For how many days food do you think I should keep there?
Thanks,

How much food should be included in a BOB is a tough question.

You have to ask yourself a few questions and answer them before you might be able to get some sort of an idea how to answer that.

Here are a few questions I asked myself when trying to determine a similar thing for myself. These questions go beyond the number of days I would prepare for, but I included them anyway.

• For what situation or situations am I preparing a BOB?
• Based on the answer or answers to the first question, how long do I estimate it will take before I can get to a reliable source of food?
• What are maximum and minimum caloric requirements to stay alive and to be very active during that time if necessary? (this goes to determining whether it was a wait it out situation, one where I would have to be on the move, etcetera)
• What type of emergency rations would be best in different situations where I would require a BOB? (This goes toward size and weight carrying restrictions and what resources would be available i.e. (e.g.?) dehydrated foods, MREs, Food Bars, etc)
• Subsequent to the last question, are there any dietary restrictions I should take into consideration?
• Also subsequent to that prior question, is it more important to carry as much water as possible rather than pack a lot of food?
• How many people will have to survive on the sustenance I want to pack in my BOB?
• Are any of the situations for which I am planning cases where food makes a good bartering item?
• How much can I realistically pack in my BOB without it being a detriment? (I'm not just packing food, but other items as well)

This is all off the top of my head, so I'm sure I have missed more than a few questions I originally asked myself during the exploration of this question.

There really are no standards for BOBs. Some say it should be a 7 day kit, some say it's synonymous with a 72 hour kit, still others consider it to be even less. What you have to consider with a BOB is what is it going to take to get you out of a perilous situation to an acceptably safe and secure one where aid/supplies are more readily available. In Baghdad, I had to think about what I would need to take if I had to haul a$$ to one of the outlying Bases. The food in my BOB then consisted of 4 hoo-ah bars. The priority was the 3 liters of water in my hydro pak, plus another couple bottles of water if I could grab them on the way out. By all counts, we figured if we didn't make it to safety in two days on our own, we'd probably be done for anyways. In fact, we pretty much all agreed that if the bubble went up and we didn't get evac'd out by our boys within an hour or so, we were pretty much dead men walking at that point anyways, and all the food and water would do is prolong the agony of the waiting.

Now back here in the real world, it's all about how much Pemmican I want to tote around with me.

Well, my BOB just has to get me about 90 miles down the road to the "ancestral land". If I can't cover that in four days, bury me, becuase I can get at least half way there by car in two hours if I stick to the back roads and then hoof it.

I carry a couple of MREs (Surepak-12s, about as close as you can get to the real thing these days), some wet packs of rice and meats, a couple of small cans of stuff, some granola bars, some bullion cubes, and a bag of instant rice. For fast energy, some "fun size" Take-5 bars and Milk Duds.

I agree factors will affect everything. My question was more what I had better keep in case of emergency.
So far I found information that it should be for about 2-3 days of food and water per person.

That depends on a lot of variables. How close are you to DC, NYC or LA, for example. Is the emergency likely to be relatively short lived, thus ground transports reaching you in a day or two, or is it something that is going to restrict anything short of helicopters even after the sky is clear?

My BOB has a few packets of bouillon and instant oatmeal, a few Powerbars and two packs of ramen noodles. I know it's not much, but food wasn't high on my list of necessaries.

For backpacking in the past I've used peanutbutter mixed with hunney and corn flower (not corn meal). I've also added Nutella to the mix at times. High calorie, high carbs, both simple and complex, lots of nutrients, and it tastes good too! I sometimes have it wrapped up in torillas or just plain.The person I got this from calls it "moose goo". I found the idea here: Moose Goo

Edit: forgot to say that for a BOB I'd just have a can of peanut butter, sealed pack of corn flower, hunney, and nutella.

I'm sure I'd get sick of it after a while, but for a week it will keep you alive and moving forward.

Ah, heck, you're making me hungry.

If you add some figs or dates and some Sesame Seeds to that peanut butter concoction, you have what's known as biffy bar. Very tasty indeed, and still high in energy and nutrition. For those who can't stomach plain Pemmican, this is a good alternative, though not nearly as substantial.

This brings up a good idea. Pemmican doesn't have to be just dried meat and suet (or Tallow). You can add all sorts of things to it, like dehydrated berries or veggies, nuts, whole grains, and even seasonings to give it some character. In fact, most of the indian Pemmican I've eaten contains dried berries and usually sunflower seeds.

