but that may not include grazing.

Someone else can look up how fast pigs grow and how many litters a sow can have in one year. Whatever the answers, hogs have been a staple in Olde Europe because of their ability to thrive on little land and they are omnivores.

Does a mature hog have at least 100 pounds of sausage in it? If so, one should last a few days in that crowd. A week if they get a taste for organ meats and scrapple. Bacon we know they like, but curing it might be tricky.

If they can break into everything from local delis to Wal-Mart and Target, canned goods can last for a good 10 years with only minor degradation in taste or texture. Maybe not all of them that long, but if the zombie apocalypse lasts that long, they have other problems.

50 people? At 4 people per acre, that's around 10 acres-- less if they can scrounge enough canned stuff. That's Spinach, kale, yams, and other high density, high nutrition vegetables that can be grown and canned.

Stored gasoline lasts about year. Better start thinking about alternatives unless enough drilling and refinery people survive.

Remember, it's a TV show, and if there are no good answers the writers will make some up.

Also, zombies are too wise to touch them. They might go for the RC cola though.

I hate coconut. Not the taste, consistency.

..... that most canned foods will last at least 6 years and probably longer. Things like dried pasta will also last a very long time. FWIW.

didn't realize it was 6+ years. Hopefully, most of the zombies will have deteriorated by that time.

thanks

grains might go bad before other things and the storage areas take up a lot of room. And they attract rodents (which, of course, could be eaten). Of course, some of that stored grain could make whiskey before it goes bad.

And where do you grow the grains in the first place?

Canned and boxed oatmeal might last, along with boxed cereal if you have decent storage.

fruit trees and bushes, but the grain thing is a problem. So just wondering if growing grain was part of that.

I would think their acreage is very limited.

but, in any sort of secure location, it seems it would be difficult to survive for a lengthy period of time.

The prison did have some grounds/outdoors area where they did try to raise pigs and grow some vegetables. However, I'm guessing that it was not nearly enough to feed the people they had there at the time over the long term (before they started dying off from swine flu and other various reasons.)

full of protein, iron and fiber. Rick and the gang should definitely look into Kudzu, dandelions and greens.

it's going places.

Shit, without people beating that stuff back I'm surprised zombies are even able to walk around.

And if you can hunt down some bamboo, in about a year or so, a wall of sticks 100 feet wide to cross.

I've tried to cross a field completely covered in kudzu and believe me, it was damn near impossible.

they keep the hot spent fuel there and it has to keep the cold water running. I think they would melt down. Or else they would be the safest place to be.

In just about every long term zombie story, the meltdowns of all the plants cause a huge issue with tansportation. Some add the fun of radioactive zombies that are superfast and strong, but just about every zombie world has to dela with this.

Was part of the book Day by Day Armageddon.

now that would make a good story

on The Walking Dead - if there are any nuke plants in Virginia, South or North Carolina along the route.

you'd have eggs and they could eat bugs

New-on-shelf batters will maybe still able to be recharged if you can find a manual transmission car to push-start (or a solar charger), but the batteries sitting in vehicles won't last more than a couple of months before the electronics (even in standby) wear the battery down.

I don't think the gasoline will be useable as a motor fuel for modern vehicles after a couple of years; the filters and fuel injectors will probably gum up. Older vehicles with carburetors might fare a little better... but then again, maybe not.

Diesels can be run on vegetable oils, so even if you can't find diesel, you can burn corn oil or whatever, assuming the temperature doesn't get too low. And you can also burn home-heating oil; it's the same as diesel, only it's not taxed as a motor fuel.

Dry food will last for years... beans and rice and pasta and nuts, even chips and pretzels and taco shells. Canned will last for a couple of years, probably more, but you run the risk of that anaerobic bacteria causes botulism that will quickly kill you.

Farming would be hard; you need to work fields for a long period of time before being able to harvest your food. That is a huge investment in time and energy, and what do you eat before the harvest ripens? And how do you store the food? How many people know how to can anymore? Where do you find canning supplies? How about pressure cookers? How do you make jerky and sausage and hard cheeses and smoked meats?

