Domestic Civil Defence - No Food !

Annex I : Food Lists - 'A Can at a Time'

The foods listed here share one thing in common - good shelf lives without special preparation. They are maybe not the standard "pizza n' chips" stodge, but offer a good meal that keeps body and soul together. An effort has been made to bring up to date the rather dated lists - some twenty years old - that still influence thinking in Britain and America. The 'survivalist' cooked grains and beans diet is unfortunately both cheap and rather inedible, so a more normal approach is called for.

Choose foods that are mainly what you are used to eating. Look at your usual diet and list those foods that need the freezer, the fridge, the microwave, the toaster and the oven. For your one week list, find substitutes that don't need these five main power-users in the kitchen. The following points will help :-

• Expect to cook only on one or two hobs.
• Include some foods that you can eat good meals from without cooking. If you can afford it, consider a couple of days' worth of Hot-Cans for you and all your family.
• If the freezer fails, have some perishable foods in a form that has a long shelf-life :-
  • Milk - UHT or dried milk.
  • Cheese - processed packaged cheese.
  • Butter - Indian melted butter (ghee) can be bought in jars or cans. Or in a crisis you can make your own from unsalted or lightly-salted butter.
  • Eggs - Dried eggs keep for a long time.
  • Meat - A few tins of corned beef, stewing steak, cooked minced beef or chicken supreme. If vegetarian, consider additional tins or packs of soya and other nut protein.
  • Fish - A few tins of sardines, tuna or salmon.
• Bread - Packs of Ryvita, biscottes, self-raising flour to make emergency bread and pastries.
• Vegetables - Tinned peas, beans, sweetcorn, potatoes and tomatoes.
• Fruit - Cans of tinned fruit, packs of dried fruit and nuts.

Acquire a gas or petrol stove, keep in enough propane gas or a spare gallon of unleaded fuel to keep your stove running for up to a week, cooking and heating water for washing and drinks.

Build up your stock over several months, a can at a time. Use one can or pack, replace with two. If you have a caravan, use it as a store and to hold up to two weeks' extra food. Keep at least two weeks' food in the house.

This should an expanded version of the One-Week List, but may mean buying some items in bulk packs.

To give an example of what has been considered in the past, these are the quantities suggested for one adult over 14 days on the back page of the 1981 HMSO publication 'Domestic Nuclear Shelters'. Modern tastes mean that this will have to be modified. :-

• Biscuits, crackers, breakfast cereals, etc. : 2.75 Kilos (6 lbs.)
• Canned meat or fish (e.g. corned beef, luncheon meat, stewed steak, pilchards, sardines) : 2 Kilos (4.25 lbs.)
• Canned vegetables (e.g. baked beans, carrots, potatoes, sweetcorn, etc.) : 1.8 kilos (4 lbs.)
• Canned margarine or butter or peanut butter : 500g (1 lb.)
• Jam, marmalade, honey or spread : 500 grams (1 lb.)
• Canned soups (amount not stated, assumed to be standard 400g tin) : 6 tins.
• Full cream evaporated milk or dried milk : 14 small cans or 2 x 300g (0.5 lb.) containers.
• Sugar : 700 g (1.5 lbs.)
• Tea or Coffee (instant) : 250g (0.5 lb.)
• Boiled Sweets or other sweets : 450g (1 lb.)
• Canned fruit, fruit juices, fruit squash, drinking chocolate : 'If sufficient storage space is available.'

To give an example of modern alternatives, the writer was presented with a box of Sainsbury Breakfast Bars; these were packed six to a carton, in a box of twenty cartons. As each bar had over 300 calories, it represented a considerable and varied food, with a shelf life of at least five months.

This is the tough one. One can either accumulate a stock of prepared foods (which cost a lot) or gradually go over to basic staples varied by the proteins and fats in the One-Week List. The list given here should be varied with other long-life foods that have good keeping characteristics. Storage in sealed plastic drums in the dark, dry and cool (but not frozen) is the best solution. Frankly, few peacetime isolations last longer than one month, except in the most remote islands of the Hebrides.

Cresson Kearny, in his 'Nuclear War Survival Skills' (NWSS) argues for a basically vegetarian diet consisting of cooked coarse flour made from a stock of rice or wheat, with beans, sugar and dried milk powder. This is fairly cheap and provides a 2,600 calorie diet but it is not particularly enjoyable. Curiously enough, the Breakfast Bars mentioned previously were not dissimilar in composition.

This is from Table 9.3 on page 78 of Cresson Kearny's NWSS - 'A basic survival ration for multi-year storage'. The amounts are for one adult over one month. :-

• Whole-kernel hard wheat : 16 oz. (454g) per day - 30 lbs. / 13.6 Kg.per month
• Beans : 5 oz. (142g) per day - 9.4 lbs. / 4.3 Kg.per month
• Non-fat milk powder : 2 oz. (57g) per day - 3.8 lbs. / 1.7 Kg.per month
• Vegetable oil : 1 oz. (28g) per day - 1.9 lbs. / 0.9 Kg.per month
• Sugar : ¹/₃ oz. (10g) per day - 0.63 lbs. / 0.3 Kg.per month.
• Salt (iodized) : oz. (57g) per day - 3.8 lbs. / 1.7 Kg.per month
• Total weights : One Day : 26¹/₃ oz. (748g.). One Month : 49.5 lbs. (22.5 Kg.).
• Multi-vitamin pills : 1 pill per day.

The main snags are that the grain and beans are dry and the beans need to be soaked for 24 hours before being cooked. Also, greater amounts of vegetable oil and sugar would raise the palatability and energy value.

Kearny recommends turning part of the daily grain ration into parched ('puffed') grain, by heating and shaking small amounts in an open container over a hot hob, flame or red-hot coals. Parched wheat stores well if kept dry and away from insects. Such parched wheat can be eaten as a breakfast cereal or pounded in Kearny's improvised pipe mill to flour.

The writer is investigating alternative diets and more attractive means of presentation; at the moment, the best recipes appear to be breakfast bars, emergency bread, porridge and bean stew. The inclusion of such long shelf-life items as stock cubes, dried herbs, pepper, honey and dried fruits and vegetables, would greatly improve the 'Kearny mush'.

A Little Does You Good...

There is a good argument for stocking a little alcoholic drink. Water that may be unsafe because of bacteria is sterilised either by brewing or by adding enough alcohol to make it 2 % alcohol. In other words :-

• A 70 cl bottle of wine at 12.5% alcohol by volume can sterilise up to 3.5 litres of water.
• A 35 cl bottle of rum at 20% alcohol by volume can sterilise up to 3.15 litres of water.
• A 70cl bottle of gin at 37.5% alcohol by volume can sterilise up to 11.9 litres of water.

Food Lists and Equipment :-

[One Week List] [Two Week List] [One Month List] [Food Preservation] [Basic Recipes]