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You’re not entirely without options if you plan on social distancing yourself in the woods and want to pack some just-in-case grub. We’ve rounded up four solid MRE and survival-food options that you can buy with just a few clicks.
This 1.6-ounce Mountain House freeze-dried food pouch meal allegedly keeps for 30 years and is simple to make: you pour boiling water into a Mountain House pouch, stir, and let the food stand for 10 minutes before enjoying. Mountain House meals are known for being tasty and flavorful—for freeze-dried food anyway.
Listen, you don’t buy MREs for the taste, so don’t order a box expecting James Beard Award-winning grub. You buy MREs for the long shelf life and the high calorie count. This box contains classic military-surplus MREs. Each meal is about 1250 calories and will keep for from five to seven years. Western Frontier randomly fills boxes with different meal options from five different cuisine types: Asian, Mexican, Italian, traditional, and vegetarian. If you’re truly hungry, nothing will taste better.
At 20 calories each, Survival Tabs won’t fill your stomach or curb hunger pains, but they do contain 100 percent of 15 essential vitamins and minerals, to keep your blood sugar up and your mind sharp in emergencies. They also require no prep—just pop a tab in your mouth as needed—and a dozen or two will take up no space in the bottom of your pack. Perhaps best of all, the tabs purportedly have a 25-year shelf life, so you can stash and forget about them until stuff hits the fan.
This 120-serving container of freeze-dried fruit from ReadyWise is a perfect complement to other rations you already have stocked. (It’s tough sledding surviving off Mountain House alone, after all.) The 6-pound, 20-year-shelf-life bucket includes four pouches of bananas, two pouches of peaches, four pouches of strawberries, and five pouches of apples. Each pouch contains eight servings worth of food.