Stress is a killer

In a crisis, with no food, hunger is your master. When you have a family to feed, that master grows some sharp, ugly fangs. The knowledge that your food won’t last until tomorrow morning will force you to prioritize everything you do around getting more, forcing you to make choices that range from less-than-ideal to wildly foolhardy.

Stress is a stone-cold killer. Nothing kills stress like having a plan in place, and feeling empowered to deal with whatever comes your way.

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Imagine you’ve had a chainsaw by the horns for the last several hours, as you race – carefully – to remove a fallen tree from your roof. More rainclouds are looming, and you want to get tarps over the damage as soon as you can. Your back is aching, and your limbs are jelly. The job is a calorie-burning holocaust. In this moment, just knowing there’s hot food on the horizon will completely change your outlook on life.

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Imagine knowing that the next time there’s an ice storm, you can be safe at home, helping an elderly neighbor or relative, rather than standing in a jammed checkout line at Wal-Mart, or getting ugly over the last can of beans on the shelf, all the while wondering if you can make it home without planting your car semi-permanently in a ditch.

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Imagine that instead of driving around in the dark with traumatized kids in the back seat, frantically searching for an open convenience store, you can bring your family together to prepare a candlelit feast, while your kids announce that this is “more fun than Thanksgiving.”

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An investment in stored food buys you time to adjust, and it pays a fat dividend of mental clarity on the day you need it most. The intangible, psychological benefits – the hope, and the morale boost – are far greater than the sum of the calories on your shelf.