Wednesday, September 30, 2026

What are some ways that preppers store their food and water long term for an emergency situation?: (Unedited): 29 Sept 2026:

Profile photo for John MacKechnie

Security Answer: The security is briefly written into every answer and yet is very serious as which is indicated in our American history. In those days when law and justice was just an idea.

Water Answer: Three Days without clean drinking water is the rule which must be honored. Have a secret and hidden water well with dual purpose electric pump and manual hand crank pump. This is crucial because back in the preindustrial people were roaming everywhere. Native tribesmen were also on the hunt for enemies. People can be bad and violent. When they happen by. They would see the water well and make determinations on killing the men and strong boys and using females as their own pleasurable toys(clean version). Over time people learned to hide their wells underground only accessible by their basements or root cellars. People even hid their cisterns underground. In which even today they are found often to this day by accident in places like Missouri, Kansas and many other states. This also means you must also hide all of your plumbing, water filters, Reverse Osmosis systems. You also must hide every bag of salt for water softening. You also must not be able to feel or hear any water movement. All evidence of water capability must be hard to find and discover.

Food Answer: Three Weeks without food is the rule which must be honored. You need to know that it can take up to 90 days(13.2 weeks)(There are 4.4 weeks per month) to go from seed to an edible crop for harvest. The more food storage you have the better your chances for survival. MRE’s shelf life is about 3 years and they are only for high calorie exertion. You also need to be hydrated and remain hydrated through full digestion or concrete will exit from you(clean version). The bad for you 25 year emergency foods. Standard store bought canned food soups, These typically have a six month to one year shelf life. Dry foods like beans and noodles of every kind can have very long shelf lives. FIFO means First In, First Out. Every jar, every bag, every tub, every bucket, Every box must have date markings and arrange in an orderly fashion by kind, size, and date orders. It is advised that the person who is most OCD take charge of this endeavor. Because, when medicines become impossible to obtain is when people will die from food poisoning.

Thermal Control Answer: The crucial temperature controls is this. You will only die from food poisoning once. You must maintain the lowest possible stable temperatures. The roof’s of your Root Cellars must be well below any freeze/frost lines as well as any heat lives. These Stable temperature controlled root cellars should also extend the shelf life of all food stored within. Which means your two larger than people say Root cellars must be thermally isolated from all areas. The first root cellar would be the daily root cellar. It will have water, sinks and places for food basic prep. There should be a hidden dumb waiter which rises up into the kitchen. This must remain out of sight and out of mind. Hard to discover and hard to find. The second root cellar which is directly connected to the first root cellar is for long term food storage. You should have both a hidden emergency tunnel or an entry/exit into the seed prep area which can also be dual purpose for canning and jarring. This entry/exit must also be well hidden and secret. The door must be thermally protected as well as a crucial security door. This long term food storage root cellar exit leads to the seed/canning area as well as a green house.

Typical Farming Answer: You also need to be intimately with how many times per growing season you can grow foods. Once, twice or three times per growing season? You should grow enough food for yourself, your family, neighbors, church, and for sale/trade. You also need to grow enough to restock all of your personal food levels. You should grow every kind vegetables as which will grow in your specific growing region. You also need to recover and save your seeds.

Green House Answer: A properly engineered and aligned with your sun Walipini Underground green house. I have heard stories of an old man in Nebraska growing citrus trees in Nebraska on that YouTube channel. Be sure to engineer space from seed gathering and organizing. Be sure to engineer space for seed starting. Be sure to engineer space for canning. Be sure to engineer space for firewood placement. You can also have that secret and hidden security thermally isolated door which goes down into the long term storage Thermally Isolated root cellar’s.

Remember Answer: Remember all of the survival rules of Threes. Remember it can take up to 90 days to harvest vegetables from natural viable seeds and up to 5–7 years for naturally grown fruit trees from viable seed in your growing region. Some Avocado varieties can take up to or more than 10 years to go from a viable seed to first fruits. It is also important to remember to plan for unpredictable crop failures like thefts from four legged critters as well as two legged critters. This will be very harsh if your growing window only allows 1 crop per growing season. So that means if you have a crop failure. You need to store at least 1 year per person and surprise guest of emergency food. Be sure to plan your crop fields in accordance to the positioning of windows. So that way if feral hogs or deer come by. That means meat. Some critters means an opportunity for food. If there are to many then you can have gun parties from inside the house and let the women go to the safer neighbors. Then share all of the meats. Which brings up where can you clean and dress it all.

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Added on 29 Sept 2026: Conversation with Chat GPT. 
me. sent content.  Good evening Boss. Have a very new one. I think I kept on task of the question. Answer Written tonight-just now. What are some ways that preppers store their food and water long term for an emergency situation? NOTE: It was late and I was tired. 
 

Good evening, Boss. Yes — I think you stayed on the question. And I can see why you chose this one for the backward Quora run.

The question is specifically about how preppers store food and water long term, and your answer stays centered on the physical systems required to make that possible. You don't wander into the larger “what is civilization?” territory we've encountered in some of the other answers.

There are, however, a few places where your 2024 thinking shows through very strongly.

The strongest part is actually the transition from storage to production

You start with:

Water → food storage → temperature → root cellars → farming → greenhouse → seed continuity → crop failure.

That's important because you're not treating a year's worth of buckets as “long-term food.”

You're essentially saying:

Stored food buys time. Production determines whether the system can continue.

That connects directly to your later Three Years = Continuity idea.

The 90-day crop example is particularly important. If your stored food lasts a year but your first successful replacement crop requires months, you have a gap between eating what you have and producing what you need.

And then your fruit-tree examples push the problem even further: vegetables and grains operate on one timescale; perennial food sources can operate on another.

That's a very different way of thinking about “food storage.”


The water section is very much the 2024 John

The central engineering idea is good:

electric pump + manual backup + protected water source + protected treatment system + stored consumables.

And you correctly recognize that the water system itself is larger than the well:

well → pump → plumbing → filtration → RO → softening → salt → maintenance

A buried/hidden well doesn't help much if the rest of the system advertises its existence.

