DIY doomsday food kits: how to eat well after the apocalypse
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Loading... - Alice Winston
- 15 Mar 2021
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Those keen to survive Armageddon will be pleased to note a bargain in Costco this week. The US retail giant is selling $6,000 (£4,330) “doomsday prepper” food kits. Promising enough to feed a family of four for a year, these 600-can stacks contain freeze-dried carrots, egg noodles, quick oats, macaroni, freeze-dried banana slices and potato chunks, among many other staples. And because there’s nothing more embarrassing than starving neighbours attacking your post-doomsday compound, it is all “packaged discreetly for privacy in shipping”.
It’s easy for Americans, for whom prepping appears to be overtaking baseball as the national sport. But what about Brits, for whom a can of baked beans is still just a nice Friday night post-pub snack, rather than a golden ticket to repopulate a ravaged Earth?
Lincoln Miles runs Britain’s largest prepping superstore, Preppers Shop, from Roche in Cornwall. He reckons you could do it for less – around £1,000. Here are his tips:
Get a bit of everything
“To combat boredom,” says Miles, “variety is very important. Ideally, you’d like to have a third freeze-dried, a third tinned, and then your grains and pulses. And the freeze-dried food is surprisingly tasty. They do everything – even freeze-dried bacon and eggs.” The freeze-dried would be the cost bottleneck; each pack, of around 800 calories, costs about £5. “But if you go to Aldi, say, and buy tins, well they’re only costing you pennies.”
Buy slowly and steadily
“Most preppers I know tend to do a little at a time,” says Miles. “Rather than blowing £1,000 at once, which invites suspicion, it’s much better to just put a fiver a week on your normal shopping. Store them at home. Then, after a year, you’ve amassed a lot.”
Choose your timeframe wisely
Miles thinks storing enough to last a year might be slightly excessive. “Most [preppers] are only storing enough for three months.”
Store and cook
Pulses can be stored in the double-sealed steel bins Miles sells. Cans will keep for 30 years. Miles sells hex solid-fuel cookers for outdoor food preparation, but recommends also stocking up on gas cylinders.
One warning though. Apart from nuclear winter, marauding animals and plague, one thing could still take down even a well-stocked prepper: forgetting the can opener.