One of the most exotic Pemmicans I've had contained Grape Nuts cereal, powdered pork rinds, and whey powder. It was so good I nearly ate a cupful, but it was so rich I almost made myself sick doing it. Once you start thinking outside the box, you can come up with some truly palatable recipes.

You gotta remember, there were literally thousands of people living off of Pemmican for hundreds of years in our past. If it weren't possible to make it taste reasonably good, I doubt it would've been as popular. Some folks even preferred a good Pemmican ball to fresh roasted game.

Of course, a good portion of that has to do with mindset too. for instance, there's folks up north that will chew whale blubber, and think Castor oil is candy, and many traditional Japanese eat foo-goo for breakfast, which is well beyond my consumption capabilities any time of the day. But then I could never get the big grub down during SERE training either.

I keep a few "quick" food items in my BOB but I keep another bag stocked with more long term meal type foods such as dried veggies, rice,canned meats, etc. If I am leaving in a hurry and can only grab my BOB I have a few things but if I can grab my food bag it would give me a lot more to go with.

We definitively should have a cooking section on this forum !! <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

What?? No jar of marshmallow?? How can you expect to survive without that?? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Seriously, the stuff I carry was meant to be mainly comfort food than anything else. Wiggle into the shelter, boil a cup of water, mix in the bouillon and slowly sip while contemplating life's little mysteries - like how I was dumb enough to get stuck out here in the cold... <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Like a lot of people, I carry enough food inside me - though some people I know actually call it a beer belly! HA!! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

A cooking section sounds like a good addition to the Long Term Section.

Marc

*Nods*

Cooking to store and with stored foods is a part of that that I will be tossing data in for. I found it amazing, back when I was on the Y2K crew, that people were buying wheat, but they didn't have grinders. Yeah, you can make it work, but wheat stew gets awfully old real fast. Among my various stashes and caches of information, I have some 80+ year old cook books, and if I've tried it, I'm willing to share a recipie or three. Not whole books, but a few of the best, and lots of the general advice.

For eample, how many of us know how to use mason jars? How many people have tried canning oddish stuff, like your favorite chinese place's General Chicken. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> (It didn't work too well, but I am going to try again if I can talk them into getting more sauce, and put the rice in a seperate jar.)

My automobile BOB is intended for 4 days. I keep 2 Mainstay 2400cal. packages in the bag: 3-4 days food in a pinch. Since I envision this for bugging out and keeping on the move (e.g. to a larger cache).. not setting up any camp.. I picked a food source that required no prep. Also it is tolerant to the heat and cold of storage in my truck.

Yep, like I said, you can buy good rations, or you can make good rations. I guess it's just my style, being a camp cook, that I prefer rollin' my own. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Ben, I've experienced two problems with the pemmican I've made:
1) It got 'et before it got stored.
2) I wasn't sure about heat tolerance given the fat.
The solution to #1 is, I guess, willpower.
Re: #2 Do you have a pemmican recipe that stands up to storage in a vehicle in the summer. How'd it do in the sandbox?

I never got to make any over there, unfortunately. Wax candles wouldn't have made it through the peak of the heat there (I logged 137, but I know it got higher than that).

Suet stands up to heat a little better than tallow. Suet is the organ fat, which is a slightly denser fat molecule (and therefore a little higher caloric value for a given mass). You could mix the hot fat with flour and gelatin dissolved in a little water to form a really soft roux that, when cooled, would stiffen up but not crumble, and will take the heat a little better. I'm not sure if parrafin and suet will homogenize, but if they do, that would certainly harden the Pemmican up, just don't overdo the wax. Maybe you could take a frozen Pemmican ball and coat it in wax like they do cheese wheels.

I've never had a problem with Pemmican getting too soft to handle. If I am going out into hot terrain, I'd just put the plastic wrapped pemmican into a ziploc bag and be done with it. It won't liquidate, but even if it oozes a little, I can recover it all, and it won't go bad, so to me it doesn't matter much if it gets squishy or deforms, long as it stays in the container.

Another great side use of Pemmican is it can be a great aid in getting a stubborn fire going.

I agree with you, I have a 3 day pack (as well as the wife and kid). I carry 3 days worth of rice, boullion, beans, jerky, some protien bars and a few "goodies". However, all I have to do is get to our pre-determined meeting place. It is 2 hours away via 1/2 interstate and 1/2 dirt road. There is food supplies there as well as shelter, water etc... Our plan is simple, drive if we can, walk if we must, make it either way. We also carry handguns, a shotgun and a hunting rifle. If it has 4 legs and I am hungry... it just became food. I also have one backpacking fishing pole that I could grab if we are headed in a direction that has lakes or streams. Food is only as distant as nature allows.