Do It Yourself Survival Food
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
2 cups Flour (preferably white bleached flour, as this will preserve longer)
½ Teaspoon Salt
½ to ¾ cup Water
Mixing Bowl
Rolling pin
Cookie Sheet or cooking screen
Measuring Cup and ½ teaspoon
Cookie Cutter, Jar Ring, or Knife for shaping
A clean chopstick, writing pen, or small twig
The Recipe
This recipe could not be more straightforward and is excellent for kids. The tricks to good hardtack are a low temperature and long, slow cooking time. You can even reduce the cooking temperature to 200 and bake/dry it out longer. To begin with, place 2 cups flour and ½ teaspoon salt into the bowl. Slowly add in ½ to ¾ cup water and mix with your hands. You want the dough to be pliable enough to shape. You don’t want it so dry it is flakey, but you also don’t want it doughy or spongy like bread dough. So, mix it until it isn’t crumbly and it’s not too spongy. If your dough is too sticky, just add a little more flour about 1 heaping tablespoon at a time. You will want to be closer to the ½ cup of water instead of the full ¾ cup.
Once the dough comes together, sprinkle some flour on your working surface. You will want to roll the dough out to a thickness of ¼ inch or less. Thicker than that and it won’t dry and cook properly. Too thin, and it will burn, brown too much, or crumble too easily. Less than 1/4 inch thickness is the ideal height. Don’t worry if it isn’t exact. Because there is no leavening agent like yeast or baking powder, it won’t rise. The thickness you cook the dough at will be about the same as the final cooked product’s thickness. I have made these a little bigger than ¼ inch, and they will still come out fine, but they are harder to eat and take longer to cook.
You can either use your cookie cutter or mason jar lid to cut out neat circles or use your knife to cut into the more traditional 3-inch by 3-inch squares. To make the traditional square hardtack version, trim the edges of the rolled-out dough and set it aside, so you have a square of about 9-inches by 9-inches. Cut the 9-by-9 square of dough into a tic tac toe pattern, and you will have nine squares with approximately 3-inch sides.
The excess dough you set aside can be shaped by hand or rolled out for additional biscuits. If you use the small mason jar lid, it will allow you to store the finished hardtack in the next size up Mason jar. You could skip the rolling pin altogether and just shape these by hand if you want to.
Using the chopstick, writing pen, twig, or another similarly shaped object, poke holes into each square. The holes don’t need to go all the way through the dough, but they can. This process is called “docking.” The holes will allow moisture to completely escape in the cooking and drying process.
Gently transfer the squares to your cooking sheet, cooking stone, or cooking screen. If you use a screen, you can slightly reduce the cooking time and end up with a somewhat crispier biscuit.
225 degrees
2 hours
Flip
2 more hours
Place in an oven at 225 degrees Fahrenheit/107 degrees celsius. Bake them for 2 hours, then flip them and bake and dry them for another 2 hours. If you want to reduce the overall baking and drying time by a full one-quarter, replace ½ your water with vodka. This will evaporate faster than water, 172 degrees versus 212 degrees, and won’t leave any residual taste behind. It may also help to kill off any bacteria or wild yeast that may accidentally become a part of your mix, so this may marginally add to the longevity of your final biscuit.
After 2 hours, you will want to take them out of the oven and flip them. They may stick a little to the cookie sheet but will come up with a spatula. You don’t want to use oil on your cookie sheet because you don’t want the biscuits to pick up any of the oil in the cooking process. A silicone cooking sheet or non-stick cookie sheet would be ideal for this process.
When you take them from the oven, transfer them to a wire rack for cooling. If you are in a dry and not humid environment, you can leave them in the air a little longer to further dry out. Once 
they are at room temperature, you can vacuum seal them or use mylar storage bags and oxygen absorbers to store them for maybe 100 years or more.
That’s it. It’s a straightforward means to make and store survival food. It’s light and can sustain a person for a couple of months if it was all you had to eat. The main thing is to keep them free from oxygen, moisture, or any insects like the weevil or maggots.
