Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Family Safe in a Crisis
Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Family Safe in a Crisis
What if your life was disrupted by a natural disaster, food or water supply contamination, or any other type of emergency? Do you have the essentials for you and your family? Do you have a plan in the event that your power, telephone, water and food supply are cut off for an extended amount of time? What if there were no medical or pharmaceutical services available for days, weeks, or months? How prepared are you?
With this guide by your side, you and your family will learn how to pla
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Disaster Preparedness Books,
If you’re like I was, you’re looking through the various disaster preparedness books wondering which one is best. I have worked my way through many of the most popular books and offer a shared review of all of them here. I hope this comparison helps you make a decision. I should also point out that I researched nearly every disaster book out there and recently published the Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family. If interested, search Amazon for the title. Onward with the reviews!
Book 1: Crisis Preparedness by Jack A. Spigarelli
Like many of the disaster preparedness books, this one begins by answering the question, “Why bother being prepared?” It also outlines a framework for being prepared that includes accumulating supplies, getting mentally and physically prepared, and having your finances in order. One thing I particularly liked was the emphasis on the importance of knowledge. It wasn’t just about what items you need, but also what skills and knowledge you should develop. But this book is mostly about food preparation for a major disaster, with emphasis on having a year’s food storage, milling your own grain, growing sprouts, home canning, dehydrating, freeze-drying, etc. There are detailed tables showing the calories of various foods including their protein, fat, and carbs. The final third of the book offers advice on other topics, including weapons, hand tools, clothing, energy, medical, sanitation, transportation, communications, and home preparation. The book concludes with a list of recommended books and a brief listing of companies that sell disaster preparation items. Overall, this is a very good preparedness book. I probably should have given it 5 stars, but I thought it went a bit overboard on the food plan. That said, it is the most comprehensive of the preparedness books.
Book 2: Preparedness Now! By Aton Edwards
This is another thorough disaster preparedness book, one that focuses more on emergency situations (fire, chemical attack, etc.). It is organized into brief chapters (some only a few pages) on a variety of important topics, including: water, food, shelter, sanitation, communication, transportation, and protection. It is also filled with many packing lists detailing what you should get in preparation. It introduces the e-kit (a very lightweight kit to keep with you) and grab-n-go bag with more extensive items. Final chapters of the book discuss various possible disasters, including earthquakes, tsunami, infectious diseases, chemical and bio warfare, crime, fire, and extreme weather. Some of the commentary is a bit questionable, but the technical content is good. Note the deficiency with this book is that it does not offer any detail on food storage.
Book 3: Disaster Preparedness for Dummies
First of all, this isn’t a book. It’s a DVD video. I wasn’t paying attention when I bought it, and was a bit surprised when it arrived. I generally like the Dummies series. They are well researched and serve as a good summary. This DVD offers a lengthy video discussing many disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, etc.), briefly outlining how you might prepare for them. It also has an overview of how you should react in case of a terrorist attack (nuclear, chemical, and biological). But the advice is all very general, and is more like what you’d expect to hear from your local weather station. For example, the video repeatedly advises you to “stay calm” and “evaucate in an orderly fashion.” The videos are high quality, but don’t expect detailed outdoor survival tips or food storage suggestions. Everything presented is relevant and useful, but it feels more like a FEMA public service announcement.
Book 4: Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton
This book is broken into six main sections. The first section offers decent but very incomplete summaries on preparing for short-term emergencies. The second section discusses how to store and purify water. The third part talks about the logistics of setting up a food-storage program, and has some suggestions on how to store food. The fourth section details what types of foods you should store. The fifth section has blank inventory planning pages. And finally the last section has some recipes. About half of the 285 page book is either blank planning pages or simple recipes. The first half of the book is pretty good stuff, but I found this book to be incomplete. It does however offer some good advice on food storage.
Book 5: Organize for Disaster by Judith Kolberg
This book goes an entirely different direction than the other preparedness books. Emphasis is on understanding the federal resources (i.e. FEMA, Red Cross, etc.) available, creating a personal intelligence network, organizing essential documents, maintaining insurance coverage, listing a home inventory, preparing your house for disaster, basic first aid, and…
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|Book does exactly what the title says.,
Just like the title says the book is full of hints to store food for a crisis. There are a number of excellent hints such as storing food that you would normally eat and turning over your stored food through your regular eating habits. The book also mentions having emergency clothing, food and water packed and ready to go because when a crisis occurs there will likely be no time to pack up supplies. You want something you can just grab on the way out the door. Hurricane Katrina is a good example. Having emergency supplies in your car is another excellent idea. Time and again we read about families being stranded without adequate clothing, food and water. Finally, one of the best ideas is to always have a ready store of hundreds of dollars in cash on hand.
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|Use it only as a start,
I always liked this book, but a question has arisen about the completeness of the protein in dried milk. Seems that in the process of dehydrating the milk, the protein is largely deactivated. So, it would be a mistake to stock up heavily on the four items mentioned but is better to use more of a variety of foods. Another question is about food allergies arising from a daily heavy consumption of wheat. This is one of the most common food allergies but most people eat more of a variety and allergies to one item don’t tend to build up, but with that heavy consumption of one food on a daily basis they could. Another thing to consider is cooking times when fuel might be in short supply or nonexistent. Shortage of food is likely to go hand in hand with fuel shortages. It is better to store many food items that don’t have to be well cooked or very thorougly processed. I suggest people buy this book for the valuable information in it but very carefully think about the drawbacks and drastically alter this plan for themselves. The author does list other items to store and suggests best length of storage….read this section carefully. Learn about basics of good nutrition and walk through a grocery store for ideas of what foods might be stored. You can get your storage items in other places than the grocery store, but it will give you some ideas at least.
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