Sampling of BOB Food

eBay always has them.

Another option is to Google for sources of Wise Food Company's buckets of meals, which are packaged rather like the Mountain House camping meals. I know several families that each have a least a year's worth of these things stored up, claiming they have a 25+ year shelf life when kept in the sealed buckets in the cool dark basement (a claim which I haven't double checked yet). One bucket will store 120 meals. But the buckets have more of a rectangular footprint so they store better than 5 gallon buckets and waste less space. I've not yet had an opportunity to sample them so I can't speak to their quality or nutritional value.

 

There will be very few living vegans/vegetarians after a massive TEOTWAWKI/SHTF scenario. Consider what one crop failure will do to a person unable or unwilling to eat meat. One year may not be the end of it, but two, or three years. You may want to reconsider your definition of "sustainable". Small livestock like chickens, ducks, rabbits, even sheep, goats, or pigs are highly sustainable, provide hundreds of pounds of consumable products annually, serve more than one purpose in every single case, and give a protein "cushion" to fall back on when your vegetables and fruits are killed by drought, floods, hail storms, excessvely cool temperatures, excessively high temperatures, vermin, insects, etc.

Veganism and its various flavors are an artifact of our current modern society. When that society and all of the mechanisms that support it are gone, vegans and vegetarians will be too. Just saying.

 

Long term, it's harder to get all the nutrients you need on an all-veggie diet. Doable, but you must know what you are doing.
Man is an OMNIVORE - we are designed to eat a wide variety of foods. Though certain medical conditions and alergies can definitely restrict that!
I expect there will be times after SHTF day that I will be glad for a simple can of beans.... but any squirrel or bird within sight will be in peril of it's life!
The UN has been developing MRE-type emergency foods for people of cultures who don't eat meat. Maybe look into what they are and consist of, and do your own similarly? Of course, the average American will want a lot more calories than a starving Somali refugee......

 

Well like I said, I'm not a vegan. I have chickens and I do eat their eggs. I have numerous local friends with a continual surplus of roosters. When it's time to get my poultry flock into a self-sustaining population, it won't be hard to do. And I'll be eating fish, too.

But every Billy Bob out there is going to decimate the deer population, and then start picking off big livestock, when things get desperate. Who among them is going to come up close to my home for a shot at Swiss chard or bush beans?

True vegans have serious challenges in meeting their nutritional requirements. Since I've made the change, my physician has been doing regular blood panels and following my progress. My blood work was a bit of a mess on a typical North American meat-heavy omnivore diet. Having moved to a diverse plant-based diet, augmented regularly with eggs & cheese, my health has improved in measurable dramatic ways. It's been like turning back the clock on aging.

As for having a crop fail, I'm not too worried. Other crops are harvested throughout the year. It's not like I'm planning on living on just corn or something.

Having been driven once before to utter desperation & hardship, I found plenty of forage all around that my neighbors never would have thought of as food. I may have slept in the cold during that time but my belly was never empty.

 

I agree about the bubbas in the deer woods. The game will be GONE within a couple weeks. I am on the edge of the local National Forest, and poaching is already a problem.
East of town, the cattle ranches will be hard hit by the Golden Horde too.
My mother long ago introduced us to the concept of 'Dandelion Salad' and Sassafras Tea.
My father has fruit trees, grapes, tomatoes, beans and peppers. If things get really bad, I could bunker down at their place - but it's right on the edge of town - no security from The Hoard at all.
I am quite close to a major lake with good fishing - though at the moment water levels are WAY down in our area - major drought cycle. Smaller and closer fishing spots are all dried up.

 

Emergency essentials sells Provident Pantry brand along with Mountain house. I use my MH to flavor rice, noodles and oats that all store long term. It will break up the monotony of just rice and beans, and will hold us through the winter or until the first crop comes up.

The provident pantry powered milk is amazingly good, I have a finicky family, and I replaced a gallon jug of milk with the powdered stuff from EE and they couldn't tell the difference. A bit sweeter, but minor difference and very doable.

I happen to like the storage life and weight savings of dehydrated/Freeze dried, but for meals on the run the MRE can't be beat. Todays MRE is far better than the crap we ate in the 80's, but far from considered "good eats".

 

For the consideration of BOB use - simply getting to a place of safety, we an eat foods we wouldn't normally like. I can tolerate a lot for two or three days.
Trying a couple flavors of Wal-Mart's "Coleman" camping food packets now - they dropped the MH packets I am accustomed to and like.