My understanding is that it's much more common for Europeans to live in or close to cities, or at least walkable neighborhoods, than it is for Americans; and I have this idea that Europeans often will get groceries more often, even daily, since they are often a short walk away. And European dwellings are typically more compact, so there's less storage.
The typical American experience is driving 20 minutes to a superstore (basically a huge warehouse with price tags on every shelf -- an order of magnitude larger than most European supermarkets), stockpiling food for a week or more in walk-in pantries. A month of food is not uncommon here. I think our family goes to Costco and Walmart every 2-3 weeks or so.
So maybe this preparation directive is more relevant to Europeans who typically have smaller dwellings (less storage space) and more fresh food on hand? (I envy it!) Because when I read it, I'm like, "Yeah, most American homes have this already."
Our family also has "go bags" that are ready with about 1 week of portable supplies (food, clothing, light shelter, etc) and a stockpile of food at home, with long shelf lives, in case of any number of events that may disrupt supply chains for months...
Yeah fwiw, as a European urbanite, when I was younger and single, I'd pay zero mind to having more than what I immediately needed for my next meal. If I needed anything, I'd slip into my shoes and walk to the store (which was 5 minutes away) and buy the thing. I'd regularly drop by the grocery store twice or even three times in a day. Though now I'm older and not living alone, I walk 15 minutes to buy 1-2 days worth of food instead.
Doesn’t bread go stale, milk go sour, chicken/beef/pork/eggs go spoiled, and fruits and veggies go moldy in two weeks? Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
Please explain how you’re able to do this, I would love not to have to shop for groceries every one or two days.
Ultra-pasteurized milk cartons have a shelf life of months (some even unrefrigerated) when unopened. Once open, they need to be used within a week or so, but that is doable with 1.5 gallon cartons.
> eggs go spoiled
Not really. At least the ones we get here, can last a long while in the fridge. Easily a couple of weeks if not more.
> fruits and veggies
Some veggies can be frozen e.g. carrots. Others can be fried/roasted and then frozen. Fruits do go bad fast yes. Some of the fruits can be bought frozen as well.
> Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and
Frozen bread thawed at room temperature tastes surprisingly fresh IMO. And no, it's not the "flour-based product" you refer to. I have made home-made bread and frozen with no issues and then thawed it out later.
> we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
I don't eat meat, but I think the answer is again a chest freezer that sits at -20 C or so. A 10 cu.ft freezer is super compact and cheap and can store a lot of food.
OK, I will answer. Bread goes in the fridge in a ziploc (sealed plastic bag). It can last days without getting moldy or dry or stale. Meat goes in the freezer - and it can stay there for months if it is vacuum sealed (I have salmon I caught from last summer in my freezer. Because it is vacuum sealed there are no freezer 'burns'). Veggies - the fridges have some type of circulation inside and they have some bins marked for veggies. In these bins veggies do not go stale in a day or two. Tomatoes / peppers / carrots / celery can easily last more than 1 week. My two cents.
Bread is mostly sliced bread in the US which lasts long. Can be frozen.
Lots of meat / fish is frozen.
Milk lasts for weeks in the store, same at your house (until you open it). I know in France milk is sold in bricks or bottles that aren't even refrigerated.
Most veggies can be frozen. And they weren't picked a couple days before you bought them, they can clearly last a long time.
Well, we drink almond milk mostly, and it keeps for 2 weeks. A lot of our meat is frozen unless we're planning a special meal. Some fruits and veggies are a bit tricky, sometimes we make a quick trip to get some fresh produce, but between some produce keeping well on the counter, and others in the fridge, they last a week or so.
Bread keeps long enough, unfortunately thanks to preservatives. "Homemade" (can't believe that label is allowed on factory-made food here) bread lasts a little longer in the fridge. But all bread I know freezes well, so we thaw it when we're ready to it the loaf, and it's gone within a few days.
We also live in a dry climate in the mountain west. I don't think we could get away with this in a wet climate.
Not OP, but for a lot of things, I actually get two or three months worth of meat (typically chicken) that is frozen (from a super-mega-super store called Costco), and I keep it in the freezer. Not uncommon for people to even have a chest freezer, or second refrigerator in their garages, if they live in the suburbs.
Bread keeps for a week, no problem, and when it's older than that and has started to go stale, it gets toasted for sandwiches.
But I typically go to grocery store weekly, because we eat a lot of produce in our house, and though I have some techniques to keep lettuce good for 1 to 2 weeks, some stuff spoils quickly.
Our eggs are refrigerated, they can keep for awhile in the fridge.
Meat freezes well. We load up the freezer and defrost in the fridge a day or two before cooking.
Bread tends to last two weeks in the fridge, but our bread isn't what I'd consider great bread. It's just for toast or sandwiches.
Eggs last a long time in the fridge, well beyond their best by dates.