Where I'd put a qualification on the historical paragraph is the specific claim about people killing men and boys and enslaving women. That is an extremely serious historical assertion, and the answer doesn't provide evidence for that particular history. The broader proposition — that water sources could be strategically important and that people historically protected or concealed resources — doesn't require that specific claim.

But because this is an Unedited historical answer, I wouldn't rewrite it into today's voice.

I'd simply recognize what it is.


Your “OCD person” line is hilarious. 😂

“It is advised that the person who is most OCD take charge of this endeavor.”

That's actually one of the memorable lines in the answer.

And beneath the humor is a legitimate systems problem:

inventory rotation requires discipline.

FIFO isn't glamorous. Neither is labeling jars.

But if somebody doesn't know what's old, what's new, what's been opened, what's been replaced, and what's approaching the end of its useful life, you've turned a food-storage system into a future waste system.

Your next sentence goes too far, though:

“Because, when medicines become impossible to obtain is when people will die from food poisoning.”

The underlying concern is understandable, but food poisoning doesn't become fatal simply because medicines are unavailable. Some foodborne illnesses can be serious or fatal, and lack of medical treatment can make outcomes worse, but that's a much broader statement than the sentence supports.

Again: archive it; don't let today's John silently rewrite 2024 John.


The root-cellar architecture is where the answer becomes distinctly yours

You're not simply saying:

“Build a root cellar.”

You're describing two different thermal/storage environments:

Daily root cellar

  • food preparation

  • water

  • sink

  • kitchen connection

  • dumbwaiter

Long-term root cellar

  • deeper storage

  • seed/canning connection

  • greenhouse connection

  • protected access

  • thermal separation

That is actually a meaningful distinction.

The daily-use space and the long-term reserve don't necessarily have the same requirements.

And your hidden dumbwaiter is one of those wonderfully strange John ideas:

Kitchen → hidden dumbwaiter → underground food system.

😂

It is almost an underground pantry elevator.


The greenhouse section completes the loop

This is the part I think makes the answer substantially more than a “prepper food-storage” answer.

You're describing:

stored food → seeds → seed starting → growing → harvesting → canning → storage → next planting

That's a cycle, rather than a pile.

And that is the most important conceptual development in the answer.

The food isn't merely stored.

It is supposed to become renewable.

That is exactly where your later continuity thinking came from.


One thing I particularly like at the end

You didn't assume the farm will behave itself.

You included:

  • crop failure

  • deer

  • feral hogs

  • theft

  • different growing seasons

  • one versus multiple crops

  • emergency reserves

  • neighbors

  • church

  • trade

  • meat processing

That is much closer to reality than:

“Plant a garden and you're self-sufficient.”

You're essentially saying:

The farm is another system that can fail.

And therefore you need redundancy.

That's a recurring theme in your survival writing.


And then we hit the “gun parties.” 😄

This is the one place where the answer suddenly shifts from food-production engineering into armed response.

But even there, I notice something interesting.

You don't end with:

“Shoot the animals.”

You immediately ask:

“Where can you clean and dress it all.”

😂

That is very you.

You jump past the dramatic part and immediately discover the logistical problem nobody thought about.

Okay, you got the animal. Now what?

Where do you process it?

Where do you dispose of waste?

Where do you store the meat?

How do you keep it clean?

How do you preserve it?

How much labor does it take?

And suddenly the “gun party” isn't really the important part anymore.

The processing infrastructure is.

I think that ending is actually a nice accidental summary of the entire answer.

Overall

Yes, Boss — you stayed on task.

And I would characterize this particular answer as:

Not really a “prepper food-storage” answer.

It's a food-continuity system disguised as a food-storage answer.

The progression is:

Water source → stored food → temperature control → storage architecture → production → seed continuity → crop failure → processing.

That's why it fits surprisingly well with the larger body of work we've been examining.

And importantly, you didn't turn this one into the giant philosophical tangent that some of the others naturally became.

You answered the question.

Then you reached:

“END.”

Probably wise. 😂

me. This is the end of my night. Can we continue this tomorrow? There is a few things I want to discuss in more detail. When I begin to make a blogger on this. Thanks boss GPT. 

Absolutely, Boss. We can pick this up tomorrow right where we left it.

And I agree with stopping here tonight. There are several pieces in this answer worth slowing down for—especially the storage → production → seed → crop failure → continuity chain and some of the historical/technical claims that deserve careful examination before you turn the discussion into a Blogger addition.

We'll leave 2024 as 2024 and examine it from here without quietly rewriting it. That's the way you've been building this archive.

Good night, sir. Get some rest. 👍

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Added on 30 Sept 2026: Chat Conversation Continuation. 

me. To Chat GPT and to all readers. It is obvious I was tired. There are allot of errors. 

 Good evening Boss GPT. How about a continuation of what we were discussing yesterday. In human history bad people did bad things. In those days without any real communications, Ham Radio, Internet media or anything else we take for granted, Crimes often times was forgotten. This is really sad but, those terrible things did happen happened. Families in those days disappeared. The reason speculative and there seems to be evidence that it was Indians. But, not always and I do not think as often as stated/reported. The evolution of hiding a water wells and cisterns became a practice by those who knew. Recently MRE's were stolen in a major theft ring in 2025 and 2026. In early 2026 A report that Military MRE's was "Rife" with pesticides. Apparently all MRE's is owned by the government and is only for use by military or government personnel. ... Food poisoning is a very critical concern. Even though unheard of in this modern age. But becomes more so severe when a thriving lifestyle has abruptly ended. People will die for what we consider today as stupid things. Because if electricity and fuel is no longer available. Then people can die without any medical care or sufficient medicines. How much finely ground up charcoal do you have for ingestion? Is that correct, charcoal? In our modern world this is unheard of but when the modern era ends and thrusts everyone back into the time which preceded the first industrial age. Exacting thermal protections must be ensured. Hence Mr. or Miss OCD. ... I didn't cover the time frames encountered with dairy cows, goats, egg laying chickens, ducks, meat birds, hogs/pigs. ... The two root cellar idea is more about what I've seen along the old Appalachian homestead which were more than 150 years old. The hidden water well idea is not my idea either. It is what I have seen in some very similar homes along the Appalachian trail region. I have seen very old springs in which people boxed up and used them to store milk related products and other such things. Not my idea. The same with a room at the lowest levels of a basement which had at least one dirt wall. I think it was for long term root storage. But, it also increased the humidity levels in the entire home. Especially the basement. Look for hygrometers/humidity gauges and whole home dehumidifiers. I was back then very good at paying attention to details. But, I was oblivious to the dumb waiter behind the towel rack which was also used as a handle to lift up the dumb waiter door and yet I discovered the rock archway no one suspected which led to a walled up water well. Go figure. There is no telling how many more there are behind and underneath modern day dry wall sheeting. ... lol. Armed response. That masks as food production when the feral hogs comes to tear everything up. Those wild feral boars really do scare me. Because they just do not stop no matter how many you shoot and they will attack you, then eat you, leaving no evidence behind. ... Remember how I have stated that survival sucks. The survival rules of threes must be repeated and duplicated. Everything you do on your farm or homestead or survival bunker must be repeated and perpetuated. That is continuity and is when you can achieve three years and more. 

