When All Hell Breaks Loose (47 page)

The Soviet Famine, 1932–1934

The Soviet Famine was initiated by Josef Stalin in an attempt to boost industrialization financed by forced collective farms in which grain production fell by 40 percent. His draconian measures included forbidding peasants to leave the country without permission; expelling, killing, or sending rich peasants to labor camps; and forcibly seizing what little food remained to double grain exports to raise cash for his failed plan. The predicted chaos included a report issued by an Italian consul member in the Ukraine reporting "a growing commerce in human meat" and that people were killing and eating their own children. Astute authorities immediately responded, not with food, but by distributing posters that read: "Eating Dead Children Is Barbarism." Due to a national cover-up forbidding doctors to disclose on death certificates that the deceased had starved to death, numbers for the total dead are sketchy but estimates are at 5 to 8 million people, 10 to 25 percent of the population of the Ukraine.

When the snow melted true starvation began. People had swollen faces and legs and stomachs. They could not contain their urine. . .and now they ate anything at all. They caught mice, rats, sparrows, ants, earthworms. They ground up bones into flour, and did the same thing with leather and shoe soles; they cut up old skins and furs to make noodles of a kind and they cooked glue. And when the grass came up, they began to dig up the roots and ate the leaves and the buds; they used everything there was; dandelions, and burdocks and bluebells and willow root, and sedums, and nettles. . .

—Soviet writer Vasily Grossman, recording the spring of 1933

 

The Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–1942

Three hundred eighty thousand Jews were confined to a 3.5-mile area that normally housed 160,000. The population eventually reached 445,000 before the Nazis sealed off the area with a ten-foot wall, with the intention of starving all of the inhabitants within nine months. Official food rationing provided 2,613 kilocalories per day for Germans, 699 kilocalories per day for Poles, and 184 kilocalories for Jews in the Ghetto. Tens of thousands died from starvation and disease.

People of all ages died in the streets, in shelters, in homes, and in hospitals. Nighttime produced a special hazard as even the most courageous or insensitive lost their nerve when, in the darkness of the night, they happened to accidentally step on some soft object that turned out to be a cadaver. The family commonly removed a body from their home onto the street, after removing all evidence of identity. In that way, they might be able to use the extra ration card for a few days. . .. Mothers hid dead children under beds for days in order to receive a larger food ration.

—Witness account of life in the Ghetto

 

Northern China, 1958–1962

Chairman Mao's failed bid to "industrialize" his nation, along with several natural disasters and drought, killed an unbelievable 30 million people by starvation, disease, infanticide, and cannibalism. Desperate families swapped each other's children to eat, thus avoiding having to eat their kin. The pest reduction campaign to protect crops included the entire country beating on pots and pans to prevent sparrows and other birds from landing until they fell down dead with exhaustion. Without the predation of the birds, insect pests multiplied, damaging crops. During the mass starvation, clueless officials doubled the exports of grain and decreased food importation. Although it was the world's largest famine, it was not revealed to the rest of the world until 1981.

On the muddy path leading from the village, dozens of corpses lay unburied. In the barren fields there were others; and amongst the dead, the survivors crawled slowly on their hands and knees searching for wild grass seeds to eat. In the ponds and ditches people squatted in the mud hunting for frogs and trying to gather weeds. It was winter, and bitterly cold, but. . .everyone was dressed only in thin and filthy rags tied together with bits of grass and stuffed with straw. . .. Sometimes neighbors and relatives simply fell down as they shuffled through the village and died without a sound. . .. The dead were left where they died because no one had the strength to bury them. . .. The silence was unnatural. The village oxen had died, the dogs had been eaten and the chickens and ducks had long ago been confiscated by the Communist Party in lieu of grain taxes. There were no birds left in the trees, and the trees themselves had been stripped of their leaves and bark. At night there was no longer even the scratching of rats and mice, for they too had been eaten or had starved to death.

—Famine survivor Mrs. Liu recounting the winter of 1959.
Of the 300 people who lived in Mrs. Liu's village, only 80 survived

 

Biafra (now Nigeria), Africa, 1967–1969

Civil war—caused famine kills 1 million people, leaving another 3.5 million to suffer from extreme malnutrition.

North Korea, 1994–1998

A combination of reduced Chinese and Russian food subsidies, along with the effects of collective farming, flooding, drought, and government corruption, caused an estimated 2 to 3 million people to die of starvation, disease, and cannibalism. Defectors reported the elderly routinely walked out into fields to die, thereby reducing the burden of having to be fed.

