How do I keep my fridge cold if the power goes out?
If your freezer is not full, fill any empty space with water jugs while the power is still on. Fill the water jugs only about 80% of the way full, and keep their lids on loosely until they're frozen solid, because water expands when it freezes. This improves the efficiency of your freezer all the time, and the ice containers can be moved to the fridge to keep it cool longer in a power outage.
If you have a cooler, consider moving perishables from the fridge into the cooler. Put the most perishable stuff (meats) on the bottom, the least perishable stuff you'll eat (veggies etc) in the middle, and your ice bottles on top. Stuff usually stays cold longer in a cooler than in a non-working fridge, because the cold air stays in the cooler when you open the top, whereas when you open the door of the fridge all the cold air falls out. Remember that cooler air sinks below warmer air, so storing your cooler in a basement will also extend the time it stays cold for.
If you're going out and buying a cooler for preparedness, look for the kind meant for boating or long camping trips. Some good coolers can keep stuff at a safe temperature for over a week if you add enough ice.
Be careful when using dry ice indoors, especially if your house is not very drafty. Dry ice turns directly into carbon dioxide when it sublimes, and carbon dioxide is heavier than air. This means that the CO2 from the dry ice may displace the air enough to cause danger, if you're using large quantities of it in a small and well sealed room.
If you filled your water containers with potable water, it will also be a bit of extra drinking water once they thaw.
Only [forage] if you know what you’re doing
Learn about the universal edibility test. It's best to bring food with you, and second-best to eat only things you recognize as definitely edible. But if you're faced with a choice between eating something unknown or starving, approaching the unknown food in a rational manner can save your life.
"Premade emergency food supplies are an option"- They certainly are an option, though the nutrition is generally pretty poor, as is the cost per calorie, as is the quality and taste of the food. They seem to be marketed to people who are looking for an easy way to check off a fear from their list. While I understand the market, I would estimate a trip to a bulk food supplier or other discount retail store that sells in bulk might address those concerns even if products are not all labeled specifically for emergencies.
In estimating the optimal food storage, I'd suggest also considering:
When choosing food for emergencies, make sure to pay attention to what, if any, preparation it needs. Bags of dry beans can be attractive cost-wise, for instance, but have fun preparing them without prep time, a heat source, and excess water.
If you do this you’ll want to put the food in sealed plastic containers so the wildlife can’t get into it.
And be aware that there are critters that will quite happily chew through plastic, assuming they think that there's something inside.
Author: Finan Adamson
Last Updated: 03//2022
Overview
This guide goes into detail on food storage, how much food people need, how to know if your food has gone bad, and how to keep your cold food cold. This is meant to give you a tool to reason about how to prepare for and act in emergencies that disrupt your food supply. Ultimately the decision of how much food to store comes down to your own estimation of risk and how prepared you want to be.
Food Storage
How much food should I store?
Ready.gov recommends you store at least a 3 day supply of non-perishable food. Finan thinks you should have more like two weeks. If it’s easy, it’s totally ok to have more, but for most disasters you won’t be without access to some way of buying food for extended periods of time. We’ve seen in the Covid pandemic that grocery ordering has continued and people can still go into grocery stores relatively safely with sealed N95s or P100s. If things like earthquake or fire disrupted supply chains that could make food much more expensive/scarce, but you’d probably be able to get food or get to food within a month. Something like a nuclear attack could disrupt food supplies for much longer, but you probably have bigger immediate problems at that point and are likely evacuating elsewhere. Food is also not as limiting as water. You can survive much longer without food than without water.
What kinds of food should I store?
Where should I store my food?
How do I know when food has gone bad?
Food Strategies in an Emergency
How do I keep my fridge cold if the power goes out?
What do I take for food if I’m evacuating?
How else can I preserve calories?
Should I forage when I run out of food?