Hello again,

Recall: My last post was on cache items and that I still have the child that is keeping me up at night. Excuse any grammar mistakes again.

After my last post I noticed I left out a few items, etc
I'll try to make this quick and at least somewhere near the quality of my last post.

Additional Items that store well:

-COCO (I have stored it for over 10 years in the container it came in without any lose in flavor.)

-Honey (It will crystallize but putting it in a double boiler will melt it again. I only had one JAR go 'bad' in my life. It was a jar that was opened and left for a year...and by bad I mean that it started to ferment into mead. I actually considered it a perk. Most honey will not change even if opened and resealed. Great for using on wounds as well.)

-Vasoline (Works great with cotton balls and on babies. Please don't ignite babies. I have Vasoline that is 20 years old and hasn't changed in any way I can detect. I'll be honest this somewhat scares me.)

-Nitrol Gloves (I have stored Nitrol gloves for 2 years straight without any lose in elasticity, color change etc. I highly recommend throwing out (using up) latex gloves, condoms ETC. I have NEVER been able to keep a latex product for 2 years. They always change color and break super easily. Condoms are good for 1-3 years as they seem to have a better quality of latex. That being said I wouldn't trust an expired condom to do the job of birth control.)

-Electronic Media (Some people say CDs will fail over time. I have some that I burned myself and they are still going well 20 years later. My biggest concerns with backups is that people don't verify their backup system works by doing actual trial runs. My other concern is that as the data density increases the survivability of the data diminishes. i.e. a cd rom can take more scratches and distortion than a DVD can. Higher capacity hard drives have the same chance or greater of failing plus they contain more of your information. If you are caching information I now recommend USB micro drives ... or preferably paper. Yes, caching data is important. I've scanned numerous survival books and printed them on high definition laser printers at 30% of their original size or smaller. If you use write-in-the rain paper it will not be affected by rain...even submersion for months. THEORETICALLY I've taken the peterson guide to wild edibles and compressed it down to 11 double sided 8.5-11" pages. A real bug out bag weight savings plus it is waterproof. Local copyright laws vary. Stay legal San Diego. I am currently testing the paper but it has stayed the same for something like 5 years now.)

-Pictures (A long time ago pictures lasted incredible amounts of time. Egyptian paints haven't faded in thousands of years being exposed to the sun. I have pictures of my great great grandfather that looks better than a 25 year old picture my parents took. Today most pictures are stored on hard drives and never printed. While it is possible that our future generations will have extraordinarily backwards compatible computers I would recommend a physical copy. I don't mean printing out a picture....the paper will yellow and the color will fade. I recommend selecting a few key pictures and having them laser etched on to stainless steel or gold. The cost is about $50 for a coin sized image that will last for many forever. The laser etchings today are in such high resolution that they look like a perfect black and white image. You don't see individual pixels. Maps and info can also be printed on the side of your survival knife. That is if you can part with it for a time.)

-Shredded coconut. It never goes bad, even in unsealed plastic bags. I recommend the sugar free non-chemically type for health reasons, but as you aren't keeping it as a stable food you might not worry about the chemicals or sugar.

-Chia seeds (Yes, like from Chia Pets. These seeds last forever. I've stored them for over 8 years in the grocery store plastic container. Even with opening them to eat some and no special handling they haven't gone bad. Did I mention you eat them? They are pretty neat. A friend of mine runs marathons and swears by them. They keep your energy levels up for endurance tasks. They also work as a pretty good appetite suppressant. A tablespoon full of seeds easily substitutes for a meal. You don't feel hungry and they keep your energy up. Try some of these flavorless, slimy wonders.)

-Soap (Natural fat based soap stores terribly. Get the chemically stuff. Liquid soaps have stored 10+ years without degrading. Laundry bars are PERFECT. They will outlast our species. If you set them on a shelf and come back in 35 years the laundry bar will only get better with age. I know. I'm still using one that is 35 years old. They lose their scent which is a perk and the lose all of their remaining water. Which means they shrivel a bit. Not only are laundry bars better for storage but it is like super concentrated hand soap. A little goes a LONG WAY. If you are concerned with staying clean smelling you can also use a stainless steel bar of soap. Rubbing the stainless steel on your body removes all odors. Don't believe me that you can use this stuff? Trust me you can. Sold mostly for hunting folk who want to hide their scent from animals you can pick them up for $10 or so. You'll have a bar of soap that will last forever. Give it a try for a week and see if your wife can tell the difference. My first trial was one armpit with my normal soap and another with the stainless steel soap. After one week of testing I let me wife know what I was doing. She cringed at the thought but was unable to tell which armpit was washed with only the stainless steel. To smell clean you can also use Xstatic shirts. Again, a spinoff from hunting. These shirts are treated for life and it will never was out. They destroy odor causing bacteria with silver. If I went three days without showering in the same shirt it would be evident to anyone standing within a 1 foot radius. After 1 week with this shirt you couldn't detect human odor with your nose against it. It did smell a bit 'musty' my wife said but not like human scent and it was still barely noticable. These shirts are $50 and well worth it in laundry alone. Only get the all natural fiber ones with 3% or more Xstatic. Other brands were tested by a 3rd party lab and found to lose their silver with washes. This is bad for you AND aquatic life forms.)


