In part one of this post, we discussed planning for bugging out. Today, we are going to talk about one of the most important logistical hurdles to overcome if you are bugging out on foot: how to have enough food for your trip.
I used to include two or three Mountain House freeze-dried meals in my bugout and get-home bags, being sure one was chili mac. I also packed a couple of MREs. The problem is that both Mountain House and MREs are increasingly expensive, around $10 per meal for something I hoped never to need.
Since then, I have put together some lower-cost options, which I am sharing below. These are good for these tough economic times and will allow you to buy three meals for the cost of one MRE. This is especially handy if you are trying to feed the entire family.
The amount and type of food you will want to bring depends on the distance you need to travel and whether you are driving, riding, or walking. If you are driving, there is nothing preventing you from packing a Coleman stove and a cooler with eggs, hamburgers, fruit, deli meat and other fresh food. Since that doesn’t take much meal-planning expertise, I am going to focus on meals you would carry if you had to walk, run, or hike to your destination.
Short and Sweet
Since I live at my prepper home, I don’t plan to bug out anywhere. I have a bugout bag—old habits die hard, I guess—but I am far more likely to need a bag to help me get home. The contents of my EDC bag and the survival items in my car provide me with the food and other gear necessary to walk home.
The food in my EDC bag provides energy and fast calories that can be eaten on the go. This is not food I have to stop and prepare. If I am only 12 to 25 miles away and have to walk home, I want to spend my time moving, not doing meal prep. I also don’t want the light of a fire or the smell of food or smoke to give my position away when I hunker down for the night. If I stop, I will have a cold camp. Common foods I carry in my EDC bag are:
- Packets of nuts. These can be peanuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, almonds covered with chocolate, etc. Honey roasted nuts are good because of the added calories.
- Dried fruit. We have some dried fruit in MRE pouches, but you can also pack a bag or small box of raisins or any other dried fruit. Trail mix is another alternative.
- Bags of candy. I like gummy bears but just about any variation of M&Ms are also good. Hard candy can also give you a boost while underway.
- Breakfast bars, protein bars, Power Bars, and other food or meal replacement bars. The granola bar has come a long way since Nature Valley started selling the first one more than 50 years ago.
- Snickers bars. I’ve eaten some smashed Snickers bars from my pack, and they still tasted good. They are calorically dense, too. Other candy bars are also good.
- Slim Jims. I find these have a longer shelf life than beef jerky. They are also easier to chew.
- Lifeboat rations. These are heavy, but they are 3,600 calories, which will keep you going. You can break off a square and you have a 400 calorie lunch.
- NRG-5 Emergency Food Rations are similar to lifeboat rations, but dryer. One box weighs just over a pound and has 2380 calories.
- Gatorade powder in a packet. While I usually avoid sugary drinks, these add calories, have electrolytes, and can cover up the taste of water treatment pills. I have three in every bag. We also carry packets of instant coffee. Hot Chocolate is another option and tea bags are very lightweight.
Like any stored food, you will want to rotate the food in your get-home or other bags. But what a great excuse to eat some goodies!
Cooking Bugout Meals
I include snack and no-prep foods like those above in my bugout bag, but many of the items in it need to—or at least will benefit from—being cooked or heated. At the minimum, this requires a pot, a fork or other utensil, and some way to generate heat. My goal is to prepare a meal in under ten minutes.
I am a proponent of everyone having their own mess kit in their pack. Ours are military surplus. One is from Eastern Europe and the other from the U.S. The combination of different kits gives a greater variety of pot/pan sizes. I also include canteen cups with our canteens. That gives us multiple containers in which to boil water or fry up something. In my vehicular emergency kit, I have a larger cooking pot that nests on the bottom of a Nalgene water bottle.
For heat, I like a backpack stove, but I also use smaller folding stoves that burn Esbit or similar fuel tablets. These light easily, are smokeless, and can boil a cup of water, which is often all you need A folding Esbit stove and 12 or more fuel tablets weigh almost nothing and can often be stored inside your mess kit.
Meal Components
For our homemade bugout meals, I mix and match a carbohydrate and a protein. The carbs are light and the proteins heavy, but it averages out to a pound of weight per two-person dinner.
My plan is to have a fast, simple breakfast, eat lunch on the go or during a rest stop, and use the stove at night to combine a carb and a protein into a meal. Often one I can cook in a single pot.
Carbs
- Ramen is bulky but a very lightweight carb. It cooks up quickly and can be eaten as a side dish of noodles or a soup, which is great if you are cold. You could add six packages of ramen to your bugout bag and not notice the weight.
- Minute Rice also cooks quickly, and you can mix other items with it. We don’t eat instant rice at home, but it is great for emergencies when you don’t want to wait 40 minutes for the rice to be ready.
- Powdered potato soup is an awesome emergency meal if you can find it. (Progresso makes one). It is much more robust than Lipton onion soup. Powdered soup can be a stand-alone meal. Alternatively, you can bring a Ziploc baggie of potato flakes and make mashed potatoes to eat with a protein.
- Flavored rice or noodle pouches from Knorr’s or a similar brand are convenient. For about $1.25, you get 450 calories, which can feed one or be split between two people.
- Macaroni elbows are also a lightweight carb. No reason you could not use a box of macaroni and cheese instead of just elbows.
Proteins
- A can of chili weighs a pound, which is a lot to lug around, but it is meal by itself and an even better one over rice or with some macaroni thrown in.
- MRE entrées usually weigh 8 ounces and feed one person. (This is just the main dish, which you can sometimes buy separately from the full meal). The calories vary based on the menu, but average around 300 calories. Add a pack of Raman and you are in the 500 calorie range if you split the ramen with someone else, or closer to 700 for one person.
