Remus over at the Woodpile Report posted a little follow-up to his prior excellent post on food, recounted here: Ol’ Remus On Food. Below are his additional comments, copied and pasted with formatting intact, from October 29th for your reading pleasure. Read and heed indeed.
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last week’s essay about food as a weapon in a civil war. Some terms are unfamiliar to some readers.The phrase “deep larder” means very long term storage food. Decades, not years. One example is whole wheat, in Mylar bags, with oxygen and moisture absorbers, sealed in airtight five gallon buckets. Freeze dried food is a deep larder’s high end. Also long lasting is dehydrated food vacuum packed in Mason jars or Foodsaver-style plastic pouches.
Your shelves of commercially canned and home canned food are intermediate storage foods—a few years. The food in your cupboard, refrigerator and freezer is short term food. Some a few months, some a few weeks.
In the military, “iron rations” is ready-to-eat food to sustain troops away from a field kitchen. They’re currently called MREs, formerly known as C Rations and K Rations. Iron rations are a temporary expedient—a few days. MREs are not intended for long term storage. For the survivalist, iron rations is an emergency cache of food accessible when the main stash isn’t. Bugout backpacks are typically stocked with iron rations, either ready-to-eat or quickly prepared.
“Supplies” means ammunition, medicine and medical items, water filters, batteries, repair kits and spare parts, shoes and boots, clothing for all seasons and the like. Supplies are casualty items, in time they’re either used up or worn out. “Equipment” is different from supplies. A canteen is equipment, water is supplies. Good quality equipment with routine maintenance, hand tools for example, will outlast the user.
A partisan may use survivalist techniques, but a survivalist is a combatant when self defense is the only alternative. Militants would have you believe you’re so extra special you’ll be stalked by DC’s death squads while tending your secret potato patch. Unless you’re out sabotaging bridges or ambushing convoys they aren’t going to hunt you down with drones or trackers. They’ll have better uses for their time and resources than chasing you around in the hills. It’s the desperados you’ll have to worry about.
Prudence and a sense of proportion will see the survivalist through. He’s of no interest to the warring parties if he stays away from them and their stuff. And if he blunders into them, he’ll escape rather than shoot it out. Chances are they’ll make a big show of running him off and let it go at that. In their mind they’ve done their duty, why turn it into a confrontation? If they pursue him, then it’s decision time.