Feeding the masses

[Stonecarver]

Most members here I assume cater for their own families and friends,so have only so much they store at home. Just wondered how you would going about feeding a town or large city. Watched some on youtube where meals are prepared for 100,s or even 1000,s and unsure if work for any length of time. Storage etc

[jansman]

The company I work for feeds ( minimum) 500 people per day in it's restaurant,and supplies at least another 100 with fresh meat and bread.The resources needed to accomplish this ,6 days per week are enormous!The skilled staff to do this,safely,are scarce.( Its why we earn so well)

The 'village' I have lived in all my life ,now has a population of 8000.In a SHTF situation there will be no ' just in time delivery,erratic power at best,etc. Yesterday was the busiest day since Christmas,and we had a 15 minute power cut.when it came back on ,it took 10 minutes for computerised systems to load,and that was the deck ovens too.We were basically,knackered! That 25 minutes,we estimated,cost us at least a thousand pounds in lost business.

Transfer that to a grid- down situation,you wouldbe talking about rationed,suspiciously unsafe food,and the consequences of that.As my job is dealing with high- volume feeding,I would say it would be a thankless,nigh-on impossible task.

[grenfell]

Again it depends on the situation , extent and circumstances of any event. I soppose the closest analogy would be some of the famine events in Africa or emergencies caused by severe weather all of which rely on the event being relatively localised and allowing the input of resources from the wider global world. Assuming even that mass cooking /catering would most likely be of the basic sort especially in any protracted event, little choice but eat it or go without. I recently linked to a report of how even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would impact global agriculture so even those of us who have gardens and allotments would be suffffering and possibly not be able to augment our rations. And very very few have anything approaching a year's stocks or more so I couldn't help but think we'd all be in the same boat. As said a thankless task and when the bodies start to pile up one that would generate a lot of criticism . Thankfully I don't feel it's the most likely of possibilities but always good to think about.

[jansman]

One thing to factor in would be food hygiene.Please don't give me all that, " we have to eat a peck of dirt nonsense! ".Grid down,SHTF,Crapola, poor handwashing and food handling would be a MAJOR issue.Faecal contamination would be a real danger.E- coli in its various guises can be lethal.10 cells of the .157 strain causes renal shutdown.And death.

[Deeps]

Again it depends on the situation , extent and circumstances of any event. I soppose the closest analogy would be some of the famine events in Africa or emergencies caused by severe weather all of which rely on the event being relatively localised and allowing the input of resources from the wider global world. Assuming even that mass cooking /catering would most likely be of the basic sort especially in any protracted event, little choice but eat it or go without. I recently linked to a report of how even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would impact global agriculture so even those of us who have gardens and allotments would be suffffering and possibly not be able to augment our rations. And very very few have anything approaching a year's stocks or more so I couldn't help but think we'd all be in the same boat. As said a thankless task and when the bodies start to pile up one that would generate a lot of criticism . Thankfully I don't feel it's the most likely of possibilities but always good to think about.

A lot of these folk have a much simpler diet than us, can you imagine (in the unlikely event) if it happened to the UK, "Tarquin can't eat that, he only eats brown rice". The West (including me) have disappeared up our own backsides when it comes to indulging our foibles, the vast majority of us aren't 'surviving', we're living high, even the ones who don't realise it because they're envious of others. We're just so decadent and I can't see us coping with any kind of severe shortages. Remember the great chicken nugget famine of 2018 ????

I'd like to think that we could pull together but I just can't see it, we just so..... entitled.