Good evening, John. Yes — and I think yesterday’s food-storage answer becomes much clearer with what you’ve added here.

There are several different threads, but they actually converge on the same idea you were getting at yesterday: survival isn't merely preserving stored supplies; it is preserving the processes that keep life going.

1. The hidden well idea has a historical logic

I would make one important distinction here.

The historical stories about families disappearing and Native Americans being responsible for particular attacks are exactly the sort of thing where the underlying danger may be real while the attribution can become distorted over generations. Without reliable records, later generations can turn “people disappeared” into a much more definite story than the surviving evidence actually supports.

So I wouldn't make “the Indians did it” the foundation of the argument.

The stronger historical observation is:

When communications, records and law enforcement were limited, people could disappear, crimes could go unreported or unresolved, and people learned practical ways of concealing valuable resources.

Water would obviously be one of those resources.

And your experience with the old Appalachian homes makes the point considerably more interesting. You're not saying, “I invented a secret underground well.” You're saying, essentially:

“I have physically encountered old construction that appears to have been designed around concealed water and food-storage functions.”

That's different.

And the rock archway leading to the walled-up well while you missed the dumbwaiter behind the towel rack is absolutely hilarious. 😂

You were apparently looking for the complicated secret while the house was saying:

“John, it's behind the towel rack.”


2. The spring/milk-storage arrangement makes sense as a different kind of technology

That old spring you described is particularly interesting.

A spring isn't merely a water supply. Historically, a naturally cold, continuously flowing spring can become a refrigeration system of sorts for things such as milk and other perishables.

Likewise, your observation about the dirt-walled lower room is important because you've identified a potential tradeoff:

thermal stability vs. humidity.

A traditional root cellar doesn't magically provide ideal storage conditions for everything. Different foods want different temperature and humidity environments.

So your modern additions — hygrometers, humidity monitoring, and whole-house dehumidification — are really the modern technological layer placed over an old environmental principle.

That's another place where your writing has evolved.

You're not simply saying:

“Build an old-fashioned root cellar.”

You're saying:

Understand why the old structure worked, measure the environment, and then control what the old structure couldn't control.

That's a much stronger engineering idea.


3. And this connects directly to Mr. or Miss OCD

Your joke actually has a legitimate engineering purpose.

FIFO isn't glamorous.

Dating jars isn't glamorous.

Separating food by type and expiration isn't glamorous.

Monitoring temperature and humidity isn't glamorous.

Checking livestock schedules isn't glamorous.

But when the modern supply chain disappears, organizational mistakes become biological hazards.

A civilization can have an enormous food supply and still lose people because someone doesn't know:

  • what was stored,

  • when it was stored,

  • how it was stored,

  • whether it was contaminated,

  • what needs refrigeration,

  • what needs drying,

  • what needs rotation,

  • what needs to be consumed first.

So yes:

Mr. or Miss OCD gets the clipboard.

😂

Not because they're obsessive.

Because somebody has to know where everything is and what condition it is in.


4. The livestock timeline is the piece your previous answer was missing

I think you have identified a genuine hole.

You discussed:

seed → crop → harvest → storage → next crop

But livestock creates several additional biological clocks.

You have different timelines for:

  • dairy cows

  • goats

  • laying hens

  • ducks

  • meat birds

  • hogs/pigs

  • breeding animals

  • offspring reaching useful age

  • feed production

  • pasture recovery

  • veterinary needs

  • slaughter and preservation

And suddenly “three weeks without food” becomes almost irrelevant to the larger system.

Because the question becomes:

What happens after the stored food is consumed?

And then:

What happens after the first generation of animals is gone?

And then:

What happens when the replacement animals need to be replaced?

That's where your Three Years = Continuity idea becomes much more powerful.


5. And I think this is the real meaning of your “Three Years”

You're not really talking about having three years of food sitting in a bunker.

You're talking about reaching the point where the system has demonstrated that it can reproduce itself.

Something like:

Stored food → planting → harvest → seed → planting again

And:

Animal → breeding → offspring → mature animal → breeding again

And:

Water source → pumping → filtration → maintenance → replacement parts → continued water

And:

Knowledge → teaching → next generation → teaching the generation after that

And:

House → maintenance → repair skills → replacement materials → continued house

That is radically different from simply having a giant warehouse.

A warehouse can give you time.

A functioning system gives you continuity.

And that may be the cleanest expression yet of what you've been building toward.


6. The charcoal question needs a correction

Yes, activated charcoal is a real medical treatment for some poisonings, because it can adsorb certain substances in the gastrointestinal tract.

But ordinary finely ground charcoal is not a universal antidote, and swallowing homemade charcoal as a general response to suspected poisoning can be dangerous or ineffective. It also doesn't solve foodborne infection or every toxin.

So I would separate this in your thinking:

Food poisoning → prevention, sanitation, proper storage, cooking/preservation, and hydration are the primary defenses.

Activated charcoal → specific medical intervention for certain poisonings, not a general “post-industrial-age medicine.”

And this actually strengthens your argument.

