She makes a lot of good points here:

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2011/03/food_storage_and_evacuation.php

Not the least of these is that there are any number of situation where you may get separated from all the survival supplies you have socked away.

Having a bucket or two of supplies at non-local locations is a good idea.

Thanks Art. Definitely food for thought.

But you do need to give some thought about where you will leave your food, and with whom.

A woman I was talking preparedness with did just what was suggested in this article, leaving several buckets of food (including pet food) in some brightly-colored 5-gallon buckets with some family members. Some months later, she was visiting them and happened to see her unique buckets nested inside each other in their garage. Nested, as in stacked, empty.

She asked them where they put her food, and they just shrugged and said they ate it, and fed the pet food to their pets. No real need, it was just convenient.

So use some judgment -- don't depend on food that is long gone when you need it.

Sue

This is the major issue with preparing outside the realm of your control. No matter how well you know a person or how related they are to you it comes down to the simple fact if its not on your property consider it 100% Gone.

They will use w.e tools or items you store and eat w.e food you store. I find when you ask someone to store something of yours at their house they will, after awhile, consider it theirs and free for the taking/using.

I store food and other supplies at a friends home a few miles away. I store similar supplies for them.
We each check our off site supplies once a year.
This could be useful if any localised disaster destroyed supplies at one address.
Such arrangements are not totally reliable as others post, but still better IMHO than putting all ones eggs in one basket.

I keep more extensive supplies at a relatives much furthur away, good for any long term or large scale disaster but not readily accesable without transport.

I also store basic supplies at work, food for 2 weeks, water purification tablets etc.
For short term needs what matters is calories. IMHO people worry far too much about a balanced diet in the short term, it only really matters for the long term.
15 each of large chocolate bars, tins of tuna, and packs of biscuits, will sustain an active life for a couple of weeks, or a sedentary life for perhaps twice as long.
These supplies are not bulky, nor perishable, and require no preperation.

Maybe the solution is just as simple as having a small pile of granola bars (or energy bars) in your rucksack. There's another thread where the topic of "Bug Out Across a Devastated City" was beaten to death. But we all will need to bug out across the suburbs - in order to get home. Some food & water will help a lot.

Again - thanks for the reminder. I don't have any food in my rucksack, but i will probably add some energy bars and maybe one of those instant soup mixes.

Pete #2

When you squirrel away energy bars, pay attention to the quality of the packaging. You want something that will resist abrasion. Clif bars are great for this purpose. They have the further advantage that they can actually be eaten.

The original granola bars had packaging that would wear through. One dark and stormy night, as we were preparing to bivouac, I opened one and finally managed to choke it down, stale and dry as it was, simply out of a sense of duty that I would need its warmth in the hours ahead. I realized then that there is probably a lifetime limit on the number of those things an organism can consume safely without side effects...

Clif bars have solved that problem. No connection, etc....

I suppose another way of dealing with the 'appropriation' by people is to store your stuff in a container the size of a trunk and securely lock it. Trucker chains, padlocks, DANGER! signs...

Sue

I think Susan makes a valid point. It doesn't invalidate the idea, but it does point out that, as with so many other things where the devil is in the details, you have to be selective as to where and with whom you store things. There are households where you can safely store a sealed bucket or three with and there are those which, live as grifters, are near the ragged edge of destitution, or have kids likely to get into everything, where reserves carefully socked away are unlikely to be there when needed.

Some of this is just knowing and knowing how to read people. Some of this might be controlled through packaging and placement. A package stuffed into the far reaches of a basement, attic, or crawlspace is less likely to get messed with than one in a well traveled area. A nondescript container that neither catches the eye, nor suggests anything interesting might help. Beware OD green containers because little boys all know that is where you find bayonets and war stuff that is fun to play with. Avoid orange and red, and any markings that indicate emergency use for much the same reason.

I don't know as I would go so far as to advocate stuffing your buckets in simple brown cardboard boxes and marking them as Christmas decorations, or something else unlikely to inflame passions, but it is a thought. You certainly don't want to get too cagey and deceptive about it because you will want to be able to find it when needed.

An acquaintance had a set of modernist end tables on either side of his couch. These were cubes, about 24" on a side, made of plywood and painted matte black. This was a pretty common motif in the late 70s. These were entirely featureless in normal use and I doubt anyone gave them a second look. If you flipped them upside-down and removed four screws they were hollow and perfect for storage. He never kept anything inside but was aware he could.

A lot depends on the household.

As I have said many, many times, a bug out location is a place where you have people waiting for you to get there. THAT is were you preplace your supplies, duplicates and spares get stashed there. Anyone you don't want to spend the end of the world with will probably loot your gear; people who are waiting for you to get there so the doom party can get started probably won't.