I like Cream of Wheat but there are NOT too many cereals I don't like. One of my favorites that came and went within a year or two back in the early 70's was called 'Mr. Wonderfull's Surprize'. It came in two flavors: chocolate & vanilla. My best friend's mom worked at General Mills and she brought home samples. I was hooked. Not hard to become hooked on little round crunchy puffs filled with frosting. Down in Arizona in the summer of Pink Floyd's 'The Dark Side of the Moon', my friends and I went through 13 boxes of them within a 2-week period. When they were discontinued, I heard it was due to the misspelling of the title.
("It teaches kids that it's ok to spell incorrectly!") I think incorrect eating habits have cost our society more. Good eating habits are caught & not taught and I'm still working on overcoming several sticky ones. Cereal is still a weakness for me and I have to be careful what I buy. Lucky Charms are very unlucky for me. Did I misspell 'misspell'?

I agree that hoarding water is useless. You buy the bottles and over a period of time the water level lowers...evaporation through the jug? Strange. I just think you should keep your tub clean so you can do what I've so oft heard-fill up your tub when the storm is approaching/world is ending. I guess that's one good purpose for those garden tubs everyone wants and never uses.

Us? We have nothing, so I guess we should do more, but buying water ain't on the list.

My dad had to buy all this bottled water for Y2K and I still don't understand why. He hates panicky news stories and he hates bottled water. And yet... there it sat for most of the year. He was convinced everything would screw up because of all the Windows computers. Well, can't blame him for that...

I had a friend in grade school that thought shaking a bottle of water long enough would make it poisonous, so of course he had to try. Just made the water taste like plastic.

--
bucketbucketbucketbucketbucket...

I have a GTH (use your imagination) bag for each member of the family. They each contain water and the civilian equivalent of military rations (MREs to those in the know), as well as first aid kits, crank-powered radios, signal mirrors, flints with steel strikers, waterproof matches just in case the flint stops working, and crank-driven cell-phone rechargers. All in all, provisions for 3 days, our logic being if we can't find someplace to resupply in 3 days of driving/walking, society's been rocked back to a hunter/gatherer status and no amount of stockpiling would help.

Except for stockpiling weaponry, which is arguably more useful than stockpiling food. After all, if you have weapons, you can get food, and you can better defend that which you have. (My daughter's meal will not be taken from her by thugs)

Which reminds me: To whom does one apply for a hunting license for when the world ends?

(That was a joke)

120 gallons? Wow, I thought I was being fastidious with 2 gallons per person. Which works out to 2 gallons.

In a cinch, your water heater tank holds 50 gallons of perfectly clean at a drinkable temperature, once the electric or gas is off for a while. Oops, you bought a tankless water heater for instant hot water and lower energy bills? Enjoy the apocalypse, sucker!

Water's easy to stockpile when you have a pool, and an MSR Sweetwater filter that'll even get the viruses. Not that pumping that thing is any fun. In the winter, there's snow, so I'm pretty much covered year round.

Food? With 4 kids and a dog we'll go through that quickly, but if it goes that long the neighborhood fox will have serious competition for the bunnies, pheasants, and quail, and the deer better hunker down, too. Ammo's not an issue, trust me!

My mother has been stockpiling canned goods and water in case of some disaster or another since the mid-nineties to my knowledge. Every time a new Horrifying Disaster is predicted, she seems to entirely forget that she already has so many stockpiled canned goods and water that she no longer has room in any pantry or cabinet for anything she intends to eat or drink in a non-disaster situation.

We've been through West Nile, SARS, nuclear attack by China, nuclear attack by Russia, nuclear attack by some guy named Fred, Y2K, Al Qaeda, anthrax, and any non-materializing epidemic or other scare of the last fifteen or so years that I'm forgetting about. Naturally the latest was bird flu.

"What are you doing about bird flu?"
"Absolutely nothing. Just like the last twenty destructions of civilization as we know it."
"BUT WHY NOT?!"

She doesn't remember we have the exact same conversation each time as though from a script with a word-replace, either. I have no idea what causes this mental blind spot, as it's highly specific.

I have nothing stockpiled and no GTH/bugout bags even though I know it's a good idea. I think it's probably some form of perpetual rebellion.

Finally the obese have a leg up on the rest of us!

All we need is a pill, right?

But if there WERE a disaster and I cranked up my radio, I'd have to listen to the Evil Neighbor on old crackly WCCO. That truly would be the end of the world.

