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July 26, 2022 - Epoch Times
15:44
10 Ways to Get Ready for the Food Collapse: NYC Firefighter Who's Prepared for End Of The World
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With inflation raging across the entire country, with the price of seemingly everything going through the roof, and with even the possibility of real food shortages coming on the horizon, well, naturally enough, more and more people are turning to prepping.
The idea of preparing yourself and your family against any possible disasters, whether that's natural, man-made, or economic.
However, most of the advice that you're finding online has to do with people who live either in the countryside or in the suburbs.
Things like how to build a garden, how to put up solar panels, how to collect rainwater, etc.
But what about the people who live up there?
What about the people who live in apartments in big cities?
Well, if you're wondering about that, you are in luck, because we are about to head on over to the home of a former New York City firefighter.
He was actually at Ground Zero 9-11, and for the last 10 years, he has been a New York City urban prepper.
Let's go take a look.
My name is Jason Charles.
I got into prepping reading a book called One Second After.
This book is, entertainment-wise, it's a great book.
But when you read the foreword and the afterword, and I think the afterword was by Newt Gingrich, and the foreword was by the author.
Newt Gingrich talks about the EMP Commission report and how that this is a plausible action by whatever terrorist organizations out there, right?
Or even from within.
But nonetheless, they think that this could happen.
And that if it does happen, the societal breakdowns are going to be bad, obviously.
So reading that...
And then reading the book, and I remember one scene in the book where the hero of the book, I think his name is John, he runs around, he's not running around, he's driving through the town, and he looks at a bunch of kids starving.
And he thought to himself, I wish I would have had more to prevent that from happening.
So with that, I read that part of the book, I finished the book, and I lost my mind.
I went and I started buying MREs like it was going out of style.
And from there, I... We gathered a lot of supplies, probably a few thousand dollars within the first month.
Needless to say, it didn't go over well with the wife.
So just to properly explain this to the audience, an EMP attack is when a nuclear bomb is used to take out all the electrical grid in an area.
Right, so an EMP attack is a nuclear weapon or an EMP device.
So now they do have EMP devices that can attach, or they can be attached to an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile that goes up in the air and it detonates and it, I guess...
It releases or activates an EMP that showers down whatever area they're looking to affect.
These EMP devices, if you will, are more precise than wasting, as they put it, wasting a nuclear weapon to do this.
So once you began prepping, once you began saying, hey, I need to get prepared, so how did you actually start?
So you have nothing, so you're living pretty much like everyone else in the city, right?
Kind of basic, like, oh, I don't have toothpaste, I'm going to go buy toothpaste.
I don't have food, I'll go buy food.
So what was the first step?
The first step was going on preposites and then not listening to their Suggestion and just looking at all the stuff they had and go, we need that, we need this, we need that.
So initially when I started, I was, again, amateur or immature and amateurish at the same time.
And I just started buying anything and everything.
I started buying canned goods.
Obviously with canned goods at a supermarket, you're looking for sales, right?
You're looking for the, you know, spam, buy 10 spams for a dollar, right?
Because no one eats that shit anyway.
And then you...
Look online and go, well, you want something that lasts a little longer and you want some variety.
All right, MREs.
I looked at MREs.
And I was buying MREs like an idiot on eBay.
After I did all of that, I calmed down, realizing that this thing, whatever it is, can happen tomorrow or it can happen 20 years from now.
So I calmed down and I started listening to preppers online.
And then they were like, well, buy this first and buy that.
Set yourself up.
What things you're going to use.
You don't want to eat amarees.
Buy salt, sugar, pepper, you know, seasoning, flavor, spices.
Then buy, you know, canned goods.
Canned goods you're going to eat.
Buy rice.
Buy beans.
So I started listening and I started buying that and I started saving myself more money.
I threw away A ton of money in the beginning because I just thought I needed MREs and I thought I needed all the expensive prepper items.
I didn't.