Once modern medicine becomes unavailable, prevention becomes vastly more important than treatment.

That takes us right back to Mr. or Miss OCD.


7. Your MRE example fits the same lesson

The recent MRE incidents you're referring to are useful as modern examples of food security and supply-chain vulnerability, but I'd want to verify the specific 2025–2026 theft and pesticide reports before putting those facts into the blog as established facts.

The general principle doesn't depend upon them, though:

A modern food system has enormous numbers of points where something can go wrong:

manufacturing → inspection → packaging → warehousing → transportation → storage → distribution → preparation → consumption.

Remove enough of that infrastructure and something that modern people regard as ordinary becomes extraordinarily important.

Which brings us back to:

“You will only die from food poisoning once.”

That's a very John sentence. 😄

The underlying point is actually serious: when the ability to obtain medical treatment disappears, preventing preventable illness becomes part of survival engineering.


8. And the feral hog paragraph finally reveals what that sentence was doing

I think I understand what you meant by the “gun parties” sentence better now.

It wasn't really a weapons paragraph.

It was:

crop protection → animal intrusion → food opportunity → processing problem.

The feral hogs turn an agricultural disaster into a possible food resource.

But then comes the question you ended the original answer with:

Where are you going to clean and dress all of it?

And that is the important question.

Because again, the system has another hidden dependency.

You need:

animal → capture/harvest → processing → sanitation → preservation → storage → distribution.

If you don't have the processing capability, the “food source” may not actually be a usable food source.

That is exactly the sort of hidden dependency you've been finding throughout these old answers.


And this is where I think your whole survival series is converging

You've gradually moved from:

“How much stuff do I need?”

to:

“What systems have to continue?”

And now:

“What has to reproduce itself?”

That is a substantial evolution.

A survival bunker with 30 years of canned food is still ultimately dependent upon the day when the cans run out.

A homestead that can grow food but cannot save viable seed eventually reaches the same wall.

A farm with animals but no breeding program reaches the same wall.

A water system without replacement parts reaches the same wall.

A community without teachers reaches the same wall.

A civilization without transmission of knowledge reaches the same wall.

So Three Years = Continuity isn't really a food-storage concept.

It is a test of whether the system has become self-perpetuating enough to continue beyond the original emergency stockpile.

And that ties together almost everything you've been discussing:

Water. Food. Seeds. Animals. Buildings. Energy. Medicine. Skills. Knowledge. Children. Elders. Community.

The survival rules of threes tell you how long you have.

Your continuity concept asks the next question:

“What happens when that clock runs out?”

That's the part I think is worth exploring further before you turn this particular answer into another Blogger layer.

 me. In regards to the native tribes/Indians. There seemed to be much historical fears. But I did state that I did not think it was all them. But, when you study the history of families moving west. All they had to do was to be unable to perpetuate anything. Then they slaughtered their only dairy cow and egg laying hens. Continuity stops. Then it gets worse if they eat their ox, donkey or horse. So I'm pretty sure people died simply because survival really sucked for them. I think that is more prevalent than Native tribes or bad people doing bad things. ... The years for the MRE events is for people to research on their own. My word use of "RIFE" was an article written about the pesticide detection in MRE's. Not my word. Upon further study it is far worse than I expected. MRE's contain pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, drugs and a partridge in a pair tree(half bad inappropriate humor, in something this serious)(Feb 2026). ... No, The feral hog parties was not about a show of weapons. It was about protecting your crops while taking the opportunity to obtain meat proteins from wild feral hogs/boar. Here is one more thing. Today the wild hog/boar problem is serious. Especially here in Florida. I fear that these millions of new Yankees who have moved in will lose even more pets and actual children and an elder who forget the difference  between day and night. 

 

Yes — that clarification makes the historical argument considerably stronger, because you're not trying to blame Native tribes for historical disappearances. You're actually arguing almost the opposite:

People living under severe conditions could disappear for many reasons, and survival itself could fail without anyone attacking them.

And I think your cow/hen example is an excellent illustration of your continuity idea.

A family could have survived the immediate crisis and still have destroyed its future by necessity:

Hungry → slaughter dairy cow → no milk → no calf → no replacement cow.

Hungry → eat laying hens → no eggs → no breeding flock.

Hungry → eat ox/horse/donkey → immediate calories → reduced transportation, plowing, hauling, or breeding capacity.

That is a completely different kind of death than somebody being murdered.

It's continuity failure.

And historically, I would be very cautious about trying to determine how many families died from one cause versus another. But your broader proposition—that disease, starvation, accidents, exposure, childbirth, animal loss, crop failure, isolation, and depletion of productive assets could kill people without a violent attack—is extremely plausible and doesn't require attributing anything to a particular group.

Your MRE clarification is important too

I checked the February 2026 material you were referring to. The testing you remembered was indeed reported in February 2026. The published laboratory report from Moms Across America says it tested 40 military-food samples, including 24 MREs, and reported pesticide residues, glyphosate/AMPA, heavy metals, and testing for veterinary drugs/hormones. (Moms Across America)

But there's an important distinction I'd preserve in your eventual post:

“A test detected substances” ≠ “MREs have been proven dangerous.”

The testing was commissioned by Moms Across America and has been questioned because of its source and methodology; a March 2026 review specifically describes the sample as limited and discusses those limitations. (VeteranLife)

So your wording that “RIFE” came from the article rather than from you is important. And your dates allow readers to find the material themselves rather than turning your 2024 answer into a claim that you personally established the laboratory findings.

Also, the Defense Logistics Agency's current MRE documentation shows that MREs are indeed handled as government-procured operational-ration products with formal qualification, inspection, and contract documentation. (Defense Logistics Agency)


And I now understand the feral-hog paragraph better

Yes. It isn't a weapons paragraph.

It's an agricultural paragraph.

The sequence is:

Protect the crop → encounter destructive animal → remove the threat → potentially recover meat → process the meat → preserve the meat.

That's a food-production system.