Milk also lasts two weeks just fine.
Veggies are the hardest if they can't be frozen. We tend to go fresh veggie heavy the first week and frozen veggies the following weeks until we get to the store.
There is bread made such that its shelve life is increased at the expense of taste and texture. It is sort of gummy, I find it hard to describe. But that's not the only option, you can buy normal bread but it's more expensive. With that in mind I too find it hard to do groceries every 2 weeks, some items do last but I prefer to get the fresh version.
One thing nobody said, a lot of what Americans buy is ultra-processed and designed to have a very long shelf life. It's going to last longer than most European foods to start with.
On the extreme opposite of the US stockpiling you have mega cities like Tokyo (Seoul, HK...) where it's not common for many people to have almost empty freezers. Since you can get almost anything, at convenience store open 24/7 that you can find more than one in 500m radius.
They usually have a pretty elaborate stockpiling strategy (frequent earthquake) but most of it is done at local municipal level and not individual.
During covid, many municipalities had the service to drop off crates of food for people that had to isolate. Mostly because many just didn't keep much around for more than a day or two
Living in the Netherlands, I have two grocery stores within 1 minute walk from my front door. Because of that my home has barely any stocks of food, and I go almost daily to the store and grab what is needed for the evening meal.
If supply lines were to break down then I would be in trouble.
This stands in contrast to when I lived in Iceland, where it is more like the US when it comes to stockpiling food a week or two at a time
> I have two grocery stores within 1 minute walk from my front door
I'm curious about the physical arrangement that makes this possible?
Here (California) the walk from its parking lot to the grocery store is about 1 minute, so having two grocery stores within 1 minute would mean having your house right next to the parking and having two grocery stores next to each other. I'm having trouble visualizing how that can work.
For comparison, I do also have two grocery stores within easy walking distance, but one is about 6 minutes and the other one 10-12 minutes walk. One is across the street and the other one a couple blocks in the other direction.
It certainly is and I think it is like you said, many people more or less buy supplies on demand. Although this is probably a more recent development of city dwellers and the younger generation. It isn't at all unusual that people still have supplies lasting for a month aside maybe from drinking water.
The odd canned vegetables and noodles you never used for cooking can last you for quite a while. That said, to survive 72h you would only need drinking water anyway, even if you might end up hungry.
If a real catastrophe hits, a well or access to drinking water would be quite helpful. The rest wouldn't be too acute at first.
I can confirm this, being resided in several European countries. I do my groceries twice daily as the supermarket is 7 mins walking 2 mins cycling distance. Most people do the same. Some people, including my immediate neighbors, do a monthly big grocery shopping to fill up their freezer.
I guess I can survive 72 hours, with rice, beans etc at home but sometimes there's not much left. There's often some meat in the freezer for 1-2 meals.
72 hours of supplies essentially means water and a plan to deal with extreme temperatures. Also medication but most people have 3 days worth on-hand anyway and most medication isn’t particularly perishable. This is achievable by almost everyone.
In the US we regularly have natural disasters that leave people semi-stranded for weeks.
Violent crime really isn’t a thing in the immediate aftermath of disasters, at least in the US. Looting can be an issue but that is usually predicated on the absence of residents e.g. areas that have been evacuated, so you aren’t likely to run into looters if they exist.
A few years ago I ran through all the realistic emergency scenarios I could think of, living in a large city and driving in a car, and except for "being attacked with a gun" the emergency tool that seemed to be useful in basically every other scenario from a building on fire to stuck in an elevator to being in or coming across a car accident was a tomahawk or an axe with a spike/pick on the other end. They also tend to be cheaper than large axes and so it's easy to toss in the car or leave near the door, etc. It may not be the single best tool for some situations, but it seemed like the best all-around tool for almost every situation.
Keeping 8L bottles of water around is an exercise in of itself, they’re easy to forget and bottled water doesn’t last terribly long so you meed to remember to cycle it.
(120 days for normal filtered water with heavy agitation, 2 years for distilled sealed water).
There are a few ways to keep cycling through supplies if you’re already using food/water that can last some time.
For water, could get a water cooler. Keep a few 5 gal jugs around, and just use it for some drinking water. By periodically using it, you’re able to rotate through jugs.
For food, plan canned food supplies around what you normally eat.
For example, I like soup in the winter and fall, so I’m always cycling through it every year.
Another couple of days are from me eating various kinds of instant noodles. I always have a dozen or so at hand.
I buy bulk oatmeal for breakfast as part of my normal breakfast routine. That’s several days of food in a pinch.
I go camping several times a year so the freeze-dried foods are worthwhile keeping stocked up, and I just bring a few when I go out.
If you use your pantry as part of your supply planning, the hardest part isn’t stocking up, it’s tracking nutrients.
I can buy 5 litres of water for 1,89€ at my grocery store. Because it's industrially packaged into a sterile container, it keeps for a good year or two.