The farming question also gets vastly more complicated because most people in the country aren't farmers anymore. There are some hobby gardeners, flowers and vegetables and such, but virtually nobody does subsistence farming. It's agribusiness, growing acres of a single cash crop. Pretty much everybody gets the vast bulk of their food from a store.

And the farm machinery... how do you use it? When do you use it? If you screw up, you need to wait another year before you can try again. Where do you get the inputs... the seed and fertilizer and pesticides and herbicides that currently allow one farmer to feed a hundred people?

And how do you keep your crop from being destroyed by animals, raiders, zombie herds, etc?


We'd probably go back to herding. Let the animals find their food and turn it into meat, then we harvest the meat. Feed pigs things we can't eat, then eat the pigs later on. Let the cows and goats and sheep eat the grass, then we eat the cows and goats and sheep. Feral hogs are a problem in many states, so hunting those might be a self-sustaining source of food. Those animals can weigh 300 pounds; that's a lot of meat. One hog that size a day could feed every at the prison.

Things will have to stabilize before farming can make a comeback. With the population so scattered and vulnerable, with the nation still struggling to stabilize, with local groups of widely variable types of people in conflict over resources, organized farming will take a while to become predominant again. It would seem to be that hunting wild game, ranching, grazing, scavenging, and gathering will be the primary source of calories for perhaps a decade.

This won't be helped by the coming population boom. With birth control running out, a lack of Plan B or abortion services and a genetic inability to stop having sex, there are going to be a lot of kids born once people begin settling down. Fortunately, they'll be old enough to start helping out on the farm at about the time the canned food starts going bad. The ones that survive the lack of antibiotics, vaccinations, and other medical care, that is.

on other subjects.

if this were Facebook, I would "Like" your post

The death rate will hop up and and take a lot of those kids, and women in childbirth, just as it used to.

Around here, a lot of people know how to farm. Learning how to can and make cheese and so forth is not rocket science.

Gas stations need power to get the fuel pumped, so there may be not enough gas quickly.

Can goods can last for years or just a year or two, it depends on what they are.

This book, How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, claims one can feed a family of 4 on less a 1/2 acre.

so, 100 people would only need 25 acres according to this book - if they plant the right fruits & veggies. Even doubling the acreage needed to 50 is still not terrible.

Of course, if you have people who were used to pizza, McDonald's, ice cream, etc, they might get tired of a diet of fruits, nuts and berries after a while...but, if you need to do that to survive, then you do it.

This is where being a truck driver would come in real handy!

I have thought about this scenario for years, just not the Zombie Apocalypse - rather something on the order of "The Stand" or similar situation where the majority of humanity is wiped out.

So.....Where's the food and how long will it last?

Most major and even smaller cities have a cold storage wharehouse, so as long as the power is still on, there will be plenty of food there. Edit to add that even if the power is out, a cold storage facility will stay cold for quite a while, as they are basically a giant ice chest. But sooner or later they will warm up and what's inside will start to spoil, so time is of the essence!

Reefer trailers need Deisel, and as a poster above pointed out, at some point most petroleum fuels will be useless, but I think if one is clever, that won't be for quite a few years. So a collection of reefer trailers and a few thousand gallons of deisel will keep your frozen foods good for quite a while.

After that, you would need to use refrigerated shipping containers. These are good because they are not equipped with a deisel engine, rather just the reefer unit itself and get power from an external electric generator. When they are rolling down the road, this unit is typically mounted underneath the container chassis and a cable is run to plug into the fridge unit. (When they are on a ship, they plug into the ships generator system)

So if one could set up a renewable electric source, you could use the containers for quite an extended period of time.

Again, that's where being a truck driver, or at least knowing one, will come in handy. I know where all this stuff is! The other thing you need is a way to off load the containers and stack them up. You could make your own somewhat safe compound out of containers but just stacking them 3 or 4 high.

Then you just hope no one knows how to operate a fire departments hook and ladder or just shows up with a bulldozer!

where you can catch fish. And chickens might be a better animal to breed than pigs. I believe you are right about the gas. After a couple years, you can forget about it. Those with solar power systems could would be better off.

There'll be plenty of meat all winter. Zombie meat isn't bad. But you gotta cook it right.

if it withstands nuclear explosions, it will withstand zombies.