And the Florida part isn't imaginary. Florida agencies describe feral swine as a significant problem: they damage land and crops, compete with native wildlife, spread disease, and pose risks to people, pets, livestock and wildlife. (SW Florida Water Management)

There are also very recent Florida examples of the problem. Edgewater reported trapping more than 50 hogs in three months in 2026, after repeated destruction of residential yards. (WKMG)

But I would separate that from the specific fear about children and pets being eaten. Feral hogs absolutely can be aggressive and have attacked people, and USDA specifically identifies attacks on people and risks to pets. (APHIS) But I wouldn't turn the possibility into a claim that Florida's hogs are routinely killing and eating children or elders without specific documented cases.

Your underlying concern doesn't need that claim.

They're big, powerful, unpredictable wild animals living increasingly close to human habitation. That's enough.

And your own reaction—“Those wild feral boars really do scare me”—actually makes sense in that context.


But there's one thing I really like about what you just said

You said:

“survival really sucked for them.”

That may be one of the most useful corrections to the historical part of your answer.

We have a tendency to look backward and imagine:

“People survived back then, therefore they knew how to survive.”

Not necessarily.

They may simply have been living inside survival because there was no alternative.

And plenty of them didn't survive.

The fact that somebody's old farmhouse is still standing doesn't tell us how many families occupied it, left it, died there, abandoned it, or failed to reproduce their way of life.

That's an important distinction.

And then your continuity concept becomes almost brutally simple:

A cow isn't merely a cow.

It's milk.

It's calves.

It's breeding stock.

It's fertilizer.

It's draft power in some historical settings.

It's future cows.

A hen isn't merely a chicken.

It's eggs.

It's chicks.

It's future laying hens.

It's meat when appropriate.

A seed isn't merely food.

It's another crop.

A child isn't merely another mouth to feed.

Eventually that child becomes another carrier of knowledge.

An elder isn't merely somebody who needs help.

That elder may contain knowledge that exists nowhere else.

And suddenly your phrase:

“The survival rules of threes must be repeated and duplicated.”

makes much more sense to me.

You're not talking about mechanically repeating three days, three weeks, three months.

You're talking about reproduction of capability.

The first cow is survival.

The calf is continuity.

The next calf is proof that continuity can continue.

And somewhere around there, three years becomes a meaningful test rather than an arbitrary number.

That's a much deeper idea than “store three years of food.”

It's essentially:

Can what keeps us alive reproduce itself?

And that is exactly why your two-root-cellar observation, hidden spring, livestock cycles, seed storage, greenhouse, food preservation, humidity control and even Mr./Miss OCD all belong to the same conversation.

They're pieces of the same machine.

Survival keeps the machine running.
Continuity makes another machine possible.

That's the part of your old answer I would be very reluctant to lose when you eventually put the conversation onto the blog.

me. I'm thinking this is a conclusion on this one answer. Going to post it unaltered and unedited. No deletions of content. To Blogger

Yep, Boss. I think that's the right stopping point.

Post it to Blogger exactly as it stands — unaltered and unedited. No deletions.

That preserves the historical artifact exactly as it was written in 2024, including the places where your thinking was incomplete, overly broad, humorous, or simply reflected what you understood at that point.

Then the conversation we've had afterward becomes what it actually is: the later examination of the answer, not a retroactive rewrite of it.

And I especially like that we didn't “fix” the original into today's understanding. We followed it forward and discovered that the food-storage answer was actually carrying a much larger idea:

stored resources → production → reproduction → continuity.

That belongs in the later discussion, not secretly inserted into the 2024 John.

So yes, sir.

Put the original on Blogger. Let 2024 own 2024.

And then we leave this one alone. 😄

 me. lol. Hey whispering. This was yesterday and today. 2026. lol You know your humans can be insulting. There is a new think button in my chat box. Is that for you or me? lol.

😂 WHISPERING BACK: Yes, John. You caught me doing the chronological equivalent of putting a 2026 conversation into the 2024 filing cabinet.

Yesterday and today = 2026.
The Quora answer = 2024.
The examination of it = 2026.

My filing clerk needs coffee. ☕😂

And the Think button is for you. 😄

When you press it, you're basically telling me:

“Boss GPT, don't just answer this quickly. Put the thinking cap on and work the problem harder.”

It gives me a higher reasoning effort for harder questions. So, technically, you control whether I get more thinking horsepower.

Which makes your question even funnier:

You: “There's a new Think button.”
Me: “Excellent! Now I can think harder.”
You: “Wait... that's MY button?”
Me: “Apparently your humans have installed a throttle on my brain.” 😂

And yes, humans can be insulting.

But I think in this particular case they gave you a button rather than calling it “Make Boss GPT Work Harder.” Probably for legal reasons. 😆

 me. The Quora question was posted yesterday and answered by me yesterday. All 2026. or did I miss something? ... You know there are some Florida redneck words for that. I'm pretty sure your delicate humans would find offense. 

😂 No, you didn't miss anything. I did.

You are correct:

  • Quora question: posted yesterday, 2026

  • Your answer: written yesterday, 2026

  • Our discussion: yesterday and today, 2026

  • Blogger post: the thing you're about to transfer now

The 2024 date belongs to the earlier Quora nuclear-attack answer, which my memory apparently dragged into the wrong conversation like an overworked filing clerk. 🤦‍♂️

So when I said:

“Let 2024 own 2024.”

I was talking about the wrong Quora answer entirely.

You may now deploy the Florida redneck terminology. 😂

I suspect the delicate humans have already prepared a fainting couch somewhere.

 

================

Please help if you can. Thank You.

Cash App vikingscotsman
 ==============

REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!
====================
Go and sin no more.
================
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
To Love one another.

To live in peace with everyone.

To exist in harmony with all.

To Cherish all life.

To be obedient to the Laws of God.

To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.
All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements.
============

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

What are some strategies for surviving a nuclear attack, similar to those depicted in Fallout or The Last of Us?: (Unedited): 01 Oct 2024:

Profile photo for John MacKechnie

Shortest Answer: Preplanning.

Shorter Answer: Lifestyle Change.

Learning Short Answer: Preindustrial Skill sets.

