News roundup for Fri, May 13, 2022

Love the idea of donating your surplus pantry items to a food bank!

…and to use the flight simulator lol

Maybe study Wasteland 3 or Trials of Fire for something with an SHTF theme.

Karl, here’s a forum post with some more SHTF and prepping related board and video games https://theprepared.com/forum/thread/games-that-teach-survival-skills/

I’ve heard that the Microsoft Flight Simulator is amazing and very accurate. They have all the controls functioning and laid out exactly how they are in the various aircraft and use real satellite images to simulate the world you are flying in. You can fly and see anything you want.

When we have food that is no longer edible (i.e. cans that have gotten way too old, not just expiration date old) I pour them into a large bowl(s), mix together, add some liquid as needed, then freeze it in quart ziplock bags to give to the chickens or pig on hot days. We call them pigcycles. 

Here’s another thing you can do:  Don’t buy a house on stilts right on the ocean.

Thanks. I hope they’ll help.

I’ve been seeing similar homemade formula recipes circling the various prepping facebook prepping groups and to be honest, doing that would make me nervous. First off, there doesn’t seem to be much nutrition in that, and second what Carlotta mentioned in the news roundup, it could lead to life-threatening infections. I wouldn’t want to risk the safety of my child. The tips on how to obtain formula are safer and ones I would consider first. 

Another tip I saw on Facebook is to go to Amazon.ca (Canada site) as they supposedly have formula available. I don’t know how that all works out, how the money exchange works, or if they can get it to someone living in the states, but it’s worth a shot to check it out if other options don’t work out.

Canned evaporated milk is prepared at American factories under hygienic conditions. The formula is what close to all babies in the West consumed until weaning for many decades. Boiling and cooling the water used is the same for commercial and homemade formula.with both you fill bottles and refrigerate for up to 24 hours before use.

Abbott had problems with contaminated commercial formula. I think a life-threatening infection would have a cause, but it wouldn’t be from an intact can of evaporated milk mixed with sterile water.

This is what nearly everyone did until commercial formula became widely used around 1975, for convenience, not for safety reasons. If you need formula and stores don’t have it, there is no shortage of canned evaporated milk. I think mixing it with boiled water and Karo in the recommended portions is what prepared people do. 

It contains as much nutritive value as commercial formula does. It has appropriate amounts of protein, fat, and carbs in the form of simple sugars, similar to the lactose in breast milk.  It should not make you nervous. Neither commercial nor homemade formula is ideal. Only breast milk is complete nutritionally and immunologically, giving the child the mother’s antibodies to everything she has been exposed to, and changing to meet the needs of the growing child. But we’re talking here about what to do when it’s too late to choose breastfeeding. 

Since that book was written a lot has changed in our understanding of nutrition and how the foods that babies eat shape their dietary choices later in life.  Now we know that sugar is poison, that giving it to a baby would be a tremendous disservice and set them up for metabolic disease (which 1/3 of Americans have) later in life.

Agreed. There’s a big difference between “survived” and “thrived”. There’s a lot we’d do differently in a true collapse situation to keep our babies/children/selves alive — this is not that situation. 

I think thriving is what breast fed babies do. All artificial substitutes fall short of the best nourishment, but permit most babies to grow to weaning.

Lactose is the main source of the most abundant sugar naturally present in women’s breast milk. Corn syrup or sugar were used in formula, for the energy the baby needs to grow and for bowel function. Both Similac and Enfamil include very similar sugars. 
The sugar in the lactose also aids in the digestion of the protein in the milk.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/the-carbohydrates-found-in-breast-milk-431997

It turned out that evaporated milk turned out to be a miraculous development perfectly suited for formula. It was sterile. The process of heating and reducing the milk effected chemical changes resulting in a soft curd easily digested, and much less allergenic than untreated milk. Diluting it created a product remarkably close to breast milk. 

I read today that some parents are diluting their babies’ formula to make ut go further. Now there’s a really bad, dangerous plan for you. Some are paying hundreds of dollars for a single can of formula. Some are giving young infants cooked vegetables blended in water because they can’t get formula. 

I think it would be much better to buy cheap, readily available evaporated milk and Karo, sterilize the bottles and nipples, boil the water for ten minutes and cool, keep unused bottles of formula in the refrigerator for up to a few days, all basic hygiene for mixing commercial powdered formula as well, and give the babies some food. When I was a child, it’s what my mother, aunts, and everyone I knew did for their children. We were all healthy children and no one became ill from this evaporated milk formula. I breast fed mine until self-weaning, but under current circumstances this would be an eminently acceptable, inexpensive, and readily available alternative. 

