Are Survival Food Buckets Worth It?
A serious take.
At a time when Americans are struggling to buy basic groceries, Costco is selling a year's worth of emergency food buckets for about $3,000.
It's designed to feed one person.
If you could actually live on survival food for a year, maybe it wouldn't be a bad deal. Can you, though? Several companies sell emergency food kits. There's Readywise, 4Patriots, Ready Hour, Augason Farms, Mountain House, Backpacker's Pantry (Vegetarian), Good-to-Go (Vegan), and Valley Food Storage. We could go on, but those are the big ones. The cost runs anywhere from $100 to $200 per bucket these days. One bucket feeds one person for a couple of weeks.
Various prepper channels push these buckets hard. Others trash the idea of food buckets in general, even if they have deals to promote certain brands. It sounds appealing to have a year's worth of food ready to go that lasts for decades. They cook up quick. All you need is water and some camping cookware (and heat).
Every now and then, you hear someone bragging about stocking an entire basement or bunker with these things, enough to last decades.
Are they worth it?
Earlier today, I launched a project to research and produce a manual/reference guide for long-term social and industrial collapse. I'm going to make it available to supporters as a PDF, and I'm going to sell a print version at cost (because who wants to rely on the internet for long-term survival?)
We've got more than 150 backers so far, and it hasn't even been 24 hours. I think people see the value in this book, and interest will grow as the project approaches a tangible thing. I've started compiling articles I've already written on these topics, and we're at 20,000 words. I've started drafting a table of contents and planning for more in-depth research.
You can read the developing table of contents here. I've also finally added an official contact page so anyone can reach out to me.
Feel free to make suggestions.