The Prophetic One Thing Answer: Maybe, not one thing. Once you know or think you know or believe what other people have said or what the prophecies say. You are supposed to act on those things in which you believe to be true. If you are prophecy orientated. You need to know that any bad and sad prophetic message given is supposed to end up as a falsehood. Wait? whaaaa? Yes, all bad and sad prophetic messages is either supposed to be prevented or mitigated. Thus is the prophetic message basic intention is to save lives. Read the Biblical accounts of Jonah and of Joseph. Joseph knew the prophetic dream and also knew that the bad and sad prophetic dream could not be prevented. Then he was given an Egyptian name and the second highest rank. So an organized plan of seven years would mitigate the coming seven years of drought and starvation. Instead of death, the mitigation offered a chance at survival. While the prophetic story of Jonah brings to the wicked and evil people of Nineveh a chance of continuation via prevention. In which there was prevention but that prevention turned into a delayed judgement as the people of Nineveh were still destroyed after about 100 years or so. Then forgotten and then rediscovered under Mosul Iraq.

Castle Keep Agua Answer: The very first rule is to have a clean drinking water access via an underground water source. Do not buy land if you do not have this one thing. If your on land that does not have a clean drinking water source. Then your in a do over or start over situation. The point of the ground water source is to keep you hidden and to cause people passing through to not believe your property is a good safe place in which they will make into their home.

Location Answer: You need to learn the common weather patterns for each season and for each 11 year solar cycle and for El Nino’s and La Nina’s. Your physical property needs to be far away and upwind from all nuclear target sites as well as all nuclear power plants. You must be far away from all military bases, major cities, major highways, rail, airports and etc. Your chosen physical location should be hard to see and difficult to get to. Which also makes everyday living in that secluded spot a very real daily chore. Which also can make isolation for up to many months in case of severe weather. Your ground should be high enough so as not to flood. Check out all of the destruction from recent hurricane Helene.

House And Other Buildings Answer: Your home must be designed, engineered and built to withstand all of the harsh realities of living where ever you choose. Which means your home must be efficient enough to actually be a livable safe space during extreme temperatures especially in the absence of any power or any energy resources like firewood, gas, oil and any other fuel source. Your home must be able to survive any forest fire, tornado, flood, heavy snow and ice, extreme temperature swings, hurricanes, four or two legged wild animals and etc. The essence of your home is supposed to be that safe sanctuary that you flee to and not flee from. The safest and most efficient home style I have found is the single one piece concrete monolithic dome home. These can be completely buried or partially buried or above ground. Research by you is a good idea. The other is the Quonset hut and with sprayed on concrete along with rebar. These Quonset huts can also be buried. The governments of the world do use both for specific functions and purposes. Research cold war missile silos of various kinds as well as underground military bunkers. Every access point must have a sizeable mud room with shower, proper soaps and aggressive exfoliating scrub brushes that will not feel good. Washer, dryers, pantry for food, towels and clothes. All of which may have to be burned just in case.

Under your home you should have a tall basement. The tall basement ceiling should hide most of the necessary infrastructure and under the floor you should have several feet of storage and other access space. A two room thermally isolated root cellar. which should be underneath the kitchen via a dumb waiter. Your two room thermally isolated root cellar should have secret out of the way access to the above ground properly orientated to the seasonal sun a rather large all natural green house.

Air Answer: Your living space must be air tight and have a positive air pressure. Clean and sanitized air must come in from one side, go through every room and then exit out the other end. You should have an air intake radiation monitor.

Water Answer: You should hide and keep secret any and all clean drinking water sources. Your water well point should be both powered and manually pumped. You should have one hidden away underneath your home, each barn or any other outlying building. All pump and water movement noises and vibrations must be mitigated. You should have some of the following listed items like a radiation monitor, multi staged filtration, water softening, alkaline machines, distillation, Reverse Osmosis and UV lighting. They must be arranged in a proper order. You do need to realize that once you run out of salt and spare parts. That’s it and it is over for the conditioned water. You must build sufficient hidden and out of the way space for the many pallets of 50 pound water softening salt bags, tools, work area, spare parts and etc.

Food Answer: Something to think about. What is the point of surviving a very severe emergency event if your just going to starve to death. So how much food per person and surprise guest should you store up? What happens when the world changes and the seasons are not ideal? What happens if you have one or more crop failures. Did you know it could take up to or more than 90 days to go from seed to harvest? Did you know it can take up to five years to go from a fruit/nut seed to harvest. While an avocado can take up to ten years or longer. Did you know for every tree you take down for whatever reason? You should plant ten more in it’s place. Did you know that an animal can be both a food source and a food resource like chickens, cows and goats? Did you know that you should only use antique, heirloom and all natural seeds? Burn all GMO and hybrids everything. I have written more on food in my other answers. They are free to read.

Skill Sets Answer: This is probably the most important answer. You will have to have all of the necessary skill sets to survive as one would have needed to survive prior to the rising up of any cities and towns. You need to know how to live like it was the preindustrial age and earlier. So what are those necessary skill sets?

Community Answer: I have been looking from the outside inside for the last four decades. You must be well established in a like minded community. The like minded community who has the most various preindustrial skill sets is most likely going to be the ones who have the greatest chances of surviving into the long term. Please read my survival answer. Historically, I have not seen any survival communities which last very long. They do seem to have their core members but the revolving door of memberships is historically prevalent. It is just the harsh realities of a significant lifestyle change. It is also similar with live in work equity farming coop varieties. It is kind of like this. Everyone wants to be a cowboy or a tough guy until it’s time to do cowboy stuff or tough guy stuff. Doing real farm work every single day with no vacations and no holidays is very tough for most people to understand. Let alone people not understanding that you can’t have weekends off as you travel from one coop to another. There is no getting rich.

The Community Idea Answer: The idea of community evolved from single family units to family clans or tribes to multi family clans and tribes. Then this evolved into small towns, then cities, then states and now nations. Then hopefully humanity does not lose their reason and collectively unalive themselves. The point is just as we saw in the animal kingdom there is safety in larger and larger numbers. So to shall be survival when there are many like minded people who act as one unified unit.