- You can buy a 2.5 ounce piece of Spam in a pouch, but it is less expensive to buy the 12-ounce can, especially if there are two or three of you. One can has more than 1,000 calories, so split it between people or between meals. The single in a pouch is only 230 calories. Spam goes great with a flavored noodle package. If you are feeding three or four people, you can cut it into cubes and add it to the macaroni and cheese.
- Tuna is also sold in pouches, but again is less expensive in a can. I dislike tuna and chicken for bugging out because they lack the fat and added calories of Spam or canned beef or pork. If you are walking 12 or more miles a day, you will want every calorie.
- Canned pork in barbecue sauce. A 12-ounce can over rice or with mashed potatoes makes a tasty emergency meal for two people.
- Canned soup from Progresso or Chunky usually contains 350 to 400 calories per can. Some of their soups go well served over or with mashed potatoes. For others, you can add extra rice, noodles, or eat with the carb of your choice.
- We have some lentil meals that come in pouches. These go well with rice.
- Peanut butter. When I went backpacking as a teen, we would cram peanut butter into what looked like giant toothpaste tubes and squeeze it out onto a cracker to eat. With plastic jars, that is no longer necessary. Just buy a small 1-pound jar, which has 2520 calories and is 14 servings.
Breakfasts
- Oatmeal is good for breakfast because all instant oatmeal requires is some hot water and few minutes to soak it up. You can buy flavored single-serving pouches for convenience or bring a box or baggie of the plain stuff and add some nuts or raisins. Other hot cereals are also fine.
- If you prefer to eat on the move, consider breakfast or other food bars.
- Dried cereal also makes a very lightweight breakfast. If you pre-pack cereal and some powdered milk in a Ziploc bag, all you have to do is add water and shake it and you will have milk with your cereal. You can then eat it straight from the baggie using your spork or the spoon on your hobo or boy scout folding knife.
- You can also pack pancake mix and make pancakes. Make a peanut butter sandwich with two pancakes and you can eat it as you walk.
If you want something closer to “real” bread, mix up the ingredients for bannock or your favorite fry bread and pack them along in a Tupperware container. Here are the ingredients for Bannock, a Scottish bread often eaten for breakfast.
- 2-1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons of baking powder
To make the dough, add 3 tablespoons of oil and 1 cup of water.
After you have made the dough, you can fry it in the pan portion of your mess kit and flip it once it starts to brown. You can also wrap the dough around a stick and hold it over a fire, rotating as needed. Bannock can be eaten as is, with peanut butter, or with a jelly packet. (Jelly and sugar packets found at restaurants are nice additions to your bugout bag.)
Extras
Consider packing salt, pepper, and other spices, such as a small bottle of hot sauce, that might make your food taste better. These take up little weight or space.
Also include a morale builder or two, like the previously mentioned hot chocolate or a pouch of freeze-dried ice cream. Use these as incentives. If we get to this location tonight, we’ll open the freeze-dried ice cream.
Pouch foods are lighter than canned foods, but the weight is the water or liquid in the food, especially canned soup. When you get right down to it, the can Spam or chili comes in isn’t that heavy compared to its contents. Use some creativity and you can find other pouch foods in the grocery store than are good for your bug out meals.
Non-Food Considerations
I haven’t mentioned sleep systems, tents or shelters, water filters, extra clothing, communications, cutting tools, cordage, etc. My advice is to not go overboard on these items. Your bugout goal is not to practice bush crafting skills or to build a great lean-to; your goal is to get from point A to point B as fast and safely as possible.
I also have not covered hunting or trapping food. You can carry some lightweight snares and set a few out at night if you are in danger of running low on food, but don’t spend more time trapping than walking. The faster you get there, the better.
The time to kill a deer or other large game is after you have arrived at your destination, not a third of the way there. But shooting small game with a .22 could stretch your food supplies. So could catching fish, but a line, net or cage trap that can work while you sleep better than a rod and reel.
Pre-positioning Supplies
If you have a good stash of survival stuff at home, you probably wouldn’t be able to take it all with you, even if you drove. I have heard of people who leave a pre-packed cargo trailer in their garage, so all they have to do is hitch up and pull out. That is a great idea, if you are not caught by surprise. Of course, the trailer full of gear does no good if officials shut down the Interstates, turn people back at the state line, or an EMP takes out modern vehicles and you are forced to walk. This where having a stash of cache can help you re-supply along the way.
The best cache is a friend’s house along the way. The next best is to rent a 5’ x 5’ storage unit somewhere between your point of departure and destination. You can store food and supplies there. Many storage units require electricity to open the gates and door locks, so if it is a grid-down scenario, you need to be prepared to climb or cut the fence and potentially break into the building. Of course, if you are a week into a WROL scenario, you may not even be the first to do so.
I recommend your cache is a three-day walk away. This is close enough that if you leave without your bag or if everything is taken from you as you leave the city, there is a strong possibility you can still make it to your storage unit on foot. I also suggest putting a change of clothes, some blankets, ammo for your weapons, and more food in there than you need. This will allow you to camp out in the storage building—possibly in an empty unit—to rest, recuperate, and refuel for a day or two. Also, if you make a trail friend or bring an extra person or two with you, the extra supplies could be useful.
The downside of a storage unit cache is it is expensive to maintain. Burying a bucket or other container in a park or elsewhere along your route is a cheap alternative. The danger is you may not be able to find it. It is also difficult to check up on or replenish.
A .50 caliber ammo can is also a decent stash container and should be water tight. I use these for caches on my land and am always impressed at the amount of gear I can stuff into one. They have an internal volume of roughly 5 liters. You can fit a lot of rice, oatmeal, and MRE entrees in that space.