Mylar Bags and Sealers – At Star & Bullock Hardware
The best advice I can ever give anyone is to plan to stay put. I don’t care if you live in a one bedroom apartment in the middle of a city, or off grid in the Ozarks. The myth that “you have to stay on the move” is a fools errand. If you are young and strong and smart, and you have no ability to build resources now (which probably means you aren’t that smart really), fine. Plan to live on the hoof. But otherwise, plan to lock your door and hope the water stays on for a time. Enough people will kill each other for whatever resources are left that you will most likely be able to go out safely in a matter of weeks.
That is why I’m not a huge fan of these groups of people who plan to team up and share resources in some bug out location. Because for one, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to get to your preplanned location. And you have no idea if those who do show will bring guests who were not part of the group.
Plan to stay put, alone, with no reliance on outside help. Because that is more than likely how it will work out regardless.
Because mostly the only people reading this are those I would call “insiders” by now, I’ll tell you that I don’t expect us to go Mad Max. I expect a downward spiral where we land on a new reality that has a greatly reduced quality of life for everyone. And who does and doesn’t survive is up to our Illustrious Creator. But no I don’t expect everyone to make it. And I think that is actually the plan.
In the meantime, a lot of people are going to be expecting help, and all the government is going to have to help them is more and more currency. It will work at first, but at some point it will stop working, and the violence will start. That is when you just lock your door and wait it out.
I don’t think the water is going to be the first thing that goes down. In many areas we are on nuclear power, so most likely the water will be the last to go. Electric perhaps not so much. Because as I’ve explained, we may get to a place where your local transformer blew and can’t be replaced, but down the street they are still on. In this case, the water would most likely stay on. Electricity is only required at the pumping stations, which are usually robust and underground.
So that leaves food, and cooking of course which I have covered and will continue to cover in its many facets.
If you plan to stay, you can protect a lot of food with not a ton of money and minimal work, besides carrying the food itself. Filling one gallon bags is a mess, and slow going. So my focus has always been on large bags. Until now the best bag was at Uline. They make it with a ziplock for $245/100, and $172 without a ziplock. You do have to buy 100 bags. I find the ziplock useful after opening the bag to be able to close it and protect the food from insects as you use the contents. Shipping to me in South Florida right now is $57. They also charge sales tax even though they seem to have no nexus in Florida.
Insects are the primary reason you should use Mylar. Flour moths and many other grain insects can cut through regular plastic pretty easy. And smell “breaths” out of regular plastic to let them know the contents as well.
Rodents will not be slowed by Mylar, if they know the food is there. But Mylar does a pretty good job defeating smells.
I recently had a run-in with a grain insect on some seed corn that I bought for my new garden farming project and channel. It made me decide that I need to go back to Mylar to stress the importance of protecting your food from insects. I’m not a fanatic when it comes to oxygen absorbers and perfect storage conditions. I think the food will be used well within it’s date at this point. But insects can just wipe you out right away, and as I have said many times, Walmart flour often has flour moth eggs in it that hatch. If the flour is in Mylar, the insects generally die off before they can do damage. With oxygen absorbers they die very quickly. I recently covered how to make these out of steel wool and coffee filters. But they are also cheap to buy.
One of the downsides to the Uline bags is that they only hold 4 bags of Walmart flour in the 10lb size. You can fit 45lbs if you use the 5 lb bags, and 50 if you use the 25lb bags (put them in sideways). But my favorite size is the 10lb. and those are kind of a pain.
The Uline fits 60lbs of the 20lb bags of rice and dry beans from Walmart, and 40lbs of pasta.
If you watch the video, you will see that these giant bags I found fit 6 of the 10lb flour, and 80lbs of rice and beans. Probably 50-60lbs of pasta as well. I haven’t tried.
They are not available with a ziplock currently, but I have always said that you not rely on the ziplock for bag closure regardless. You need a bag sealer, and I show you a couple in the video that I use. Several comments on my Mylar articles have said that people use clothes irons to seal these bags, but I have not tried it. You can for sure use to pieces of steel heated on your stovetop, and press the edges together.
If you are doing a lot, or have some people with whom you can share, it is worthwhile to buy a sealer. The two in the video are fantastic, though the impulse sealer is really a two person job to seal correctly with a nice flat straight seal.
That is why I chose to start this article with my stress on staying put. If you just make a pile of these bags in your living room, or in the corner in the kitchen, you will be able to just lock your door and not leave. Eighty pounds of rice is over 120,000 calories. Each bag is roughly a month of calories, running lean. If you mix it up with ten of these bags, and include flour, rice, beans, pasta, oil, sugar, salt, yeast, and maybe some oatmeal and nonfat dried milk, you will eat as well as almost any billionaire in his bunker, with not one can of high cost food, and you didn’t waste your money on Patriot Supply, or Heaven’s Harvest, or any of the other survival food scams that are running out there.
The important thing is to get started. As you can see in the video, calories are heavy. And though my advice is to use Walmart Delivery, few people ever take that advice, so get going carrying it yourself. If you have to do this alone, I suggest you stick to the Uline bags, as the ziplock makes it easier to heat seal the edge. It holds it straight. You have some time. But perhaps soon you will not.
Mylar Bags and Sealers – At Star & Bullock Hardware
Yep. And that’s why I don’t have a bug-out bag. But I do keep a ‘get home pack’ in my car. Some months back Paul suggested foil packs of Tuna. I prefer a can of tuna packed in oil – very calorie heavy. I keep that and a can of nuts in my pack and swap in fresh ones every year.
I actually lost some foil packs of salmon after about 5 years, but they were stored in a hot trailer in south florida. So it’s good you are swapping in fresh ones. Dinty Moore and walmart ravioli are more calorie intensive, and they come in at around 300 calories per dollar, which is still more than patriot supply augusun farms et all. I know you are only keeping a pack worth, but tuna comes in at 100 or so. I have a lot of tuna, but I like to explain that caveat. The larger sized cans are better, but you have to have the people who can use it up before it goes bad.
Paul,
This is good work that you do; thank you for the effort.