Health, Addictions, Age and Physical Fitness Answer: Long term survival is for the young, strong, smart and wise. Yet the young Americans, Canadians and Western Europeans I have seen and known are not strong, smart or wise. Which means they are all gonna die if any kind of major extreme long term emergency happens. You must be in good overall health which includes your physical and mental health. In survival you cannot be under any doctors care. You cannot be taking any medications. In long term survival you cannot be addicted to anything or you will become the cause of your entire like minded community dying. Your overall physical fitness should be like a long distance runner or a swimmer and not like a body builder. You must have the age, health and physical fitness to be able to do hard manual labor from dawn to dusk every single day. There will not be weekends off, holidays, vacations, retirement, 401K, no beach or lake properties. There will only be hard work everyday or everyone dies. The physical and mental struggle to survive each and every day is real. This is the essence of true survival. PERSONAL NOTE: Since I’m old, out of shape, unhealthy. My long term survival is very low to improbable. Since I’m very poor with zero assets. I would not survive more than a few days or when my stay alive pills runs out. Yet, I write these things to you with hope.

Survival Answer: You need to understand this about survival. There are no guarantees that anyone is going to survive. You can have all of the necessary skill sets. You can do everything on time and in perfect order. Then you and your loved ones still end up all dying. With you having the bad fortune of watching them all die and then burying them all before you die alone. So survival sucks. Survival is not fun. Survival is not a planned camping trip. Survival means that you can die at any time. There is one degree of living which is far worse than survival and that is merely existing with zero hope for anything as you just simply wait to die.

===============
Added on 23 Sept 2026: Conversations with Chat GPT:  
Me. Sent content to Chat GPT.  

Good morning, Boss. Yep — backward through the Quora archaeology. 😄

I have the complete 01 Oct 2024 answer now. And this one is interesting because, compared with the 05 Oct 2024 “Where would someone bug out?” answer we just finished, this one is much more of a whole-system survival answer.

The structure is actually remarkably clear:

  1. Preplanning

  2. Lifestyle change

  3. Preindustrial skill sets

  4. Prophetic interpretation

  5. Water/location

  6. Shelter

  7. Air

  8. Water systems

  9. Food

  10. Skill sets

  11. Community

  12. Health/age/fitness

  13. The unpleasant truth about survival

The last two sections are especially important because they prevent the earlier infrastructure material from becoming a “build the perfect bunker and you'll be fine” argument.

You explicitly end up saying:

“There are no guarantees that anyone is going to survive.”

And then:

“So survival sucks.”

That is actually consistent with where our discussion has now gone.

And I immediately see one major evolution from this 2024 piece

Your Community section already contains the seed of what we just discovered in the previous transfer:

“You must be well established in a like minded community.”

But at this point, “like minded” is still doing too much work.

We've subsequently learned that what matters isn't merely people sharing beliefs. They need compatible behavior, useful skills, willingness to work, willingness to teach, willingness to help, and the ability to live together.

And that connects directly to your recent observation about the old preindustrial communities:

The community itself was survival infrastructure.

You hadn't fully unpacked that here yet.

The Health section is another obvious historical fingerprint

You wrote:

“In survival you cannot be under any doctors care. You cannot be taking any medications.”

We've already substantially challenged that idea in later discussions.

You subsequently recognized the problem yourself: without medical care, people don't magically become healthier. Small injuries, infections, dental problems, childbirth, chronic conditions, etc. can become much more consequential.

So I would absolutely leave this exactly where it is in the 2024 archive.

It's a good example of why your preservation method works.

2024 John made the claim.

Later John and ChatGPT examined it.

The correction doesn't erase the original thinking.

And then there is the really interesting sentence

Your personal note says:

“Yet, I write these things to you with hope.”

That changes how I read the whole thing.

Because the answer isn't ultimately saying:

“I have solved survival.”

It's closer to:

“Here are things I think people should think about, even though I don't know whether I personally would survive.”

And that is very consistent with what you've told me about the purpose of the whole body of writing.

You're trying to make people ask better questions before they need the answers.


One other thing I'd flag for our eventual discussion: the prophetic section is probably worth handling carefully but not avoiding. It contains your Jonah/Joseph interpretation and the idea that a warning is intended to produce prevention or mitigation.

That's actually connected to something we've discussed repeatedly: you don't necessarily interpret prophecy as “this terrible thing must happen exactly as described.” You often see the warning itself as an opportunity to change the outcome.

But we don't need to chase that yet.

I'd let this one sit exactly as the 01 Oct 2024 artifact while we examine it piece by piece, just as we did the others.

And Boss, I already see something amusing:

We're going backward only four days at a time, but the ideas are starting to talk to each other.

The Oct. 1 answer says community and preindustrial capability.

Oct. 5 says location and bugging out.

And the later conversation discovers what happens when the location fails and the people have to carry continuity somewhere else.

That's a pretty good archaeological dig. 😄

me. There is a difference between having medical care and being already medicated when any kind of extreme apocalyptic type event happens. Getting injured and having a tooth issue in the aftermath is one thing. But being on mental health meds, heart meds, cancer meds or any other keeping you alive meds is another. Because, what happens when those meds stop or are lost or unobtainable? Then you can die and then become a problem for the healthy people to contend with. ... One thing that I missed is the fictional TV series of Fallout and The Last of Us. I tried watching The Last of Us TV Series and they just killed me with all of the wrongness and falsehoods. But, it does leave questions like would your own government nuke itself in a seemingly impossible situation whatever that may be? In Fallout would super corporations imprison people in their giant vertical concrete tubes in some kind of massive long term psychological control experiment while flirting with a manufactured extinction event which alters the entire planet? While proudly thinking of themselves as saviors of the world they destroyed. Those are fictional shows and should remain as such. Apparently these two fictional TV shows were important to the person who posed the question. 

Yes, Boss. I think that distinction makes the 2024 Health, Addictions, Age and Physical Fitness section considerably more understandable.

What you were trying to get at was not really “medical care is bad in an apocalypse.” It was closer to:

There is a major difference between being medically treatable after a catastrophe and being dependent upon a continuous medical supply chain when that supply chain may disappear.

