"The Office" and long term food storage?

[Alison F]

The most recent episode of "The Office" has a funny scene about rotating food in an emergency stash.

 

For now, you can watch it on Hulu.com for free -- it's the very first scene in the episode.

 

[IthacaNancy]

Thanks Alison!  I'll make sure not to get sucked into setting a disaster timeline if anyone has cause to question me about storing staple foods! : )

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Thanks for sharing that clip, Alison.  It's good to see that The Office character featured here has the basic concepts of "store what you eat" and "stock rotation" figured out.  He needs to work on the community involvement thing though...and canned okra...oh no!

The fluid timeline thing really is a great insight on the part of the comic writers.  My experience has been that the disaster/collapse generally happens to be 2-3 years out from whenever "now" is.  Storing staples for a rainy day may turn out to be a wasted effort (no one would be happier than myself if it were so), but things truly are in transition now with the decline of easy-to-get fossil fuel and climate change.  Living more prudently, the way my grandparents did, makes sense to me given the uncertainty unfolding around us.

[Janice]

Hi Katie,

What does this mean? 

" My experience has been that the disaster/collapse generally happens to be 2-3 years out from whenever "now" is."

Thanks!

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

When you read/hear about looming disasters from "people in the know," they often peg the fallout date as being 2-3 years out from whenever they write/talk about it.  Not sure why that is, but it is a recurring theme I've noticed over the past decade.  It seems to me that shifting away from the systemic woes of our unsustainable cultural norms on an individual basis doesn't require a date or even a time line to justify it;  it's just a transition we need to make for our children's and the planet's well being. 

Maybe it's human nature to ask:  How much time do we have left?  And human nature to try to answer that.  But I think the more important question is:  Okay, this current lifestyle isn't working for us or the planet in the long run, what should I do instead...and how?