History, Nutrition, and How To Eat Hardtack
Molar breakers, tooth dullers, worm castles, sea bread, dog biscuits, sheet iron, ship’s biscuits, hardtack…whatever you call it, it’s maybe the ultimate survival food. As long as humankind has been baking with processed cereal grains, there’s been a version of it. If it was all you had to eat, you could survive on it alone for two to three months, and when adequately stored, it can stay intact for well over a hundred years. That makes it one of the oldest and most resilient foods you could have in your prepper supplies.
Hardtack is hard. It can break your teeth and loosen your fillings. 9 of these and some salted pork was a standard Civil War ration for a soldier. Lacking adequate storage techniques, civil war hardtack would often become infested with maggots. This lead to their nickname worm castles. In the Royal Navy, the rations were a pound of hardtack and a gallon of small beer, which was the equivalent of near beer today with an alcohol content below 2%. The biscuits are lightweight and sturdy if kept dry. They pre-date the Civil War and the Royal Navy and were probably first invented when unleavened processed grains were cooked too long and too slow to be bread.
Egyptian sailors are known to have carried a flat, hard, and dry loaf made of millet grain. The Romans had a version of their own, as well. Crusaders carried a biscuit that was typically a combination of bean flours, rye, and barley. Almost every culture around the world has some version of it using the indigenous cereal grains.
Nutritionally, there isn’t much there. There isn’t any vitamin C, which is why sailors on long voyages would sometimes get scurvy. There are about 15 carbohydrates, 2 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat, 1 gram of fiber, 290 milligrams of sodium, and scant amounts of potassium, sugar, calcium, and iron. It will keep you alive for about two months without supplementation with other food sources.
There are several ways it can be eaten. Civil War soldiers would often drop it in their coffee and let the heat and liquid soften it. They would also smash it and put the crumbles in soups of whatever they could gather. In this way, it acted as a thickener. A really common practice was to soak them for an extended time then fry them in some of the pork fat that was also part of their rations. This created a type of fry bread with a little more flavor. You can soak it in milk or milk and honey to soften it. If it’s on the fresher side and not too hard, you can eat it like a hard cracker and put jam or preserves on it. Sprinkling them with cinnamon will add a little flavor after a disaster and will help to keep insects away.
I will sometimes make a quick batch and take them on hikes or camping trips with a bit of trail mix as well. They provide a decent carbohydrate boost. If you plan to consume them in a relatively short amount of time or plan on packaging them for long-term storage, you can tamper with the recipe and experiment with other grains and flours. The Aztecs had a version of hardtack made from quinoa. You could use bean, corn, oat, barley, rye, or even almond flour. Different flours, however, may reduce the shelf life of your hardtack. The natural fats in the flour will oxidize over time, which may give the hardtack a stale and rancid smell and taste. The key is to cook out all the moisture so any natural yeasts or molds can’t take root on them and store them in an airtight, moisture-free environment. You can even put some rice grains in the container if it’s airtight and can remain pest-free. Don’t use sugar unless you plan on eating them right away, as this will attract unwanted pests and yeasts.
If you plan to eat them right away, you might add honey or sugar or even a little oil or butter. But, if you plan to eat them right away, you might be better off just making a cookie or granola bars. Those will be tastier and less challenging to eat.
Well, there you have it. Hardtack! One of the first processed and baked survival foods. Let me know in the comments below how your batch turns out, and let everyone know your secret to making or eating hardtack. Do you have some stored away in your prepping supplies?
the expiration date. Don’t try and use more to compensate for this loss of potency. Continue to use it as prescribed, as it will not be possible to determine how much it has degraded. One of the reasons over-the-counter medications are available without a prescription is their long and stable shelf life. Some medicines, however, can become dangerous to take if they are beyond their expiration date. Some medicines may even change their chemical composition over time, so it isn’t an issue of potency and dosage at that point. Save your red labels for any medications you really should not take after their expiration. These will likely be your prescribed medicines. Insulin, oral nitroglycerin, tetracycline, antibiotics, eye drops, nasal mists, and injectable medication of any kind should not be taken after they have expired. However, regarding over-the-counter medicines, you should not take or use any that powdery, discolored, smell, or changed composition in any way.
