What did we eat?
Not too many types of food, most popular was some kind of local pancakes, to prepare them you needed water, hand full of flour and local herbs, i don t know type of herb, but i am pretty sure it was cow food.It did not require cooking oil, and it needed few minutes on fire to be ready, feeling was like you are eating dusty carpet 🙂
To explain it simply, it was grass, we just use small amounts of flour and water to keep that grass together.
We eat that when we did not anything else.
Speaking about herbs, people used a lot garlic and lavender as substitute for antibiotics, pine was popular as a antiseptic and of course camomile.
Mre s and cans were luxuries, we acquired cans mostly trough trade. Rice was popular to had, i ques one reason was because it easy to prepare it.
Who owned some kind of garden was in advance, i remember green salads mostly from gardens, to protect that gardens was another problem, but that is theme for another post i quess.
It was matter of whole new thinking, for example if you manage to get somewhere tomatoes, and happened to had some sugar in house, than probably you gonna make kind of marmalade from that, or sauce, call it as you like, and put it in jars.
Most popular kind of can was corned beef because few reasons, it was meat to eat of course, it had a lot of fat in that can, when we eat meat, we used that fat and can as a lamp (add a lace and bottle cap, melt fat)
As i said mostly it was a matter of improvisation,like to make small portable stove from pressure cooker, simply with hammer nails and saw we made two openings, one for smoke and one for wood, we attached some pipe on smoke opening, so basically we had small portable stove, we could carry that in bag, or backpack, if we going somewhere on day, we could quickly cook something on that, and warm our self.
Of course it looked funny, we cough because smoke all the time, but it worked, and it was portable.
We also made stove from the bigger cans, also portable.
Was aroma from cooking a concern for your group? How did you address this early (first two weeks) and later in the event?
How far into the SHTF situation did you realize you needed to stockpile? Had you anticipated the situation at all?
Did you make rocket stoves to conserve fuel?
What were your sanitary accommodations? Did this contribute to illness?
No actually most of the time aroma was not problem, because few reasons, mostly because city was in ruins, houses were burning, rubble, dead bodies, broken sewers, dense populated area, so most of the time aroma of cooking was hard to notice. As soon as i realized that i am going to be out of the supply and there is no usual ways of acquiring goods, in my case it was maybe after week or ten days.
There were some obvious signs of coming SHTF situation, but you must keep in mind few things, i was not into survival before, and we had normal civilized modern society and city, so most of us simple did not want to believe that bad things gonna happened , even when all started, we still keep saying for some time like :” this things have to stop, it is just not normal”
We make all kind of different stoves, from simplest type of “can stove” or pressure “cooker stove” in order to keep it portable or to take less fire wood.
Sanitary conditions were bad or non existant and of course this contributed to illnesses, for example diarrhea was always an issue.
The syndrome you describe is called “normalcy bias”. Most folks just want to believe that things will remain the same. Many people I know have only known plenty and wealth and cannot conceive of anything else.
My dear wife pays attention and she saw this coming. We have been preparing, even though she had to drag me kicking and screaming. We live in a rural area, have good relationships with our neighbors who are like minded. Your blog shows me some areas i still need to address.
Even though the signs of collapse are everywhere, most folks don’t want to hear it. I am careful to listen for a few keywords spoken by those who believe. I have had great conversations about planning and sources of resources. Others look at me like I am insane, so I just quit trying to convince others.
It’s just as well you’ve quit trying to convince them. When it does become reality, their first thought will be, “Hey guys, I know someone who’s been stocking up! Let’s go take his stuff!”