Now that I'm older, a lot of those items were absolutely worth buying because they did come in handy during Hurricane Sandy and Irene.
You know, now that I'm a lot older from that point, from that midpoint to now, I have more gear where a lot of it's going to come in handy and some of it probably is never going to come in handy.
But this is why you have it.
You have it in case you need it.
So if you can go back and redo it, knowing what you know now so you wouldn't waste the money, how would you start?
How would you start stocking up your shelves in your closet?
Oh, if I went back in time and smacked myself in the face, it'd be like, yo, start with the canned goods, the rice, and the beans.
Start with the basics.
Don't go crazy.
Don't go with the MREs.
Don't get portable power stations off the back.
Learn the basics of prepping and what you need.
And then, essentially, what you should do Above all, is write a list.
Get a pen and a pad out and write out what you need.
Not what you want, what you need.
What you want comes later, right?
What you need is food and water, right?
And that's what you focus on.
Then you look at medical gear, right?
You actually focus on medical gear at the same time.
And you go, what do we need?
Who has what?
Well, if you have, you know, like diabetes or asthma or anything like that, you can stock up on meds, but meds don't last that long, or at least they lose their potency over time.
So you have to keep that in the back of your head when you're collecting that.
Medical gear like 4x4, Band-Aids, wraps, things like that, you buy that at a clip and you start gathering that together.
But while you're also collecting medical gear, you should take first aid classes because first aid classes are going to help you use a lot of that gear.
Because a lot of people Don't know how to use it, but they will figure it out, but there is also a proper way to use it so you don't use more of it.
Some people seem to think you use the gauze, you need eight gauze and a little cut.
No.
One will do, fold it in half, put it over, wrap it, and you're done.
That goes with medical gifts.
So there's a lot of things also you should be learning at the same time.
And one will say this is a lot to learn.
It isn't.
You take a week at a time or a day at a time and you focus on one thing you want to learn, right?
If you want to put more food away for yourself, you learn about pressure canning, right?
That's going to teach you how to put, especially if you live in an apartment, you do pressure canning.
So this is the closet, right, that you keep everything in?
Yes, we jokingly call it the Doomsday Closet, but I'm pretty sure we're not joking anymore.
Yeah, this is just where we put the majority of our preps.
But I also rather started canning, so I had to put another rack system in here and started canning.
This is chicken broth.
So this is under high pressure, and you can it, and it can stay in here for a couple of years.
So in theory, not theory, but if it gets bad and there's no more food coming in, we can rely on this and the rice as well.
You can mix the two together and make it some kind of a stew more separately or boil the rice in that with meat that we also have in here as well.
So we have, it doesn't look great, but this is beef.
And how did you put that in the can?
So you pack the beef in it, and then you just boil it under high pressure.
I have a canner under the desk, and I break that out probably once or twice a month, can a bunch of stuff, and then put it in here.
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So canning is just where you pressurize food in a glass jar, pretty much.
And it stores your food for a lengthy amount of time.
I'm not sure what the amount of time is.
I hear a year, some people say two.
I'm not quite sure what it is myself, so I'll have to test it out myself.
But when you take meat or vegetables, you put them in this glass jar, you put them in a pot, and it has to be a specially designated pot to do so.
You can't do it in any pot.
It has to be a pressure canner.
And you put these jars in a pressure canner and you build up the pressure, seals the food inside, boils it at the same time, rather cooking it at the same time, and there you go.
You have food that you can store away that you did yourself that cost you I wouldn't say little to nothing, but cost you less money than buying stuff that's treated with all these preservatives and chemicals in it.
And then since it has an expiration date, let's say one, two, or three years, I mean, it does expire, it's not exactly clear when, but it does.
No, not forever.
So do you just kind of label it and then you sort of eat the older stuff and then just kind of move it through the cycle?
Right, so if you're canning food, and let's say it's a year, you look at the date and it's almost a year, you start eating those canned goods and then you replace it with new ones.
You do that with canned goods as well, though canned goods can go way longer than canning your own food.