aids, testing strips, topical creams for pain, itch creams, ear drops, eye drops, and anything required for ongoing and regular treatment of any existing conditions is your first priority because any current condition left untreated after a disaster can quickly become even worse. Understand the typical conditions you have and take care of those in your stockpiles first. Then determine the needs of your immediate family and make sure to have those items on hand. Finally, consider any of those family members who may need to shelter with you after a large-scale and prolonged disaster. Elderly parents and others will also need over-the-counter medicines that may be in short supply.
given to someone with a fever. 
of situations, kill you. Just as you have an emergency hat in your prepper inventory, make sure you have some powerful sunscreen as well. 75 to 100 sun protection factor is the best, since tanning or providing yourself just a little protection won’t be practical in a disaster. Pay up and get an easy to apply 
are just two that can be readily obtained in the wild or stored in dried form for years. Ginger may also increase the effectiveness of other drugs. For gas or bloating or acid reflux, 
insect bites. 
Oral pain will stop you dead in your tracks and can make it difficult to eat when calories are critical. An oral anesthetic like 
Hi Everyone,
I figure, in an emergency situation, at some point we’ll have to resort to natural yeast. I have a starter that I’ve kept alive for almost 3 years now. I make waffles once every 7-10 days, then replenish it. At first, I practiced making bread, trying to get a bread that was not too “sour.” When I finally had it pronounced “edible” by my other half, I stopped making it.
They are in my lettuce mainly, but I’ve seen them on the lawn, and I see chew marks on everything. Unfortunately, Capt. Jack’s Dead Bug Brew does not kill earwigs. Diatomaceous Earth will work, but not when wet, so that means reapplying every time you water, which for me is nearly every day. You can smear Vaseline around the base of the plants. And that would work maybe for my pepper plants which are getting eaten at an alarming rate. But there isn’t really a “stem” for lettuce. So I looked up some organic pesticides and found that Pyrethrin will work. I tried buying it on Amazon. It says they won’t deliver to my zip code. Then I tried ordering in through Walmart, and they canceled the sale and said to try later. I looked at the ingredients for a product called “Eight” by Bonide. I got it at Armstrong. Way back on page 110 of the little booklet that is attached to the container (JK), it says it kills earwigs. I sprayed, but they are STILL eating the leaves. Ugh. Last night I cleared away ALL the mulch, thinking that they are hiding there. It’s an all-out battle, that’s for sure!
I waterproofed a bunch of matches for my kit. I tied about 10 wooden matches together with dental floss and dipped the whole thing in paraffin wax (it’s in the canning section of the store). I also made many fire starters out of cardboard egg cartons, dryer lint, and paraffin wax. I found that these will burn for about 20 minutes. I LOVE them and have a big stockpile for our outdoor fire pit. The cardboard catches fire easily, and then it burns long enough to catch the wood on the fire. I have flint and steel in the packs, too. But I find the matches work better. Right? That’s why God invented matches!!!!
The most evident impact of droughts and extreme weather precipitation events are witnessed on the impacted land. When we think of droughts, we often think of the farmer and his crops drying up in the fields. In Taiwan, farmers are being paid not to grow crops so that the water may be repurposed and directed to chip manufacturing needs. Last year’s Derecho wiped out corn crops in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. Just two years ago it was droughts all across Europe that lowered yields and affected farmers. Wildfires from Sweden to California are more extreme and disrupt production, trade, and whole economies.
The climate has constantly been changing, but it is undeniably changing at a more dramatic rate. The swings to the extreme are barely contained in the historical record, as we see droughts and deluges that were barely once-in-a-lifetime events before happening year after year. Farmers cannot just switch over their crops to heartier, drought-tolerant varieties. In some cases, no such drought-tolerant variety is available, and farmers can’t keep pace when the sun scorches their fields, and water levels drop.