Yeah, the scientific understanding we have of infant nutrition has dramatically improved over 50 years. The early printings of Dr. Spock’s books from the 1950s and 1960s aren’t up to date. Just because something happened to work for my parents or your parents, it isn’t automatically the best option for people who can’t get baby formula.

“Thrived” is a subjective and emotionally loaded word. You need actual studies showing that a recipe leads to as-good or better outcomes than breastmilk or commercially available baby formula.

I think in this present situation, the consideration is whether to give your baby the evaporated milk formula or blended vegetables with water (as I read some parents are doing). Or have them put less and less of their last powdered formula in the bottle with more and more water. Anyone can go to any store and buy cans of evaporated milk and sugar or corn syrup. I remember feeding my cousins with this when they were babies, in glass bottles. They drank it avidly and then fell asleep. They grew well. They still all look well and happy in the pictures they put on Facebook. This is not a competition between Similac and the evaporated milk formula. In any competition, breast would win. What else gives antibodies and adapts to the baby’s changing needs over time? Every few months they find new previously unknown benefits of breast milk. In the Third World, death from diarrhea is ten times more common in commercial formula fed babies than in breast fed, death from pneumonia five times more common. But that’s not the point here. Here in Missouri I read today that half of the stores which usually sell formula have no formula on the shelf. None. So should a prepper hold out for Similac even if it takes a month to restock shelves, order from Canada or Australia with thousands he doesnt have, or buy the Pet and Karo and give the baby food which will satisfy him and which countless millions ate exclusively until weaning?

I think the main logic behind the situation with formula is:

• Baby formula is an absolutely essential product for everyone with a baby who doesn’t (or can’t) breastfeed. Therefore, demand for formula is relatively constant and doesn’t decrease with higher prices.
• The FDA approves baby formula blends and has (allegedly) been dragging its feet on issues like whether to approve formula that’s already approved in the EU or similar developed countries. Deferring to regulatory agencies in other countries would allow more consumer choice. The FDA could also potentially change how it approves baby formula so that more companies could make it. I’m not a libertarian, but I tend to support regulations that discourage monopolies.
• Limited production facilities (like if you remember the concerns about meat packing plants). If one goes down, the entire supply chain has to adjust and find a way to replace the lost production and the downstream consequences can become difficult to predict. A shortage of specialty formula means the people who normally use it have to switch, which squeezes overall supply.
• Monopolies tend to prefer rules/policies that promote artificial scarcity (like the WIC rules, agreements with stores, etc.).

The Abbott Michigan plant was shut down in February when several babies became sick and two died, it was thought from bacterial contamination of their formula. The plant was said to have bacterial contamination. But the type of bacteria found at the plant was different than the type which killed the two babies. The plant was left closed for three months. Now, because of the shortage, it’s been told to open, but Abbott said it will be ten weeks before it can stock shelves normally again. 

Was just about to type the same thing! One of the funniest movies I watched as a kid. Pretty impressive they were able to land that plane. 

I mean, after compiling each news roundup humor is the only thing I am left with… 😬

I feel you!

Hyperinflation is an extreme scenario and we’re not close to a hyperinflationary environment yet (like the dollar losing half its value in a few months), though I think it’s wrong to conclude that hyperinflation is impossible or definitely won’t happen. My thinking is that the Fed will use extreme options before hyperinflation can take hold if it has to, since Powell and the Fed board know hyperinflation would be worse than a bad recession and are currently watching the situation very carefully, but I could be wrong. If it does happen, it’s not going to happen next week or next month at this point, so there’s time to prepare.

For inflation in general (not hyperinflation necessarily), it’s probably best to put money in a TIPS/CD or just buy an S&P 500 ETF. I think of hyperinflation like it’s an extended SHTF grid-down scenario: so you need food, energy, self-defense, etc.—pretty much your Zombie Apocalypse preps.

I wouldn’t rush into homeownership because we don’t know what will happen (there could be a recession, you lose your job and miss mortgage payments, the house’s value goes down, etc.). The main benefit of homeownership is the eviction/foreclosure process is usually longer after a missed payment than the eviction process if you rent.

Disclaimer: I don’t have degrees or work experience in investing and this isn’t financial advice or investing advice.

Ha! I was *just* adding it to the next roundup! 💪

I really like their maps that show how the risk is distributed across the zipcode. If I’m evacuating, I want my route to avoid all the highest-risk areas in my zipcode.