- One day I watched my grandmother washing dishes with just water. When I asked what she was doing she responded "Soap isn't magic my dear. During the depression we only used soap for oily dishes. Not once did we get sick from our dishes."
I'll never admit it to my wife but I've taken over my grandmas attitude on this one. As far as soap goes remember that you can make soap in the wild and that soap isn't magic. Soap is really best at getting out fats and oils. Sand baths DO work pretty well.
Also, If you ever are camping and have a stew that left the pot oily you can always dump in some wood ash and boil it up. It will turn the oil/fat to soap and you can easily clean the pot out. Don't waste your soap to clean it! That being said if you have oils left over in a survival situation I'd boil some more water and drink the excess oil/fat.



-Thermoscooking. Holy cow. I almost forgot this one. Silly me. Thermoscooking is ultra important. It provides a way to make food without the scent broadcasting to the neighbors. It allows you to let the meal cook itself without having to monitor it. It only uses a tiny fraction of the energy normal cooking requires and it produces TASTY CHEAP FOOD. If you are storing rice, beans and hard grains you must buy a wide mouthed thermos. No, I mean really. Like now. Stop reading and go buy one. Then come back and continue this post.
Ok marvel at your thermos. Hold it. Caress it. Love it. Now put it away with your supplies for a later date as most people won't bother to try it out while times are good. Ideally, you purchased a high quality one that doesn't have a glass flask. Get the largest one you can find as the extra capacity will mean it stores the heat better. To use pour in boiling water, add your rice and close it. Come back in 4 hrs and eat your yummy rice. You'll have to play with the ratio of rice to water depending on the rice you stocked. You can learn to cook many different dishes with them google it. I prefer to add some raisins, honey and Cinnamon to my rice. I make the thermos up at night and awaken in the morning to an instant breakfast that is just hot enough to eat without burning myself. Yummy AND it will save you tonnes of money in today's vanishing economy. Instead of having to boil rice for 20+ minutes you simply get the water up to boil and turn the burner off.

baby is crying must run.
-NIM

Thanks.

Thanks very much. I might just get a good thermos and "cook" my lunch for work in the am. Would be ready by noon. Thanks very much for the post.

same here with the dish washing without soap.a hot water rinse and a clean flour sack type dish towel is all i use unless grease is involved,people don't wash beer glass's in soapy water do they?
on canoe/camping trips i don't use soap on any of the pots and aluminum pans,just boiling water and air dry.
we have so much stuff,food wise,that is so easy to get that i don't think folks even think about trying to keep food,they just chuck it if they think it's "old" and buy new.the right storage container is a must.i'll have to admit that i had to throw out an unopened bag of bread flour because i left it in the bag in our basement food storage shelf along with the canned goods.over the summer it went moldy,which is why they sell flour canisters that seal isn't it...

Thanks a lot for your well written and educating post Your sleepless nights with a crying baby certainly benefits the community

I have to say I find some of the other items that last seemingly forever more disturbing than the Vaseline. Isn't that stuff just refined petroleum? Looks like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly

Interestingly that wiki has some good information on when not to use petroleum jelly for certain things.

Anyway, it'll probably last forever.

Thanks again NIM for some really great advice. I find your advice more useful than a lot of other advice because you've given it such thorough personal testing prior to sharing.

your writing is a kick to read. I do the same thing with my dishes, but it's cuz I'm too lazy for soap. That, and I hate how so many soaps now have "anti bacterial" crap in them. Good job promoting multi drug resistance, folks!

Thermos cooking... should look into that. Great idea!

Re Thermos cooking, I've never done rice, but that's my favorite way to get ready for a hunting or a car trip. Prep oatmeal w/frozen berries in a hot thermos before I got to bed and have a delicious hot breakfast. Works great with steel cut oats.

One downside, an oatmeally thermos is tough to clean in a hotel room.

Love the ThermosCooking idea. I must confess I hadn't heard of it. I do baggie cook while hiking. Thermos cooking is a better way for non-backpacking applications!

Thank you for the tips! There are so many good recommendations, that I feel a bit guilty for pointing out things that I would do differently...

I personally wouldn't bother with the $50 laser etched pictures. That's mostly because it's difficult for me to tell what pics will be the most valuable 40 years from now, and I have thousands of pics. My recommendation is to backup your pics both locally and remotely. Locally, you can use CD's, DVD'S, external hard drives, etc. Remotely, there are online backup services that use redundant databases located in different locations on earth. You can pay about $5 per month to save many Gigabytes of data. I'm confident that method will save the pics perfectly for an extremely long time (or indefinitely) as long as someone knows about the data. In contrast, you can make laser etched photos for $50 each, but it can easily parish in a fire or whatever with the rest of your stuff.