MREs

MREs: Are They Really as Gross as Their Reputation Says?

MREs — or Meals Ready to Eat — have developed a horrible reputation among the fighting men and women for whom they were invented.

Bestowed by service members with nicknames like “Meals Rarely Edible” and “Meals Rejected by Everyone,” these long-lasting military food rations are built to withstand a 1,250-foot parachute drop, but can they withstand their reputation as barely edible, tasteless bricks of calories — are MREs really as bad as everyone says?

Picture Credit- Captain Dave's Army Navy Supply on Ebay

Certainly Not a Home-Cooked Meal

The reality is that no soldier, sailor, airman or Marine will ever tell you that he or she has eaten an MRE that reminded him or her of home.

Stuffed with calories, vitamins and minerals, MREs are packed in extra-tough plastic pouches and designed to have a scary-long shelf life. They can be scarfed down cold or heated with an enclosed, water-activated flameless heater. They’re consumed during short breaks or while on the move. It’s the fastest fast food in the (Read More....)

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Turn Your Bunker Into A Greenhouse And Garden Underground

Essential to any complete disaster survival plan is a store of non-perishable food large enough to sustain you and your family for an indeterminate period of time. Canned foods, dehydrated foods, vacuum-sealed seed packets, and MREs often are the primary, if not the only, items preppers rely on to get them though disasters because they can be kept without spoiling for as close to forever as food can get. As practical as these kinds of foods are, however, they are fundamentally unnatural, and without the nutritional value that fresher foods provide. It may seem that there is no alternative to these disaster foods, but recent developments in urban farming, specifically in the Netherlands, may provide a solution for survivalists.

Water & Light

Even the most inexperienced gardeners know that plants of all varieties require two basic resources to grow and flourish: water and light. Many preppers already grow their own food, but their capacity to garden would be greatly diminished if they were forced to go underground during a disaster — and given that most bunkers or other survival shelters are underground (or at least without windows), gardening seems mostly out of the question.

Though providing plants with water would be easy enough, feeding them with the right kind of light would be next t (Read More....)

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