peev2c3part2

PEEv2c3part2

Storing Wheat, part 2

If you live in the city, driving around incessantly, you might find food grade plastic buckets you just need to wash. My best finds used to be at a BBQ joint, cleaned with lid for a $1 each. Don't get too hung up just on “free”. Lots more folks sell them than toss them. Chinese places might be good, as everything seems to come out of a can there. Bakeries used to have them, although I don't know if the supermarkets will give you the buckets.

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Mom and Pops are obviously more accommodating than corporates ( at one time, Albertson's bakery was required to send the buckets back, one imagines for a recycling bribe. This was the height of the plastic prices, though, so this may no longer be a practice. Plus, Albertson's changes hands about every other year, a zombie store, so you never know ). One thing I noticed the few times I got free buckets was they seemed to be bizarre sizes. If you didn't get its companion lid, other's didn't seem to want to fit. I still have a couple dozen buckets I can't use because of that.

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I used to advocate two liter soda bottles. Then a minion told me how they started making them a LOT thinner. I didn't disbelieve him, but I sure had no idea how bad they had gotten. One of the neighbors tossed some recently, and I was simply amazed how flimsy they now were. They are complete crap-do NOT count on using them. You are barely better off than with a Zip-Lock plastic bag. The closest you are going to get to free are those restaurant buckets. The only question is, will you find enough. You can use juice bottles. But those are just as hard to find.

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One idea I'm particularly fond of is the junk refrigerator. A five gallon bucket that is now $5, if you can't find any free ones, has 0.67 cubic feet of storage space in it. A standard home fridge has 10 to 20 cubic feet. That means you replace 15-30 buckets by using a fridge, at a savings of $70-$140. If you can buy a junk fridge for a fraction of that, even after buying Mylar bags, you are WAY ahead of the game. I understand that Big Mamma might not approve of such an unsightly addition, so this might not be feasible. But just one, in the man cave, and you have up to near half a ton of wheat.

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You can use other metal containers, obviously, such as filing cabinets or the like, but as they are now making refrigerators to die far from the decade mark, there should be plenty of that junk around. On a fridge, you don't even need Mylar. Add plenty of DE, set the unit on its back ( don't set directly on concrete ) to take pressure off the door once filed with wheat. I would have extra seals to the motor access and over the rubber casket to be absolutely sure pests cannot access it. Throw a couple of cushions over as a bed or couch and there you have it, at least one years food supply.

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You can buy a thirty gallon galvanized metal trash can for less than the price of buckets holding the same amount. Six months supply of wheat in a $25 metal can ( I consider one pound of wheat a day's food. Obviously, you want more than just that-but we speak of times when that might be all you have. They are a baseline calorie ). The difference between a fridge and the can is you must beware condensation if the metal gets cold. In the fridge, there is insulation.

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There are food grade plastic totes, the IBC units, sold almost everywhere. You can buy used ones for under $100, but even new, they are a pretty decent way to store food, with a great container left over for rain catchment, for a relatively low cost. Yes, I prefer smaller units myself, avoiding placing all my eggs in one basket, but it is an option ( and you might need more than one anyway, with family. After a certain number of people, this becomes the most compact and cheapest option ).

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Even if you think you don't need wheat, you need wheat. Just because the rate of overpopulation has dropped doesn't mean the number of people around has done the same. The planet has far too many people. Even the 2 billion we had in 1900 ( before oil was used in much of anything ) is WAY too high. Yes, that was prior to artificial fertilizer, but coal had done a pretty good job industrializing, to include mechanizing farming ( which would have stripped the fertility sooner, had it not been for the Haber-Bosch process of ammonia from carbon fuel ). There had already been issues with importing bird crap from islands to keep the farms producing.

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Two billion was already placing pressure on the surplus from colonization. Go back prior to coal, and rely just on wood, and half a billion is a pretty good guess on the globes carrying capacity. Not “sustainability”, per se, as that is with civilizations crashing regularly, local forests and fields denuded. But about as much as you could hope for. Humans have ALWAYS, even hunting and gathering, been just like insects. Breed past the carrying capacity, die-off. Just because the INITIAL die-off this time has been orderly ( slow decline ) and hidden ( war, local famines ) doesn't mean that will be the case once oil supplies diminish.

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No matter how many Happy Place Plans you dream up, farmers treating their land better than in the past to continue its productivity, no matter how many organic or permaculture fixes you seek, without oil we cannot feed billions of people. If we had made a globalized effort to do so, WHILE we still had decades of oil left, to subsidize those areas with recovering soil or experiencing mishaps, yes, we could be feeding billions. But that didn't happen. We are far too tribal, and noncooperation is the norm.

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And no, we do NOT have decades of oil left. We might have centuries left of SOME oil, but we don't have decades left for billions of people. Malthus will have the last laugh, and all you unbelievers will help fertilize the fields for those that listened to him, may statues of his revered likeness soon grace the land to warn future idiots that their idiocy will also soon be rewarded. Fracking Fields Forever will never trump Malthus, your pathetic democratic empire will fold under the weight of the human tidal wave of diversity, and soon the tractors and trucks will no longer deliver you calories.

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Baby Jesus prefers to help those who help themselves. You are two junked refrigerators and $400 away from FIVE YEARS OF FOOD! If you cannot manage that, the price of ONE middlin quality AR-15, to have a half decade of food security, you will be judged harshly by those you pathetically cry to in times of hunger, your god smiting you to cleanse the gene pool gone horribly wrong. That pool is HIS, and your contamination is not appreciated. Act accordingly.

( .Y. )

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