There is a dependence, however, on large-scale operations and a very limited range of crops. By 2050, the global population will have grown and urbanized so much that we will need to produce 87 percent more of the four primary food crops – rice, wheat, soy, and maize – than we do today. When extreme weather conditions stunt the growth of these main crops, a global hunger crisis is created. Though there are many more grains that could be brought into more extensive scale production like sorghum, Farro, Teff, or Amarnath, global pallets are too slow to shift, and farmers and manufacturers lack the experience with these other grains.
It’s not just the crops we eat, though. It's also the feed we provide livestock, fisheries, and ranch operations. When the big crops fail, the effects are felt throughout the world. These failures are also observable in the sustained
socioeconomic impacts lasting well beyond the drought or flooding event. Decreased yields lead to shortages and scarcity. Collapsing land leads to collapsing economies. This can result in mass migration events or, in the case of fires, mass evacuations. These exoduses brought about by land failure impacts all regional economies and redirect billions of dollars per year to rescue and relief efforts.
FIGHTING OVER THE LAST DROPS
You may have viewed my popular video on Why The Rich Are Buying Water Rights, and it’s worth mentioning here. The real question is can we run out of water on a planet that is mostly water? The answer is both yes and no. You can
run out, but the Earth won’t. The wealthy won’t.
Water covers 71% of Earth’s surface. There are 326 million trillion gallons of it on and in the planet. 96.5% of the water is ocean water, and just 3.5% is freshwater. Of that 3%, 69% of that water is locked up in glaciers. Another 30% of that freshwater is underground and usually requires costly extraction. That leaves 114 million billion gallons of readily accessible freshwater, not necessarily drinkable water, but water nonetheless. That sounds like enough, but it represents just 1% of the Earth’s water for every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet. That 1% of the water also has to serve every agricultural and industrial need on the earth. In most cases, it also needs to be filtered and treated before it is safely consumable. So, though there is plenty of water on the planet, not very much of it is drinkable. Not very much of it is accessible, and the distribution methods are easily manipulated, legislated, and monetized. That’s never good for the common person. Nestle Water, for instance, extracted 36 million gallons of water from a national forest in California in 2015 to sell bottled water, even as Californians were ordered to cut their water use because of a historic drought in the state.
The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough water. There’s plenty for a thirsty planet. The problem is the rapid shift of water resources and a free infrastructure to channel and distribute that water. Dry areas lack the proper infrastructure to capture the water. Often, the infrastructure that is in place is not adequate. An estimated 14% of Taiwan’s pipes are leaking. In an area known for having umbrella stands outside of stores and subways because of the usual high volume of rain, 14% is inconsequential until there’s a drought-like they are experiencing today. The Salton Sea in California was created by an infrastructure failure in 1905. As humans, we seem to barely be capable of containing the flows of water that fall from the sky. In some states, water companies have forced legislation that
makes it illegal for citizens to collect their rainwater.
Desert and arid areas that have seen little historic rainfall in the past are ill- equipped to capture or even channel even light rains. The years of scorching heat have compacted the soil surface so much that the water doesn’t even absorb into the Earth. Instead, it rapidly runs off, resulting in flash flooding and mudslides. Where it does flow into a larger body of water like a lake or the ocean, phosphate levels soar, and biological blooms of deadly algae can occur. One area’s precipitation or lack of rainfall can quickly cascade into a regional, national, or global problem.
WHOSE WATER IS IT?
Beyond the exodus of populations impacting the global community, water rights, those who feel they are entitled to the water also create a host of problems. Whether it is Nestle bottling and selling water from public lands during a drought, or chip manufacturers having to scale back operations because they lack the precious resource, or its farmers being asked not to grow vital food, water is a commodity, the scarcity of which impacts us daily. In the United States, there are corporate and factory farming operations that have legislated reduced cost per gallon of vital water. In some cases, they then sell those water rights back to municipalities and refrain from growing anything. If they are guaranteed 1 million gallons at 3 cents per gallon, but they can sell the rights to that water for 17 cents a gallon, can they be blamed for profiting from the sale? And one million gallons is actually low for a farming operation. It takes one gallon of water to grow a single almond and five gallons of water for a single walnut. In a complex legislative shell game, farmers can acquire rights and then sell those rights and produce nothing.
