How I understand it is that you’re supposed to have a three month supply of food you eat on a weekly basis (cold cereal, meat in the freezer, canned veggies and fruit etc) and then have a 9 month supply (bringing you up to a year) of the essentials that will make it so you don’t die if an asteroid hits the planet. (Stuff like wheat, beans, flour, sugar, salt and other stuff).

I think the point is that if you experience financial hard times then you should be able to live off your food storage and still eat like normal human beings. But if the world is coming to an end then you have long term survival ability.

I think in addition to a 3 month supply of food you should have at least a 3 month supply of money in the bank- which will help out tremendously with unexpected job loss (at least in our experience) and is something I’d wager that most LDS people don’t have. Heck- just lack of debt would be a good start.

On a separate note- how many people feel a gun is essential to food storage- not for the ability to hunt, but to protect it?

If you’re going to store rice and beans, you also need to store water and fuel for cooking them, as well as water for drinking and sanitation. Cheap, but space is often an issue.

If a situation arises wherein you’d need to have food storage for a longer period than a few days, then let’s just put this in proper perspective as to how bad it gets.

Let’s look at how Iraq is doing today. Would anyone characterize Iraq as a horrendous hellhole? Yet somehow people there are not starving to death. Somehow they still go to the market and buy food. What about the Sudan?

Can anyone see a situation that would arise here in America that would in any way shape or form equal the desperate situation we see in any of the failed states in the world?

What about if a nuclear bomb were to go off? We’ve had that happen before in a civilian zone. It killed a lot of people. But life went on.

Can we envision what could be so catastrophic that would utterly waste our entire system of agriculture and food production for up to one year? If such a situation would arise, you’re talking about a heck of a lot worse things to happen than just needing a year’s supply (or two years) of food.

Furthermore, can we get some quotes in here from General Authorities explaining their rationale for just such this occasion?

A pamphlet, “All is Safely Gathered In” was recently distributed church-wide with current counsel on home storage and preparedness.

Answers are also readily available at LDS.org.

The three-month supply idea is simply an amplification of previous counsel prompting us to be prepared for short-term emergencies. If you have three tons of wheat, but cannot produce an edible loaf of bread, you’re not very well prepared.

Drinking water and a financial reserve are included. Longer-term storage is still counselled, but with the recognition that for some is impractical. The current counsel might best be summarized as “do the best you can to be prepared.” It certainly does not preclude a two-year supply.

The program outlined in the home-storage pamphlet supersedes previous counsel on this matter.

Home defence weapons would seem to be an individual choice. I don’t find any counsel on this at the Church web site. I personally favor a mobile automated CIWS system, but think that tactical nuclear cruise missles would not be out-of-line for some applications.

anarchy aint bad if your prepared people, think about these namby pamby liberal anarchist protest types and you got guys like me sayin you feelin lucky punk? Ya, come and try an take my food storage well that’s my view too just try setting foot on my property after the goverment has come down cuz hilary an the liberals spent all its money. Ya you feelin lucky? on my property you got guns on my end an in the woods you got bears. take your pick food storage stealing punk cuz its guns or bears for you an if you choose bears im gonna git the bear but not before it gets you

I listen for the food-storage enthusiasts comments at Church, note who they are, and make friends with them so I can go visit with my family when emergency hits. It is hard work, but I’ll do anything to be prepared.

Re: guns–this has come up with every food storage discussion in my NRA-heavy ward (rural USA). Confronting one sweet sister with the idea that she ought to be able to shoot people dead when they come after her food made her cry as she was teaching Sunday School. She fell back on “what would Jesus do” which clearly made others laugh inside at her, but I actually think is an appropriate response.

ARJ–your Bishop sounds tough! I’d hate to go to him for help with repentence!

My bishop responded that the true standard was clearly the more rigorous one

Dan, you’re one of the people I’m worried about, who don’t envision the possible emergency scenarios, and who are thinking only of extremes and absolutes; instead of thinking what you can do to lessen the possible suffering.

