My MRE's are from official Army Surplus, as are several of my items, but I couldn't find any online to use for reference on a short search.

The simple remedy here is to go to any number of REAL surplus stores and buy the 12-packs.

Believe it or not, civilians can walk right into any Military Surplus store (most are actual Army or Navy surplus here in California) and buy them for ~$50-$80 a case of 12 or roughly ~$7 each.

I will concur though that a lot of those seen on the Internet (Amazon for example) are simply civilian knock-offs.

Good call... I should have pulled out one of my MRE's in the first place:

MRE XXIX 09 - Made March 5, 2013 - Beef Stew
http://beprepared.com/mre-meal...

Anything but those disgusting Chicken Ala King and Tuna Noodles ones.... blah... Still cringe thinking about those.

Anything beyond a week is excessive imo.

Suggesting dried fruit, pasta sauce and oatmeal is outright shortsighted. How often are you going to replace those to keep them fresh?
Dried Fruit is 6 months: http://www.eatbydate.com/fruit...
Pasta Sauce (depending on preservatives) is 1-2 years
Oatmeal is 2-3 years: http://www.eatbydate.com/grain...

MRE's are 20-25 years! Seems like a better ROI to me...

If you include the pre-existing foods in freezers (which will stay for 48-hours), foods in the fridge (which will stay for 24-hours) and foods in the cupboard (which will stay for months) one can easily survive comfortably for two weeks or more.

Okay troll... Obviously you didn't think about the pre-existing food in the freezer and fridge... In total, that gives me about a week. If I need anything more, which is unlikely, I'll go hunting! Something most people, including yourself included couldn't conceive of doing.

@Anonymous

I refuse to use Alcohol based products... they are horrible at heating food and Alcohol in the USA is completely unregulated, which means it may have a toxicity level that one would rather not want to worry about.

@Stoploss

And my flashlights are not... I actually have two others with the hand-crank on them, but their candlepower sucks!

While I have invested some time and money into a preparedness kit, I do not feel adding Li-On batteries for flashlights and radio are as beneficial as just having something with solar or generation capable abilities.

I'll be honest, as a resident of a very earthquake prone area of California I have at times forgotten about being prepared. However, there is no excuse for it. For me, I have set aside a small area in a closet with a rubbermaid container with the following set up for my family of 4:

1 Case of 36 water bottles (changed out annually)
1 Box of water purification tablets
16 Freeze Dried "MRE" foods (20yr shelf life)
1 Coleman propane stove
2M HAM Radio + spare Li-Ion Battery & Solar Charger for talking with family
AM/FM 2xAA Battery radio + Solar AA Charger
2 Flashlights w/ AA Rechargeable Batteries

The problem I have is that IE11+ is such a PITA and it is difficult to get working with various Enterprise Java applications without disabling Protected Mode and completely unsecuring it or setting custom registry keys/policies. EMC Unisphere, various Cisco apps like UCSM and Fabric Manager... Even several recent Oracle tools just gag on IE11+ without spending hours configuring it to work every time you launch it.

Well, all the more reason to dump it altogether.

Just not necessarily within 35 years:

""Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history." Hawking writes. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Agreed, gave him one of my mod points hehe.

Checked the article myself, it lines up with what AC is saying.

Note that they reassess the property tax if you refinance your loan though. Mine went up $520/yr after refinancing during the 2008-9 crash.

Correction, Carbon Monoxide and water... Typo.

If you look up the properties of Formic Acid on any Chemistry site and review its compounds and decomposition state you'll see that it dissipates, breaks down, decomposes into Carbon Dioxide and Water.

Actually, here is a link to wikipedia that is actually correct in statement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Otherwise, here is my source:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...

See the main paragraph below the introduction in the scanned image.

Why would you want to convert Carbon Dioxide into Carbon Monoxide?

If not used immediately, Formic acid decomposes into carbon monoxide and water when exposed to air and heat. I wouldn't exactly call this a "game changer" unless the target of it all is to give everyone A) a lot of toilet bowl cleaner for cheap or B) a silent death.

Solar pricing is a monopoly.

Green Building Programs that offer incentives (http://www.dsireusa.org/) are in decline year-over-year due to reduced cost of panels, yet no increase in efficiency is offered on those panels in the same timeframe (2009-2014) AND price/W has nearly stagnated over the past 4 years:

2009 median installed price of PV systems installed was $6.10/W for residential and small commercial systems smaller than 10 kW
2011-13 median installed price of PV systems installed was $5.30/W for residential and small commercial systems smaller than 10 kW

http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/f...
http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/f...