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It has been some time since I have heard anyone in GC or in church talk about this. Is this no longer important?

Wisdom Seeker wrote:It has been some time since I have heard anyone in GC or in church talk about this. Is this no longer important?

It is discussed in my ward. Or aspects of preparedness are discussed, usually along with counsel to stay out of debt and things like that. I think it is good advice.

Mattie wrote:

Wisdom Seeker wrote:It has been some time since I have heard anyone in GC or in church talk about this. Is this no longer important?

It is discussed in my ward. Or aspects of preparedness are discussed, usually along with counsel to stay out of debt and things like that. I think it is good advice.

I can remember back in the early seventies that TBMs around me would talk about food stocks and the thought that if you didn't already have your supply, it might be too late.

How many times have those same people had to dump their aging stores and restock?

Now that Packer has confirmed that we'll all be having grandkids and great-grandkids, I guess food storage isn't so important.

I remember my mom talking about a two year supply when I was a kid in the '70's. She was always trying to put food away for her two year supply. My dad was a jack-Mormon. He thought it was all BS. Mom blamed him for not having her two year supply. She just knew there would be a time when we would be without.

We never went without. It's funny how this all seemed to coincide with the cold-war.

It was during the last push for a years supply of food in two 2004 GC talks that I met up with a woman in my ward who was shopping at Costco picking up two flatbed carts full of food. I am just surprised that this is no longer emphasized.

I guess the danger of physical starvation is no longer an important issue. The important issue of this era is.......

Wisdom Seeker wrote:I guess the danger of physical starvation is no longer an important issue. The important issue of this era is.......

Gardening.

Seriously.

Actually, this is something that is discussed every Sunday in my ward Relief Society. We have a woman whose entire calling is finding the best deals. Speaking from personal experience, I think there's something to the idea of having more than a week's supply of food in the house. There's been times when I've been snowed in for a week or more, and there would have been a lot more panic had we not had access to the pantry and the bathroom closet.

harmony wrote:

Wisdom Seeker wrote:I guess the danger of physical starvation is no longer an important issue. The important issue of this era is.......

Gardening.

Seriously.

Actually, this is something that is discussed every Sunday in my ward Relief Society. We have a woman whose entire calling is finding the best deals. Speaking from personal experience, I think there's something to the idea of having more than a week's supply of food in the house. There's been times when I've been snowed in for a week or more, and there would have been a lot more panic had we not had access to the pantry and the bathroom closet.

Keeping a large enough stock in your larder to tide you through possible repeats of known climatic emergencies in the region where you live is obvious good sense. Anyone who needs a religious leader to tell them to do that seems a bit lacking in the upstairs department.

Keeping a large enough stock in your larder to tide you through a completely imaginary End Time lasting a year or more is obvious nonsense, and likely to lead to a significant waste of food and money unless you invest a lot of time and energy in making sure you keep your stock rotated by eating all the oldest stuff and renewing the supply in tranches.

But paradoxically, wasting resources doing pointless things because their religion tells them to is one of the things that keep people believing in their religion - there is evidently a strong psychological mechanism that makes us reluctant to conclude that we have been doing something that is simply a waste of time and effort. The more time and effort we have wasted, the more disbelief is kept at bay.

That is perhaps why religious leaders often tell their followers to do weird things.

Stockpiling food now seems to be the specialty of Extreme Couponers.

Chap wrote:
Keeping a large enough stock in your larder to tide you through a completely imaginary End Time lasting a year or more is obvious nonsense, and likely to lead to a significant waste of food and money unless you invest a lot of time and energy in making sure you keep your stock rotated by eating all the oldest stuff and renewing the supply in tranches.

Because of this OP I've been thinking about how large a task that would be.

Say one has a moderate sized family of five people. How much food would you have to store to get you and yours through a year?

I'm guessing one would have to have hundreds of pounds of flour, sugar, dried beans, dried fruit, canned goods (veggies, canned milk, etc.).

I'm also guessing that water supplies would be required to drink and to process all those dried items. Estimating a gallon per day per person that comes out to close to 2,000 gallons.

The storage space alone is daunting.

What disaster were they expecting?