We don’t have to have a disaster where everyone in the country is without food for a year. That’s not what the LDS food storage plan is about.

We’re not talking situations where EVERYONE in the US has to live off food storage.

There are about 7 or 8 possible scenarios, some of which I listed, but also ones that are regularly preached in church, such as losing one’s job and not being able to find one. I knew a family that actually did live off food storage for almost a year due to financial hardship. That, plus their savings, plus their garden, let them survive just fine without having to go on church welfare, or government welfare.

Food in storage is like money in the bank, and it’s better in some cases, because rapid inflation can cause money to lose value, but inflation causes stored food to maintain or increase in value.

Secondly, you have to rotate storage (use it gradually), but not all at once. Your one year supply of wheat can last 20 years in storage, so you can take up to 20 years to rotate your wheat. Even just having one breakfast a week with cracked wheat cereal can be used to rotate a 1 year supply well before 20 years are over.
A wheat _cracker_ as opposed to a grinder, can be had for about $30. Even hand grinders to make flour can be had for $60.

You seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking of the extremes and absolutes. Having _some_ food storage, and being able to feed _some_ people is better than nothing, and so a little more storage to feed a little more people is even better.

Just because you can’t save the whole world, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to
save your own family, or help out your own neighborhood or city in times of emergency. Just being able to weather out a snow storm for 4 or 5 days can
mean a lot.

We don’t have to have a nationwide emergency of the whole country being without food for a whole year. It doesn’t work that way. Floods, quakes, hurricanes, tornados, can cause temporary and local or regional shortages. Personal home storage can go a long way to help alleviate that so people don’t have to wait 4 to 10 days for the national guard or FEMA to feed them. As I mentioned before, one LDS family with a 1 year supply can feed 50 other families for a week.

And don’t think your storage is just to feed you, or your neighbors’ storage is just to feed them. If YOUR stake gets flooded out and home-storage food ruined, and grocery stores are wiped out, then your neighboring stake that didn’t get hit can help out where you live, and vice versa.

And even if LDS food storage just goes to other LDS, that can make it easier for other relief agencies to take care of those who don’t have anything.

With your politics, I thought family-based home food storage would be something that you would advocate.

I think that food storage is important as it causes us to save something – if we store food, we likely save money and don’t overextend ourselves. In the case of a disaster like Katrina – my food storage would have been underwater anyway – I don’t think that is the point of food storage.

Regardless of the counsel that Jim summarized, there will always be bishops (like the OP’s) that know better!

Bookslinger,

Is Ezra Taft Benson mayhap a leader of your church (the LDS church in Salt Lake City)? I do seem to believe that he did in fact preach to prepare for when “all hell breaks loose.”

In another place President Benson says:

Elder Ezra Taft Benson: “Should the Lord decide at this time to cleanse the Church … a famine in this land of one year’s duration could wipe out a large percentage of sloughful members, including some ward and stake officers. Yet we cannot say we have not been warned.” General Conference, April 1965.

and

Elder Ezra Taft Benson: “For the righteous, the gospel provides a warning before calamity, a program for the crises, refuge for each disaster… The Lord has warned us of famines, but the righteous will have listened to the prophets and stored at least one year’s supply of survival food…” General Conference, October 1973.

and

Elder Bruce R. McConkie: “I stand before the Church this day and raise the warning voice. It is a prophetic voice, for I shall say only what the apostles and the prophets have spoken concerning our day. …It is a voice calling upon the Lord’s people to prepare for the troubles and desolations which are about to be poured upon the world without measure. For the moment, we live in a day of peace and prosperity but it shall not ever be thus. Great trials lie ahead. All of the sorrows and perils of the past are but a foretaste of what is yet to be. And we must prepare ourselves temporally and spiritually.” General Conference April 1979.