I have one of those for every member of the family (including pets) and a calendar alarm a month before they go "bad". Then we either use them for boiling pasta/potatoes or watering the flowers and get new ones.
We've had to tap into them ... twice in a decade I think? Once when a neighbour did some DIY plumbing and the water was shut down for 12 hours while actual professionals fixed their oopsie and once when the municipal water treatment plant fucked up and the water was tainted for a bit.
In America most households (single family homes or appartments or condominiums) have a water heater with something like 60 - 80 gallons of hot water (how hot? it is up to the resident to make it really hot or not that hot. Households with small kids usually do not make the water really hot).
In case of disaster water necessities could be covered by cooling hot water from the water heater.
Because we've always known where the enemy will be coming from and who they are.
In the military we did pretend that they were called "the yellow force" or something vague, but they always just _happened_ to attack from the east in every training exercise :D
It also taught me that normal people don't understand supply chain logistics.
Yes, your local store doesn't have toilet paper, but that doesn't mean it's "run out".
The logistics center 100km away has literal pallets from floor to ceiling of toilet paper, they just don't have the capacity to move them to the stores to meet the spike in demand.
Instant coffee, cigarettes, water, muesli, protein powder, olive oil, supplements, medicine and you’re settled. All durable very long, easy to store, provide all necessary nutrition and you can trade cigarettes and coffee.
I would skip the cigarettes and alcohol because the ones who want them are hopeless people who will have nothing of value to give to you in return. If you want to trade, I would primarily keep lots of cash in various foreign currencies, also gold in small denominations if you can defend yourself from getting robbed.
You can't eat gold or cash. Luxury consumer goods like high quality food and drink, tobacco, drugs, and other useful things will probably be more valuable in an emergency. Look toward what's valued in prisons.
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My understanding is that it's much more common for Europeans to live in or close to cities, or at least walkable neighborhoods, than it is for Americans; and I have this idea that Europeans often will get groceries more often, even daily, since they are often a short walk away. And European dwellings are typically more compact, so there's less storage.
The typical American experience is driving 20 minutes to a superstore (basically a huge warehouse with price tags on every shelf -- an order of magnitude larger than most European supermarkets), stockpiling food for a week or more in walk-in pantries. A month of food is not uncommon here. I think our family goes to Costco and Walmart every 2-3 weeks or so.
So maybe this preparation directive is more relevant to Europeans who typically have smaller dwellings (less storage space) and more fresh food on hand? (I envy it!) Because when I read it, I'm like, "Yeah, most American homes have this already."
Our family also has "go bags" that are ready with about 1 week of portable supplies (food, clothing, light shelter, etc) and a stockpile of food at home, with long shelf lives, in case of any number of events that may disrupt supply chains for months...
How do you shop for groceries every two weeks?
Doesn’t bread go stale, milk go sour, chicken/beef/pork/eggs go spoiled, and fruits and veggies go moldy in two weeks? Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
Please explain how you’re able to do this, I would love not to have to shop for groceries every one or two days.
Freeze loaves in chest freezer
> milk go sour
Ultra-pasteurized milk cartons have a shelf life of months (some even unrefrigerated) when unopened. Once open, they need to be used within a week or so, but that is doable with 1.5 gallon cartons.
> eggs go spoiled
Not really. At least the ones we get here, can last a long while in the fridge. Easily a couple of weeks if not more.
> fruits and veggies
Some veggies can be frozen e.g. carrots. Others can be fried/roasted and then frozen. Fruits do go bad fast yes. Some of the fruits can be bought frozen as well.
> Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and
Frozen bread thawed at room temperature tastes surprisingly fresh IMO. And no, it's not the "flour-based product" you refer to. I have made home-made bread and frozen with no issues and then thawed it out later.
> we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.
I don't eat meat, but I think the answer is again a chest freezer that sits at -20 C or so. A 10 cu.ft freezer is super compact and cheap and can store a lot of food.
Milk lasts for weeks in the store, same at your house (until you open it). I know in France milk is sold in bricks or bottles that aren't even refrigerated.
Most veggies can be frozen. And they weren't picked a couple days before you bought them, they can clearly last a long time.
Bread keeps long enough, unfortunately thanks to preservatives. "Homemade" (can't believe that label is allowed on factory-made food here) bread lasts a little longer in the fridge. But all bread I know freezes well, so we thaw it when we're ready to it the loaf, and it's gone within a few days.
We also live in a dry climate in the mountain west. I don't think we could get away with this in a wet climate.
Bread keeps for a week, no problem, and when it's older than that and has started to go stale, it gets toasted for sandwiches.
But I typically go to grocery store weekly, because we eat a lot of produce in our house, and though I have some techniques to keep lettuce good for 1 to 2 weeks, some stuff spoils quickly.
