[array-species]

Funny FEMA should just now come up, I just now spent some time considering FEMA!

It is very surprising to me that much emergency infrastructure exists, without providing very basic things to households like regionally relevant emergency kits and something like one month of MRE + Water. Rather than it sitting in some warehouse... because distribution becomes a very immediate problem.

Not forced but, offered to anyone who needs it and to be made aware of it.

Seems like that would be a win considering how much they spend per year - almost $100 USD/yr per US citizen. Freaking 30B USD.

[jfk13]

I suspect that if you distributed emergency supplies ahead of time, some people would treat it as a convenient handout and simply consume them.

And even aside from the temptation to use the supplies, not everyone would be able to find a place to store a month of rations & water.

[bombcar]

The best "emergency supplies" are consumed over time, to keep them fresh. If you're planning ahead, you just make sure that the consumables you have that can last a month, you have a month supply of.

And that is expensive (something like $1k per household, perhaps, based on https://www.costco.com/chef's-banquet-one-month-emergency-fo... ).

The US is amazing at transportation in general, and it makes more sense for each state to maintain emergency supplies they can move in a moment's notice.

But households should in general be prepared to survive about a week without outside assistance; if you're more wealthy you can increase that.

[cowsandmilk]

Not to mention hurricanes and tornadoes will likely destroy the rations for those who need them most.

[dredmorbius]

This is where awareness and planning help.

An emergency food stash that is part of a go-bag / bug-out-bag is useful. Individuals or households would have their food, clothing, and vital documents in a single piece of luggage (duffel bag, backpack, suitcase), which could be grabbed and carried or quickly thrown into a vehicle.

The challenge, at a wide-scale (national, regional, even city-wide) disaster-preparadness level, is of communicating this and establishing suitable levels of conformance.

To the extent that there are preparations which individuals can self-provide (food, water, and clothing among them) and those which require or benefit from central coordination (command-and-control, warning and information systems such as the FEMA test, emergency responders (rescue, etc.), and coordinated mass transportation (establishing and managing evacuation routes, busses, trains, etc.) it might not make sense to specifically provision such supplies, though if specific items aren't readily available commercially government coordination or distribution might help.

[vel0city]

Right? Here's some MREs to store in your house that's getting washed out to sea in the hurricane or burned up in the wildfire!

Great planning work.

[dredmorbius]

The items which would be useful for an emergency situation are largely readily available commercially, and/or depend on both local and personal circumstances. There are guidelines for packing a go-bag or bug-out bag, e.g.,

<https://www.state.gov/global-community-liaison-office/crisis...>

<https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/how-to-build-the-...>

Many of the specific supplies that are useful are dual-purpose, and may include preserved or shelf-stable food, camping, recreational, or work-out supplies.

The most critical needs are usually fairly brief, the day or two before rescuers can reach people, or during which evacuations are ongoing. Those in more remote regions may want to keep longer-term stores, perhaps a few weeks worth of supplies, but will likely have much of this on hand already.

Keep in mind that a go-bag is to go, and if it weighs much over 25 kilos / 50 lb or so, becomes a challenge to movement itself.

[icegreentea2]

The DoD procures MREs at about 80 bucks a case of 12. You could probably stretch one MRE per day for survival situations (~1250 calories), though 1.5 or 2 would be much more comfortable. Taking it to be 1 per day, one month is 200 dollars.

MREs have a 3 year shelf life at room temperature, so each person you supplied would need to be topped off every 3 years - so like 65 bucks per person per year. So fits in their current budget, but would displace like... a lot of what they're currently doing.

One month worth is probably also not really worth it from a value perspective? Push down to 5 days of MREs + water per person, and you'd probably capture like 98% of the value.

[vel0city]

> So fits in their current budget, but would displace like... a lot of what they're currently doing

Yeah, right? Like sure, we could just eliminate FEMA and instead use that budget to just hand out MREs. But then they wouldn't be doing their emergency management training and standardization that they do. They wouldn't do disaster housing assistance. They wouldn't be working on hazard mitigation activities.

There's a lot of things FEMA does that isn't just hand out some crackers after the storms pass.

Personally, if my house gets destroyed in a tornado I'd prefer FEMA to come through and cover a hotel for a couple weeks while we figure out what to do rather than just hand me some MREs a year ago that also got destroyed in the tornado.

[dredmorbius]

The recommended shelf life may be three years, but the meals can almost certainly be used long past that point, with only modest degradation.

I'd agree that a month's supply is excessive. Three days to a week would be far more reasonable in most cases. The goal is to tide over until other resources can be found, which in most cases will be a few days.

Where longer-term nutrition is required, far more conventional long-lived foods will be more appropriate: bulk grains, dried beans, canned goods, powdered or dried foods, and freeze-dried foods. These can come from normal household stocks, and simply be rotated as part of normal food purchase and preparation.

Refrigerated or frozen goods will of course spoil quickly without power in most cases (though could be viable for cold-weather climates where cold storage ... comes with the territory).

[dredmorbius]

Not to put undue weight to YouTube's reliability, but there's at least one channel devoted to eating long-out-of-date MREs and other military emergency / survival rations. From as long ago as 1906 (117 years ago):

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=562nQKR3_3M> (1h35m runtime, first bite at 16:24).

There are multiple selections from the 1940s (WWII era), and selections from numerous militaries (US, UK, Canada, Vietnam, China, Japan, Sweden, Israel, South Africa, ...).

<https://yewtu.be/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA>

[dredmorbius]

And ... having developed a new hobby ...

Not all experiences are positive. A 1986 MRE prototype, tested in 2018 (32 years old at the time) is decidedly stale:

<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qhCmUoDnzmk>

Watching a sampling of videos might give you an idea of what to watch for in terms of damaged / stale / degraded food. There's also good information on nutritional choices in emergency situations, including "metabolic water", the amount of water that's consumed or released in consumption of carbohydrates and fats (net positive) vs. protein (net negative), as well as caloric density by unit weight (4 kcal/g for protein and carbohydrate, 9 kcal/g for fats), vitamin, and fibre content.

A friend also reports that organisations often sell or auction out-of-date rations which can remain usable for some additional time.

With careful storage (cool, dark, dry place, low humidity, no degradation of packaging), emergency food should store well.

[idlewords]

MREs are not meant to be eaten for more than 21 consecutive days; even eating them for a couple of days will make the diner uncomfortably aware of why they've been given the nickname "Meals Refusing to Exit"

[array-species]

Great points.

Just thinking of MRE and water is narrow, but in my region the most likely broad critical event is total supply chain cut, so it would be a long term shelter in place situation. So I got to think for myself on that point.

For example people in Amish country aren't going to give a crap in the first place and have some of their own supply chains.

I am glad about the alert system test and think it's a great use of funds!