Weeds, of whatever kind, were boiled up and swallowed in the form of soup. The soup was so bitter that we could barely keep it down. Our neighbors collected grass and tree bark—usually pine or various shrubs. They grated the bark and boiled it up before eating it. And much good it did them: their faces swelled from day to day until they finally perished. The poorest children lived on nothing but grass, and during class their stomachs rumbled. After a few weeks their faces began to swell, making them look well nourished. Then their faces went on growing until they looked as though they had been inflated. Their cheeks were so puffy that they couldn't see the blackboard. Some of them were covered with impetigo and flaking skin. My friends and I caught frogs and cooked them skewered on bicycle spokes. We also ate grasshoppers, which are delicious fried, as are dragonflies. Grilled, the flesh of fat dragonflies tastes a bit like pork; but you can eat them raw, once the head and wings have been removed. Sparrows and quails ended up in the pot. We caught them with nets set in wooden frames. Other birds, like crows, we fried on a brazier.

—Excerpted from Hyok Kang's book
This is Paradise!

 

Depressed? Don't be! Focus on the positive and get off your butt and make sure your family has the food they need for potential emergencies. After all, stored food is a life insurance policy you can really sink your teeth into.

Food Storage Options

Now that you're good and hungry, let's discuss the many options that you have concerning what form your stored food might take. Canned, dried, or dehydrated meals, whole grains packed in buckets, freeze-dried food, and MREs (meals ready to eat) are the more common types of food-storage strategies on the market. All have their advantages and disadvantages. All will, sooner or later, need to be
rotated
to prevent your stock from going bad and/or losing much of its nutritional value. There are extremely comprehensive books on long-term food storage. The Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are the kings and queens of doing their homework regarding this and much can be learned from their generations of experience. Check out a Mormon bookstore in your area or search online for other food storage information.

Keep in mind that the focus of many of these books is a long-term storage plan for food that will last one year or more. The task of storing food for such an extended amount of time can seem so complex and daunting that many families throw up their hands in frustration and blow off storing any food altogether. Slow down and breathe. How much food your family should have on hand depends on your family's supposed emergency. Most households, excluding destitute college students, already have an ample supply of food on hand that should last for several days in a pinch. Maybe this is all you'll need for your perceived emergency, or all the room you have to store food in the first place. Knowing you're in an emergency situation will allow you to ration what food you do have, thus making meager rations last even longer. If you want specific lists of stuff to buy for a comprehensive, long-term food storage strategy, research other books whose focus is on providing you with that information.

The Simple Bare-Minimum Food Storage Plan

The average person eats one ton of food each year. If you're not into storing large amounts of food, have on hand at least the bare minimum to get you through a crisis and to remain independent from the bureaucratic and logistical nightmare that will envelop those who failed to have reserve food supplies available.
At minimum, your family should have a two- to four-week supply of food on hand at all times
. This food should require little or no cooking and meet all of your nutritional needs. It should be easy to access, portable in a pinch, and require the bare minimum of preparation and fuss. To implement this type of food storage program, simply buy more food from the store than you normally would, and when you get down to the emergency two- to four-week supply, make a trip to the store. In your mind, your home should be "out of food" when you reach your two- to four-week stock. If you bite into this stock from laziness or whatever, replace it as soon as possible. This extra food should not sit in the closet for months. It should be a part of your regular meal plan and ROTATED normally. In truth, it is not "stored" food at all, simply extra food that you have on hand as part of your regular fare in the kitchen.

I can't emphasize enough that you keep this extra food as simple as possible concerning its preparation. On my outdoor courses, I state in writing that clients should bring simple foods that require NO COOKING. Regardless of this, many still do. Because they didn't pay attention to the instructions, we are at times forced to create a heat source to cook their dinner. This heat source usually takes the form of a campfire, which requires a safe area to build the fire, dry fuel, an ignition source, knowledge of how to make a fire, the constant adding and adjustment of the fuel, hassling with rocks or berms of dirt to suspend a fireproof cooking container that someone happened to pack, water, and lots of time. While the rest of us have eaten our bagels and trail mix or tuna with crackers, the food cookers are still trying to get their water to boil. Don't underestimate how tedious cooking over a campfire can be (assuming you have the materials and know-how to do so), especially under the physical, mental, and emotional strain of an emergency. There are many down and dirty foods that are ready to eat on the spot. For most families,
canned foods
will be the cat's meow as they are widely available, durable and portable, cheap, store well for up to two years, and are easy to open and eat, in the can with a stick if necessary, with zero preparation.

Food Storage Rules of Thumb

There is no perfect food storage plan for every family as there are far too many variables to contend with, from personal dietary preferences and restrictions to global climates affecting storage. Many people waste much of their food storage supply by failing to obey a few simple rules of thumb regarding purchasing and storing food in bulk. Almost everyone interested in the storage of food will agree upon the following rules.