[.ca] Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook (ISBN 1882723252)

From Amazon.com:
Never mind all the year 2000-type scare scenarios. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine what would happen if you became ill and couldn't work, or if an earthquake or hurricane or bomb left your community devastated. It happens all the time. When unexpected disasters happen, people who are even a little prepared are much better off than those who have taken their dependence on outside resources for granted. When you imagine the security of not having to worry about going to the store for even a few weeks, a comprehensive storage system begins to make sense. James Talmage Stevens's Making the Best of Basics, now in its 10th edition, is one of the best-known preparedness bibles around. Stevens lays out a yearlong storage program of 15 food and nonfood categories, six of which (water, wheat and grains, dairy products, sweeteners, "cooking catalysts" like salt and oil, and sprouting seeds) are capable of sustaining life indefinitely in a no-frills diet. The other 9 categories are designated "Building Blocks," and improve upon the basic diet and support a more routine, less Spartan existence while relying on stored supplies. (Some of them, such as medical supplies and fuel, will seem as essential to some readers as the first six.) The book's main messages--store what you eat, eat what you store, use it or lose it--are at the core of its calm advice and simple, nutritious recipes. The 10th edition has been updated with a yellow pages section that lists current preparedness resources throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Web resources.

Will help you prepare for emergencies...:
The publisher, Gold Leaf Press Says: Basics has sold over 350,000 copies. Concerns about the Year 2000 computer bug, unexpected job loss, volatile financial markets, and natural disasters such as severe storms have made home storage and preparedness a current topic all across the country. Making the Best of Basics has been the home storage and preparedness bible for a generation of readers. With over 350,000 copies sold, Basics is the most comprehensive single volume available on in-home storage. Making the Best of Basics has been updated for the '90s and offers the average family a manageable and effective plan to enable them to live on resources in their own home in a near-normal manner for up to a year. Basics includes chapters on storing and using (including 200 recipes) everything from water, wheat, and dried fruits and vegetables to vitamin supplements to maintain your family's health and emergency sources of fuel and energy. Basics is an excellent and proven source you can use to prepare for an uncertain future.

WARNING WARNING WARNING!:
This book is helpful in many ways, but DO NOT use his numbers for the amount of food to store per person, unless you are feeding a professional football player in training. He mixed up the USDA recommmended amounts for the average family of 2.3 people, and used that figure for one person.. WE actually figured it out, and you would have to eat something like 10,000 calories per day to eat those amounts. Look at it carefully. How many people use 10 gallons of oil per person per year?

More food prep oriented than emergency:
This book has some useful information but it doesn't fit the bill as an emergency book because much of it includes things like recipes which you cook in an 350 degree oven - which you may not have in a true emergency. Also, there are a lot of charts that look good but really don't help that much. 9 pages on the use of honey seems a bit much too. Resource section lists lots of resources but closer examination shows that many aren't geared to individuals or only carry one item for emergency use.

MAYBE I'LL HAVE TIME AT Y3K:
i WAS HOPING THAT I WOULD HAVE TIME TO READ THIS IN MORE DETAIL WHEN THE Y2K BUG WAS SUPPOSSED TO BITE. Since it didn't ,I have not had the time to get deeper into this book. I like it though and maybe when the children are grown I will try some of those recipes for bread.The storage info. is neat. I always wondered how the old-timers did that stuff !

An Excellent Starting Point:
Okay, Y2K came and went and civilization is still here. (Why? *Preparedness.* If we hadn't spent those billions of dollars getting ready, it would have been bad. Real bad.) But earthquakes, floods, economic dislocation, and other bad things are still real, still very much with us, and could happen at any time. As this book says, "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it!" This book is a real help in getting your own personal preparedness program going. Maybe you'd like a year's worth of food in storage. Or maybe you'd just like to be a little more comfortable this winter when a snowstorm knocks out the power and keeps you away from the grocery store for three days. Those extremes, and anywhere in between, are addressed in this book. Some people say this books uses "scare tactics." Well, the world is a scary place. We've managed, at least in the industrialized nations, to take a lot of the scary out of it - but remember those petrol strikes in the UK last year? Another few days and the stores would have been empty. It can happen anywhere, any time. What's the harm in being ready for it? Then when it doesn't happen, you've just got some extra resources. But when it does - and eventually it will - you'll be very glad you read this book.