Food for thought: The variable value of our preps.

[Lightspeed]

At start of this heating season our stock of coal ( estimated on the basis of subsistence cooking and a little heating ) stood at just short of 4 years-worth . A good prep or so I thought.

But the reality is that this is heating fuel, and gets eaten into pretty quickly once we’re into the heating season. By Christmas that reserve was down to half of its start of season value. More was ordered and delivered bring us back to the start of season stock level.

Our heating season can extend well into May, and normal usage will see the fallback reserve dropping to 16 months worth. If we have abnormally severe weather, this figure will reduce to just 6 month’s worth.

If a supply chain issue had stopped the top-up delivery we’d have been lucky to get right through the season.

This has gotten me thinking. My belief is that a catastrophic, long term fuel supply chain problem is unlikely. So, at first if there was a slowing down, I’m pretty sure that we’d go on consuming from our perceived large stock at the same rate as normal on the assumption that things would get back to normal before things became critical for us. After all who wants to live in a cold house when the means to keep toasty is both immediately at hand and already paid for? It would be some time before we’d realise it would be a long term disruption to supply. What appears to be a healthy 4 year stock, in probability, would have been eroded to around a quarter of its original value before hard truth stared us in the face.

It’s the same with all daily consumables. Water, bottled gas, vehicle fuel , rice, potatoes rotating tinned goods etc.

Food for thought: Unless a prep is set aside, isolated from main stores, its value should be considered dynamic, and probably best assesse at only a percentage of what we were expecting from it. This is even more the case if the prep in question is prone to spoilage with time.