During a time of drought, their profits continue to go up though they produce and grow nothing.
In other countries around the globe, the problem of water scarcity is an even more significant one. Heavy-handed militaries or tribal warlords can seize water resources or withhold aid for victims of either drought or extreme precipitation events. This sends a hungry population far from their borders or compounds global insecurities. China, India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are the top 4 countries growing rice. Combined, these four countries account for just shy of 70% of all the rice grown in the world. India currently faces its worst water crisis in history. Since 2015, India has been experiencing widespread drought conditions. Some 600 million people in India are presently facing high to extreme water stress. Add to this the ravaging effects of COVID, and India's rice production is plummeting. That’s almost 25% of the world’s rice. Just ten years ago, and these tend to be cyclical events, a drought so bad in China decimated the wheat-producing regions. At the same time, what water was obtained was allocated to manufacturing over farming.
Even as floods occur in some areas and droughts in others, there will be a constant struggle over who owns the water. The rich have been buying water rights with the understanding that H20 is the newest commodity, and whoever controls that commodity can make huge profits even as others might suffer.
WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW?
The first thing you should do is understand the implications of both droughts and floods. Recognize that this will cause shortages in everything from the grain we eat to the microchips we place in every single piece of technology. When water is in scarcity, mining operations have to scale back operations. The fossil fuel industry has to scale back operations. Water is the critical element in everything we produce and consume. Industrial water is used for fabricating, processing, washing, diluting, cooling, or transporting a product. Water is also used by smelting facilities, petroleum refineries, and industries producing chemical products, food, and paper products. You can’t live for three days without water. Even if you have enough stored up for a little bit of time in the event of an emergency, I guarantee your neighbors don't. They would be desperate and at death's door in about 72 hours.
You need to implement your prepping plan for this vital resource. If you have the means and area to set up a rainwater collection system or rooftop precipitation collection system, now would be a good time to start making moves in that direction. If you own a piece of land and have considered drilling or repairing a well on it, now would be the time. If you have a slow, natural bubbling spring on an older property, now might be a good time to begin restoring it to its pioneer day glory. If you have always wanted to set up a hydroponic vegetable garden in your
back acres or garage, now might be the time to do so. The reason being that new laws that might later restrict your ability to do so will likely have to grandfather you in to pass the legislators. Even in the suburbs, a rainwater collection system can dramatically increase your odds of survival through disasters that may stretch into weeks or months. As a side benefit, your water bill will significantly decrease if you also use that water for irrigation and gardening or even washing your car. Suppose there are no actual means for you to tap into and access the free and natural water flow in the environment. In that case, you must plan to store up water in your home and have a means to collect, filter, and treat water from wild natural resources.
Just recently, officials in Florida revealed that the water treatment plant’s facilities were hacked. The hackers increased the sodium hydroxide levels from one hundred parts per million to eleven thousand parts per million. If you’re not familiar with sodium hydroxide, it is more commonly known as lye and is the primary ingredient in drain cleaners. If the real plant operators had not been monitoring the systems and hackers also overrode the sensors and redundancy programs, an entire city could have been poisoned. Whether you are in the country or the city, you should be filtering your water for health and safety reasons. You can’t rely on your little refrigerator filter because it isn’t very effective, and it wouldn’t work in a grid down disaster anyways. Even the most natural sources can be polluted by agricultural and industrial operations miles and miles away from where you tap into it. So, the
investments you make now in sound filtration systems will pay you dividends when disasters strike. I have been using a Berkey water filtration in my home for many years, so I know my family’s drinking and cooking water is safe and free from all contaminants.