President Ezra Taft Benson: “Too often we bask in our comfortable complacency and rationalize that the ravages of war, economic disaster, famine, and earthquake … cannot happen here. Those who believe this are either not acquainted with the revelations of the Lord, or they do not believe them. Those who smugly think these calamities will not happen, that they will somehow be set aside because of the righteousness of the Saints, are deceived and will rue the day they harbored such a delusion. The Lord has warned and forewarned us against a day of great tribulation and given us counsel through His servants, on how we can be prepared for these difficult times. Have we heeded His counsel?” General Conference October 1980.

Shall I share more?

Does anyone know more about the Tribune’s 1992 story that food storage enthusiasts were excommunicated?

Also, I think this is a good example of what happens when people go overboard with the food storage.

Note: I bought a three-month supply a few weeks ago, so I’m not anti-food storage.

Ellsworth, I would give your effort in comment # 9 and A-. In order to get an A, it would need to meet the Standard set by the old Sugar Beet in November, 2004:

The Elect are Falling This Election
By Rulon S. Wesson

Brothers an’ sisters, I got some good news and I got some bad news. The good news is, the Second Coming is nigh at hand. The bad news is, from what I heard in the scriptures, it ain’t gonna be pretty gettin’ there.

How come I know this, you ask? An ol’ cowhand from up in Squirrel, Idaho? I’ll tell you how. I went to vote for George “W” this morning, and anybody else what happened to be asking for votes who was also a good upstanding righteous Republican member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when I overheard an argument leaving the polling place.

It weren’t any old argument, it was between the First Counselor in our very own Bishopric and his lovely second wife, Zilda Ann. Seems Zilda, darlin’ little thing though she may be, admitted to her husband that she voted for that Democratic idiot…what’s his name. Larry? Harry? Fairy? Don’t matter much to Rulon. All I know is that his campaign signs got a jack-ass on ‘em, and that’s about all I need to know.

Anyhow, ol’ Brother Partridge was chastisin’ her like a good husband would all the way out to the truck, and it got me to ponderin’ the sorry state of affairs when even up here in Fremont County, good and attractive members of the Church turn their backs on the truth and vote for a Democrat.

That’s when I remembered that in the last days, even the elect would fall. Seein’s how Zilda’s about the cutest thing our ward’s seen in a heap a Sunday’s, and the fact that her husband’s so highly positioned in the Church an’ all, I realized in a flash this morning that it’s about over. The end is nigh. I cast my vote and headed right on over to Speedi-Mart to load up on case goods and ammunition. Anybody else wanna tell ol’ Rulon that they voted for a jack-ass?

Here’s hopin’ y’all exercise your civic duty today, and get the hell out and vote for “W.”

LOL @ #23

Dan #19- I think the validity of ETB’s counsel on food storage died with him…and the Soviet Union (and thereby the threat of MAD).

AHLDuke,

#27

Only problem with your analysis is that President Benson and the rest of his ideological brethren sold this impending doom as inexorably inevitable. Benson himself said that prophecy is history in reverse, things as they will be. Or, was he wrong?

Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone (I think it was him) gave a talk in General Conference roughly 25 years ago, in which he denounced in no uncertain terms the idea that members should be armed to protect their food supply. He said, in this many words, that if we starve while sharing our food with our neighbors, we are only doing what the Savior himself would do.

Note also that the Church disfellowshipped and excommunicated a significant number of LDS survivalists down in southern Utah back in 1992. ..bruce..

Dan,
Relax. Bookslinger’s got a point, if you can’t find anything more recent than 1980 and Pres. Benson (before, for that matter, he was prophet).

You ask if President Benson was wrong. Possibly. I don’t see any good reason why he couldn’t be wrong and, because I’m not familiar with his saying that prophesy is history in reverse, I can’t judge the context or authority in/by which he said it.

A food supply’s a pretty good idea. I agree with arJ, though, that a financial supply’s more important. During the Cold War, the idea of an impending apocolypse was real, whether or not possible. But in today’s world, the idea of impending unemployment (with our investments not worth as much as they once were) is a lot more real.