Our eggs are refrigerated, they can keep for awhile in the fridge.
Bread tends to last two weeks in the fridge, but our bread isn't what I'd consider great bread. It's just for toast or sandwiches.
Eggs last a long time in the fridge, well beyond their best by dates.
Milk also lasts two weeks just fine.
Veggies are the hardest if they can't be frozen. We tend to go fresh veggie heavy the first week and frozen veggies the following weeks until we get to the store.
Everything is frozen, canned or full of preservatives.
They usually have a pretty elaborate stockpiling strategy (frequent earthquake) but most of it is done at local municipal level and not individual.
During covid, many municipalities had the service to drop off crates of food for people that had to isolate. Mostly because many just didn't keep much around for more than a day or two
If supply lines were to break down then I would be in trouble.
This stands in contrast to when I lived in Iceland, where it is more like the US when it comes to stockpiling food a week or two at a time
I'm curious about the physical arrangement that makes this possible?
Here (California) the walk from its parking lot to the grocery store is about 1 minute, so having two grocery stores within 1 minute would mean having your house right next to the parking and having two grocery stores next to each other. I'm having trouble visualizing how that can work.
For comparison, I do also have two grocery stores within easy walking distance, but one is about 6 minutes and the other one 10-12 minutes walk. One is across the street and the other one a couple blocks in the other direction.
(Source: We sheltered some friends who had to evacuate the California wildfires. They missed those clothes.)
The odd canned vegetables and noodles you never used for cooking can last you for quite a while. That said, to survive 72h you would only need drinking water anyway, even if you might end up hungry.
If a real catastrophe hits, a well or access to drinking water would be quite helpful. The rest wouldn't be too acute at first.
I guess I can survive 72 hours, with rice, beans etc at home but sometimes there's not much left. There's often some meat in the freezer for 1-2 meals.
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In the US we regularly have natural disasters that leave people semi-stranded for weeks.
* https://www.ready.gov
* https://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-en.aspx
Defensive weapons are also a good idea. They don’t need to be anything fancy. A baseball bat or a tire iron can do the job.
Violent crime really isn’t a thing in the immediate aftermath of disasters, at least in the US. Looting can be an issue but that is usually predicated on the absence of residents e.g. areas that have been evacuated, so you aren’t likely to run into looters if they exist.
What job can a tire iron do while trying to get out of your flooded home, or escape a wildfire?
What can a baseball bat do for the residents of Helsinki in the event of armed aggression against Finland?
We invented that shit and named it according to said aggressor.
Keeping 8L bottles of water around is an exercise in of itself, they’re easy to forget and bottled water doesn’t last terribly long so you meed to remember to cycle it.
(120 days for normal filtered water with heavy agitation, 2 years for distilled sealed water).
If I forget, and there's then a situation where it's the only thing I have to drink, I won't worry about it being past the date.
For water, could get a water cooler. Keep a few 5 gal jugs around, and just use it for some drinking water. By periodically using it, you’re able to rotate through jugs.
For food, plan canned food supplies around what you normally eat.
For example, I like soup in the winter and fall, so I’m always cycling through it every year.
Another couple of days are from me eating various kinds of instant noodles. I always have a dozen or so at hand.
I buy bulk oatmeal for breakfast as part of my normal breakfast routine. That’s several days of food in a pinch.
I go camping several times a year so the freeze-dried foods are worthwhile keeping stocked up, and I just bring a few when I go out.
If you use your pantry as part of your supply planning, the hardest part isn’t stocking up, it’s tracking nutrients.
I have one of those for every member of the family (including pets) and a calendar alarm a month before they go "bad". Then we either use them for boiling pasta/potatoes or watering the flowers and get new ones.
We've had to tap into them ... twice in a decade I think? Once when a neighbour did some DIY plumbing and the water was shut down for 12 hours while actual professionals fixed their oopsie and once when the municipal water treatment plant fucked up and the water was tainted for a bit.
We have 22,000 litres of water stored, with pumps and filters. And we are on mains water too so it’s never used.
We also have 6,000 litres of water stored for fire fighting.
As do many other houses on our street and local area.
Then there is the solar and storage batteries…
We could go for a good while and we live in a metropolitan area!
Rural Australians could probably survive for longer as isolation is their life anyway LOL ;-)
Bottled water in France at least has a 1-year expiration date. I have drunk water well past this date without noticing any particular taste.
In case of disaster water necessities could be covered by cooling hot water from the water heater.
Because we've always known where the enemy will be coming from and who they are.
In the military we did pretend that they were called "the yellow force" or something vague, but they always just _happened_ to attack from the east in every training exercise :D
Yes, your local store doesn't have toilet paper, but that doesn't mean it's "run out".
The logistics center 100km away has literal pallets from floor to ceiling of toilet paper, they just don't have the capacity to move them to the stores to meet the spike in demand.