Even if you are in tight living spaces and can filter and treat water, you should have some water stored. Some recommend at least seventy-two hours worth. That is about three gallons per person. I would suggest an absolute minimum of a week’s worth and optimally a month’s worth or more. That is between seven gallons per
person and thirty gallons per person. Even in tight spaces, this can be achieved with ten WaterBricks filled and placed under a bed. You can also line your car’s trunk area or place several in your basement or loft spaces. If room permits, 55- gallon food-grade drums will weigh almost 500 pounds when full but can provide water through even a prolonged disaster. Whatever is suitable for you, make sure you have a supply of personal water stored for you and your family.
CONCLUSION
Droughts and floods are a timeless problem. In times past, whole societies were forced to move where the water flowed. Today, we aren’t so nimble. When the rains stop where once they flowed, or the rains start where once they rarely did, food production and manufacturing stop. People are forced from their homes. Even if this all occurs thousands of miles away from us, the impact on us locally is still felt. Water security is the cornerstone of good prepping. Even before you store food, you should make sure you have a means to collect, filter, and store water.
What do you think? What’s your water plan? Are you feeling the effects of water shortages?
As always, please stay safe out there. 
To understand the Colonial Pipeline attack, we have to go back to the beginning of 2020. While the connections haven’t been wholly charted out yet, the SolarWinds attack at the beginning of 2020 exposed 33,000 of their clients, 85% of which were government, to several months of surveillance, copying of files, and capturing of passwords. An infected system’s terminal might have been used to log in to another system not directly attacked through the SolarWinds Orion patch, and the login information may have been recorded. Countless systems could have been exposed and could be breached later. The SolarWinds hack was so extensive that it cannot be said with any certainty that systems throughout the United States and many other countries aren’t still being currently monitored. It was the most significant attack in history. The troves of data stolen and copied cannot even be fathomed.
You can’t dismiss an attack of this extent with a simple acknowledgment that you will pay a few more cents at the pump. There are far greater implications. We are engaged in a World War where the borders are ill-defined. While one nation might retaliate against another nation through sanctions or seizures of assets, even the United States’s ability to control or sanction cross-border transactions is potentially evaporating. Before, the US dollar influenced the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, system. That power has been eroded with cryptocurrencies and China’s introduction of their digital currency. In essence, America can’t stop or even slow the flow of international transactions as it could before. Sanctions are swiftly becoming all bark and no bite. We have moved from wars with nation-states to wars with people as nation-states in the global war on terror to where we are now– seeking to combat unknown, well-organized, and well-funded enemies with little to no means of inflicting punitive damage on the nations supporting these groups of bad actors. In this case, we so very rarely can even capture the criminals, let alone locate them.
Why does it matter to you and me? Even if you keep your money under your mattress, these attacks affect you daily. The most obvious way is increasing costs on the products of the industry attacked. In this case, fuel costs go up a little or a lot depending upon the length of the disruption. That impacts transportation costs on everything from leisure and business travel to the transport of goods. When the economy is struggling to regain its footing, this is another gut punch to the recovery efforts. Those dollars under your mattress buy less products that are increasingly less available. If you haven’t taken a look at City Prepping’s video on 
If you just heeded the call and became aware of your need to prep, you should commit and double down on your efforts with the intent of catching up to where you need to be to survive a prolonged grid-down event. If you have been prepping for a while, you need to align your preps to insulate yourself from the most prominent threats and build redundancy in your supplies. If you have a well, great, but make sure you also have the means to gather and filter water from other sources. Make sure you have a supply on hand. If the aquifer supplying your well is suddenly tapped from multiple sources to compensate for a failure in another system, and the levels drop below your water well depth, you are now the needy and desperate unless you take precautions now. If you live in the city or the country, it doesn’t matter when the food supply to the stores slows or stops. Local resources will be rapidly depleted. Well-known hunting and fishing spots will be over-exploited and depleted. The struggle for sustenance resources will be genuine.