So obviously you're going to put canned goods away, but if you want to eat as natural as you possibly can or hit the natural mark as possibly you can, you will pressure can your own food because you know exactly what's in it.
So you said two good lists to start making is food and medical.
So on the food side, can you just draw, for somebody who's never even considered doing this, maybe the top 12 things that they absolutely must have?
12?
Let's try 10.
And 10, the must that you should have?
I would say...
Rice and beans, right?
I mean, water is not considered food, but water is a must, especially if you want to live past three days.
Salt, sugar, obviously just spices as a whole.
Vegetable, freeze-dried vegetables and freeze-dried meat.
That's going to go a way long way.
Those are things you should focus on.
MREs.
I mean, that's pretty much it.
Those are the basics you need.
Anything else is just what you want.
You know, those are the things you need.
Rice and beans are the proteins and the carbs you're going to need, especially if you can't get meat, right?
But if you get meat, you're going to canned meat away or you're going to freeze dry it.
Freeze drying is another process altogether that not many people can do or don't have the space or money to do it.
But if you do, You can go to town and you can put away so much more food that's going to last you so much longer.
But if you have the space and you have the money, absolutely do it.
If you don't have the space and you don't have the money, buy it.
Buy the food already freeze-dried.
It's a little expensive, but that goes a long way as well.
So up there I see you have one of those 25-year-long kind of freeze-dried food in the food supply?
Right.
Well, that's what this is here, too.
This stuff here...
August and Farms and NutriStore, they all last about that long.
So it's all one and the same.
So for this, those are in packets, so they're already cut for the serving you need.
This, you have to measure it out.
That's the only downside to buying number 10 cans, what those are called, is that you have to measure out.
And you should be measuring it out ahead of time.
So not when the shit is on, the apocalypse, whatever it is.
You're not sitting there making more than you need because then it might go to waste because you have no real way of refrigerating it, right?
Unless it's the wintertime.
Then you can put it, you know, not in the windows, but like a fire escape or somewhere outside.
But during, let's say, times like this, you want to keep the exact measurement of food you're going to eat.
You don't want to make a little more, but you don't want to make a little less because you also don't want to under...
And then over time, shooting early calories, you're going to start losing weight, energy, and strength.
So you want to measure everything out ahead of time while you still can so that for when it happens or if it happens, you can absolutely know what you're eating and how much you're eating and the exact measurements of what you need so nothing goes away.
I mean, that's pretty much it.
Cereal and things of that nature, I wouldn't even be concerned with.
Hot cereal, you can buy, right?
Like oatmeal?
Like oatmeal, right?
Creamery, creamer rice, whatever it is, you can absolutely buy that.
That's going to go a long way as well.
You can preserve that for a long time.
And the prepackaged meals, you know, like ramen noodles, those go a long way, though.
I would try to go for a more organic version of ramen noodles and not ramen noodles themselves.
I would recommend for a person who's looking to get into this is write down Sorry, get a piece of paper, or a pad and a pencil, sorry, and write down what are they worried about happening.
So it depends on that answer that's going to dictate how you prepare from there.
Pretty much, when you're prepared, you're going to prepare for it all.
In the end, when you look at everything you have, you're like, man, I'm prepared for most of it.
But you're going to write down on paper, all right, what am I worried about?
Economic collapse, for example.
So then you look at that and go, all right, an economic collapse, what can happen to me?
Can I lose my job?
Can my wife lose her job?
And how are we going to survive from there?
All right, well, if we lose our job, we need this.
So then you start buying the food you might need, the type of food you like.
You might want to put away your own food, so you buy a pressure canner, so you can put away your own food.
So you're going to start writing a list in that nature.
If you're worried about something really basic like a tornado or something, well then you're going to, again, you're going to buy food, but then you're also going to worry about water.
So you're going to start stacking water in your home.
You're going to start stacking portable power generators because you're worried about a blackout.
You're worried about losing power.
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