I'd rather not survive the End of Days. It's a pretty good bet I'm not going to be the local warlord with a Mohawk and noserings, hockey pads and feathers--not to mention the startling facial scar and wild-eyed stare--so where's the benefit? Me, I'll be thankfully out of it way before the Buddig expires.

Two items: Lefsa, Lutefisk.

Minnesota and Norway will survive.

When I was a youngin growing up in Southern Arizona, we always kept jars of dehydrated water on hand in case of emergency. Just add water and you're all set.

Look in to it. Awesome shelf life. We live in Oregon, and I bought one of those water coolers (you Yankees call 'bubblers', I think) and we just recycle the water by drinking it, so it never gets stale, but we've always got the requisite gallonage in the garage for emergencies. We buy the water from those filter stations at the grocery store. Our lips will never touch city water again.

And a funny thing happens when you insulate your garage properly...things don't freeze! Amazing, I know. And those galllon (or two) containers are krep, and also leech plastic 'flavoring' into the water over time. We use the big 5 gallon jugs like the delivery guy brings.

I asked him to keep an eye out for water heaters that don't work, but have a decent tank that isn't rusting away. He found 3 in a month.

I installed them in series. Only the last one is attached to the gas. That way the water's always being changed, and I have 200 gal in reserve.

naw, the easy way is to look around for fat/dumb/happy people after the big one[whatever it is]comes... and get supplies from them... with guile if needed... ;)

for those who say 'nay', you should ask yourself a few questions. do you really believe that NOTHING bad will ever happen? Are you willing to bet on FEMA or the Guard? Sure, they may come through, but just imagine what would happen if everyone was willing to be responsible...

for themselves.

heh, and 3 H/W tank guy... now THAT is a good idea... and prolly dirt cheap if you DIY...

as always, James... funnier 'n me falling outta my chair laughing...

A darn good one.

I live in Pennsylvania. Finding water isn't a problem but clean water might be. So I'm looking into a Steripen:

http://www.steripen.com/

It looks more portable than all the water I'd need.

>>Two items: Lefsa, Lutefisk.

>>Minnesota and Norway will survive.

So you are saying that, having gotten used to eating poisonous industrial waste by-products, these people have immunized themselves?

Store liquids underneath dry goods. That's just common sense, well, maybe not as common as I thought.
Don't store the water where it will freeze.

As for purification... boiling and/or chemical purification are your best bets. Duh.

I don't know about Oregon, but proper garage insulation is NOT adequate in MN to prevent freezing. It just doesn't prevent freezing after that second straight week of 20 below weather -- 30 below if you're talking about my parents' place. It helps, but water WILL freeze. There must be heat added somewhere in the system, whether from the house (assuming tuck-under or some such arrangement), or a garage heater. Unless by "proper insulation" you meant to say "bury your garage under a minimum of 6 feet of earth" (which, around here, might not be unreasonable, come to think of it).

Regarding the water storage, note the requirement being discussed. We don't decide the "requisite gallonage", the state does. Assuming your household is similar to Mr. Lileks, you have 120 gal of water in your garage....that's 24 of those 5 gal jugs. That'll take a big garage. And a lot of insulation. And a heater.

...if you don't use those flimsy gallon containers such as those that hold milk or distilled water. They're not designed to hold liquid for very long, and they'll inevitably rupture, even without freezing.

Use old soda bottles, which are designed to survive the apocalypse, and add a drop of bleach to the water to keep it from going stale or growing e-coli samples or whatever.

But I doubt they'll survive a Minnesota winter in a garage. They're better kept in the basement or the pantry.

Dear Old Dad stockpiled some water in preparation for the Y2K mess (for the record, we weren't worried about computers crashing and destroying society, we were worried there'd be a coincidental power failure or some other such minor inconvenience that would set off the lunatics and thugs on a looting spree.)

He used empty Jim Beam bottles. No need to add bleach, the leftover traces of bourbon kill all the germs, and they're glass so you never have to worry about leaching plastic or anything of that nature.

I like the water heater idea, though. Much more efficient spacewise.

For emergency evacuation, get four or more new 5 gal gas cans labeled WATER can stand freezing if you leave a little space at the tops.

Go to the country to a farm supply co-op. Buy a stock tank (approx 450 gal). Make a cover to keep leaves and crud out. Add a cup or two of Clorox. Drain and refill quarterly.

Warning! toddlers and small children _love_ to drop things in the stock tank.