[grenfell]

Didn't affect me directly but yes I remember the turmoil of the lack of chicken nuggets. Bit like the lettuce shortage people were getting in a tiz about it.
I know what you mean about the lifestyles of the western world nowadays. A good example of that is the consumption of insects. Pretty common in many countries but when the subject is broached over here there's lots of "urrrgs " and " disgusting , not eating that" . I have members of my own family who point blankedly refuse to eat offal even when it comes from the same animal they are happy to eat parts of. I'm not fully immune myself to that . I'll eat pretty much anything but I did try and now subsequently won't eat tripe . I suuppose in a survival situation I'd have to change my ideas on that .
I seem to recall ( although I'm not 100% on this and stand to be corrected) that religious objections can be bypassed if necessary . Muslims and Jews don't eat pork but I seem to recall vaguely that the former at least and possibly both can eat it iff the only other option is starvation .

[jennyjj01]

Didn't affect me directly but yes I remember the turmoil of the lack of chicken nuggets. Bit like the lettuce shortage people were getting in a tiz about it.
I know what you mean about the lifestyles of the western world nowadays. A good example of that is the consumption of insects. Pretty common in many countries but when the subject is broached over here there's lots of "urrrgs " and " disgusting , not eating that" . I have members of my own family who point blankedly refuse to eat offal even when it comes from the same animal they are happy to eat parts of. I'm not fully immune myself to that . I'll eat pretty much anything but I did try and now subsequently won't eat tripe . I suuppose in a survival situation I'd have to change my ideas on that .
I seem to recall ( although I'm not 100% on this and stand to be corrected) that religious objections can be bypassed if necessary . Muslims and Jews don't eat pork but I seem to recall vaguely that the former at least and possibly both can eat it iff the only other option is starvation .

On the original topic, I can envisage that in a localised emergency, we stoical Brits would mobilise soup kitchens and foodbank type acquisition would come together to try, and shambolically fail to feed some selected few of the masses. There would be massive pockets of starvation, even then.
But if it ever scaled up to a national scale we would be screwed. Without an influx of unimaginable quantities of relief supplies, national starvation and disease would be the norm ( somewhat like the Irish potato famine ) which removed 25% of Ireland's population. Our own food creation processes are oil powered and industrial. It would only take a brief oil blockade to close them down.*

*Hopefully we preppers would have an enormous advantage in supplies and ATTITUDE.

Offal.... Well, much of it is very nutritious and some of it is delicious. I've eaten tripe, hodge, chitterlings, liver, heart, pigs blood as black pudding, lungs as haggis and ox tongue. By looking beyond the source of the 'meat' we can actually enjoy such 'rubbish'

I too understand that Muslims can be excused eating pork where there is no alternative.

[Arwen Thebard]

Most members here I assume cater for their own families and friends,so have only so much they store at home. Just wondered how you would going about feeding a town or large city. Watched some on youtube where meals are prepared for 100,s or even 1000,s and unsure if work for any length of time. Storage etc

My first question would be for how long? In the short term and on a small, local scale, some people might get organised (Sally Army / food banks etc) but without substantial relief quickly arriving from "outside" the effected area, a town or city wouldn't last longer than a few days before total panic and societal breakdown would set in. Scary! I doubt anyone would be able to cope with a sustained feeding effort of even 48 hours if it was a nationwide disaster event. The problem does [solve?] itself quite quickly though, estimates of death tolls are shockingly high within the first 3 weeks to 6 months if no relief arrives. Longer term, feeding lots of people a relatively low calorie, mainly vegetarian diet, creates various other health problems I believe.

The ideal number of people in any "group" with the ideal age range mix and experience / skill levels is between 50 and 100 I understand, it's a population number that can be kept sustainable.

[jennyjj01]

My first question would be for how long? In the short term and on a small, local scale, some people might get organised (Sally Army / food banks etc) but without substantial relief quickly arriving from "outside" the effected area, a town or city wouldn't last longer than a few days before total panic and societal breakdown would set in.

I'd expect scenes exactly like this within the first couple of days.
But after that, when the shops are empty. Then it gets really ugly.

Definite reason to keep our preparedness and our stockpiles secret.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiFQAEnN9ZA
[youtube=MiFQAEnN9ZA]

[jennyjj01]

duplicate. sorry