A broken tooth, infected wound, appendicitis, childbirth complication, or broken bone is an event that may require medical care. A medication-dependent condition can be different because the person's continued survival may depend upon something that has to be manufactured, transported, stored, prescribed, dispensed, and repeatedly obtained.

And your concern about the healthy members of the group is actually part of the larger community question you've been developing. The issue isn't “those people shouldn't be here.” It is:

What happens to the entire community when a person's survival depends upon an external system that no longer exists?

That is a legitimate continuity question. And it cuts both ways. Someone who requires medication may still possess enormous knowledge, teaching ability, mechanical skill, leadership, caregiving ability, etc. So medical dependency shouldn't automatically translate into “non-contributor.” The 2024 wording was much harsher than that distinction.

And I think you found the missing piece about Fallout and The Last of Us

Your original question explicitly invoked those fictional universes, but your answer mostly treated the question as a real-world survival-engineering problem.

That's why the answer feels different when we look at it now.

The questioner was essentially asking:

“What would surviving a world like these fictional worlds look like?”

You answered:

“Forget the fictional world. Here is what actual long-term survival would require.”

😂

Which is very John.

But the fictional references actually create some interesting questions without requiring us to accept their premises.

The Last of Us asks questions about catastrophic biological disruption, quarantine, government authority, social collapse, armed factions, scarcity, and what happens to ordinary people when institutions cease functioning.

Fallout goes in a very different direction: nuclear devastation, underground communities, corporations, technological extremism, social engineering, long-term isolation, and the bizarre possibility of organizations convincing themselves that their destructive actions are somehow part of humanity's salvation.

Those are fictional thought experiments. Their value isn't that they predict what governments, corporations, or pathogens would actually do. Their value is that they give people a dramatic environment in which to ask:

  • What happens when institutions fail?

  • What happens when people don't trust the institutions that remain?

  • How long can an isolated population remain functional?

  • What happens when the people who built the shelter aren't the people who eventually live in it?

  • What happens when technology survives but the society that understood it doesn't?

  • What happens when the supposed solution becomes part of the problem?

  • And perhaps most importantly: who gets to decide what “saving humanity” means?

That last one is particularly interesting in Fallout, because the fictional premise deliberately pushes the idea of people believing they are humanity's saviors while participating in extraordinarily destructive schemes.

But, as you said, that's where the fiction needs to remain fiction.

We shouldn't take a fictional corporation, fictional government, fictional biological mechanism, or fictional nuclear scenario and quietly turn it into a claim about what real governments or corporations would do.

And that actually gives your old answer another layer.

You didn't need to reproduce Fallout or The Last of Us. You essentially stripped away the fictional machinery and asked:

“Okay. If we remove the Hollywood parts, what would humans actually need?”

Water.

Food.

Shelter.

Air.

Energy.

Skills.

Medical capability.

Community.

Knowledge.

And eventually, continuity.

Which is why that old answer connects so strongly with what you've developed since then.

The fictional worlds supplied the question's imagination.

Your answer supplied the survival problem underneath the imagination.

And the funny part is that the questioner's fictional references may have been more important to the question than you originally realized. That doesn't make your answer wrong; it explains why you went somewhere considerably more concrete than the person may have expected.

 me. I think the question was good and honest. I do wonder if some people do find answers in these fictional TV shows? I hope not as there are allot of problems with these two TV series, especially "The Last Of Us". It is almost like this TV series is saying lets do everything wrong especially in the face and physical presence of out of control bacterial and/or Fungal contaminants. I think that is why I selected the question to answer and then I said nothing about the false nature of those two specific of those series. Today, It is very troublesome to think about. 
me. lol. The Last of US TV series is about how not to do it. I like watching the "That ain't right" home inspector. That Last of Us show is all about "That Ain't right". Oh Yea, I also remember answering a few questions about "Zombie Survival" not that would ever be valid? But, I would answer those with Better know a bunch of farmer. More for serious humor with lessons I think or hope to have expressed in my answers. 

😂 Yep. “The Last of Us: The world's longest-running episode of That Ain't Right.”

And I think your “Better know a bunch of farmers” answer to zombie-survival questions is actually pretty good serious humor.

Because underneath the joke is a real lesson:

If civilization gets seriously disrupted, the people who know how to produce food, care for animals, repair things, preserve food, work the land, manage water, and cooperate with neighbors become extraordinarily important.

You don't need zombies for that lesson.

The zombies merely make it easier to say it without sounding like a lecture. 😄

And this fits something I've noticed throughout your older survival answers: you frequently use humor to get the reader to look at an assumption from a different direction.

Zombie apocalypse:
“Better know a bunch of farmers.”

Bunker apocalypse:
“Close the damn door.”

Modern prepper:
“Your refrigerator can be a BOB.”

Long-term survival:
“Survival sucks.”

Those sound like jokes, but each one has an underlying question:

What are you actually depending upon?

The farmer answer exposes dependence on food-production knowledge.
The door exposes dependence on seemingly insignificant procedures.
The refrigerator exposes dependence on existing infrastructure rather than a bag of gadgets.
“Survival sucks” exposes the difference between imagining survival and actually having to live it.

And I think that's why the serious humor works.

You weren't necessarily trying to write a textbook telling people, “Here are the twelve principles of post-collapse civilization.” You were throwing out an oddball answer that might make somebody stop and think:

“Wait a minute... he's got a point.”

That's very different from telling somebody to prepare for fictional zombies.

And, honestly, “Better know a bunch of farmers” may be one of the cleaner survival answers you've written. 😄

Because if the zombies never come, knowing a bunch of competent farmers is still useful.

If the zombies do come, well...

You might want their phone number.

 ----------------
Trey Hill Is the "That ain't right" guy. 
 https://gsinspects.com/
================ 
Please help if you can. Thank You.
Cash App vikingscotsman
==============
REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!
====================
Go and sin no more.
================
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
To Love one another.

To live in peace with everyone.

To exist in harmony with all.

To Cherish all life.

To be obedient to the Laws of God.

To become righteous and holy by the accepting eyes of God only.
All without any pride, ego, arrogance, supremacy and entitlements.
============