Which is to say, why do we need doomsday to do food storage, especially if doomsday doesn’t seem to have been preached since the wall came down?

Sam and Bookslinger,

The point I am trying to make is that the original purpose and design for food storage was for when “all hell breaks loose.” I realize wholly that since I’ve been a member of the church (1987), no prophet has spoken in the terms Ezra Taft Benson, J. Reuben Clark and the rest did. They’ve had to back away from those over-the-top dire warnings because we weren’t about to have such a dramatic catastrophe. And it didn’t even begin with J. Reuben Clark. These kinds of pronouncements began back with Heber C. Kimball and his contemporaries.

A Random John’s whole post is about how the food storage was couched in the threat of doom. So I’ve just been trying to understand Bookslinger’s comment #13:

Dan, you’re one of the people I’m worried about, who don’t envision the possible emergency scenarios, and who are thinking only of extremes and absolutes; instead of thinking what you can do to lessen the possible suffering.

We don’t have to have a disaster where everyone in the country is without food for a year. That’s not what the LDS food storage plan is about.

I think, though, again, we’re all on the same page, just looking at it from different angles.

The “all hell breaks loose” rhetoric comes from back in the days when a seige from the US government was a real threat. There is a reason why it began that way, and there is a reason why the rhetoric has changed. Regardless, the ideas are good.

After reading Elder Featherstone’s take on using guns to protect food storage, I think I’ll just resort to using my fists and the roundhouse kick I learned in my taekwondo class at BYU. Unless it’s Jota G, of course; he’s welcome to my food storage any time, provided he can make his way through the post-apocalyptic U.S. all the way to Charlottesville.

Heck, I’m in New York City. It’s going under water anyways, isn’t it? Why bother storing food here?

KyleM–I know several young families wherein the husbands have convinced their wives to use their meager resources to purchase guns, ammo, and licenses specifically for the “food storage.” The wives could have held steady at the recreational aspect, but including a churchy need meant the women acquiesced.

I am not saying it is common, just that it has happened. (I do not approve.)

I had a seminary teacher that has a huge safe with shotguns, AK-47s, all kinds of pistols and hunting rifles. Recently he got a couple horses and joined the Santa Monica Mountains mounted volunteer deputies. He always used to say, “bring on armageddon, baby.” I’m going to his house.

Dan, I don’t know if he’s wrong or not, but I think you’re in the same boat with me on that one. That’s the nature of modern prophets.

ESO,

I don’t approve either.

Dan (44) – Glad to have known ya.

My food storage will be cigarette, pr0n and booze – I figure these will be very valuable to barter with.

[Unemployment] Also helps you see the value in having savings and no debt.

This, I believe, is one of the reasons for the more recent emphasis to get out of debt (not just save or invest for the future). It’s wonderful to have a healthy 401K, but it avails you nothing if you have a $300K mortgage.

In the vast majority of “emergencies,” you would be better off, instead of having a year’s supply of food, to only have a few days’ supply of food, plus the equivalent money you saved on food storage in a bank savings account. I doubt if there has been a single case in the United States in the last 50 years where the year’s supply of food would have been more helpful than the week’s-supply-plus-cash.

In the vast majority of “emergencies,” you would be better off, instead of having a year’s supply of food, to only have a few days’ supply of food, plus the equivalent money you saved on food storage in a bank savings account. I doubt if there has been a single case in the United States in the last 50 years where the year’s supply of food would have been more helpful than the week’s-supply-plus-cash.

Unless the bank closes before you can get it out.

I have heard counsel to have cash on hand and other money in liquid funds, but that we should be able to have enough money for expenses saved up for 6-12 months.

You all are talking about big emergencies. I have lived through the small emergency of unemployment. Stop thinking on such a grand scale. Ask yourself what your plan is if you knew that your spouse or you could only make $20,000 a year at a part-time job while you look for something else. Now what? How long can you last? And how will you do that?