A week or two; I live alone and try to not keep large amounts of food in the house.
Freeze dried food that I’ve read about prefers to be in temps of under 70 degrees and humidity of 15%. We have neither at the moment and often have temps above 70 degrees. We do NOT have a basement or other place to store a lot of food that we won’t be eating (hopefully ever). We do forget to rotate canned goods at times and end up having to toss them when they get way past their pull dates. We are moving toward buying things fresher and NOT storing things. We could probably last a week with the water and canned goods in our cupboard–fresh water is the most limiting factor in this household anyway. We DON’T stock up on water but just have bottled water on hand for my various meetings that I run.
I agree that water is the main thing. So I have 20,000 gallons in my back yard.
“Freeze dried food that I’ve read about prefers to be in temps of under 70 degrees and humidity of 15%”
That is exactly why it is Mylar-pouched and sealed into buckets so it can last a long time without any special precautions at ambient conditions within a range of temperatures.
we could design ovens out of mud/clay or do it the hawaiian way and bake things in a hole in the ground, covering that with vegetation to allow for succulent meats.
As for meat preservation, we could salt it for short-term preservation or make jerky for long-term.
Less than 2 weeks. We are retired and do our grocery shopping weekly.
We live on the water and crab all summer long so we would have crab meat if nothing else!
We bought a house in Oregon years ago. The house inspector came out of the crawl space style basement with a forlorn look on his face and said it had thousands of gallons of water. Flooding! Disaster! Haha, nope. The Mormon family who lived there before left their containers of water, but he did say their were dust rings where the canned goods had been! 
Unfortunately, should we have an “apocalypse” there won’t be much notice. The chance of a disaster that disrupts the food supply for more than a few day is only one or two percent a year. Of course, since most of us will live 70 years or more that makes such a disaster probable.
We haven’t had a Carrington Event since 1859, but there is about a one percent chance per year of having one. So we’re “due.” We haven’t had an earthquake strong enough to make the Mississippi River flow backwards since 1812, but at some point we will. There are just a lot of things that could disrupt the food supply.
About 10 days after Hurricane Katrina a cousin was driving in south Mississippi for some reason and was flagged down by some poor man who said he had not eaten in three days. He had no power and no phone service. All my cousin had to give him was some Nabs and a bottle of water. Obviously this man would have been better off if he had stockpiled a little food.
As a final note, stockpiling food out of fear of a future disaster is mere preparation. Rushing out and stockpiling food because of knowledge of some impending disaster is hoarding. Stockpiling food is an act of good citizenship; hoarding in the face of disaster is not.
We would last for awhile. Whittling down my pantry and freezer is something I’ve been working on for about 6 months. When I go to the store I try to avoid buying anything but fresh produce/milk. My husband counted 18 small cans of green chiles in my pantry. What the heck was I thinking buying all those? Can’t even remember what recipes I put them in but I’m thinking we are having enchiladas this week to get rid of some. I now go into the pantry/freezer to see what item I can grab and make something with. That’s why it was liver and onions for lunch today. That half cow I bought a year ago needs to go!!
Speaking of water… all that food is useless unless you have clean water to drink. How many gallons does a person need each day? How much if they’re cooking pasta? Hopeless to store it all.
Or if you do, some beefy guy with a gun will take it away from you. I plan of relying on the old idea that, “how well you get along with other people is what will keep you alive”. Does that make me a communist?
Can lake or river water be boiled with the expectation that it will (then) be potable?
How long can you live on extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and Nespresso coffee pods? That’s about all I have in my kitchen right now. Maybe a half an onion, a small heel of parmesean cheese and a couple of eggs.
Oh, and a case of really fine '95 Bordeaux that I put away for my daughter’s 21st birthday.
I have 4,000 bottles of vodka, don’t ask why, so what with trading some and drinking some I should be OK.
River water etc should definitely be boiled. If you have the means to cook/boil. Without electricity we’d be burning books at our house.
We have 5 jars of pickles, some rice, some fresh vegetables.
I’ve been meaning to dispose of all the expired foodstuffs in our pantry. Thank you for the reminder. In a disaster, I plan to bug out.
In most parts of the country lakes, ponds, and creeks are plentiful. I would guess one-third of my neighbors have swimming pools. You might have to use a few drops of bleach and/or boil it, but water won’t be a problem for most areas. In the event of most disasters there will be plenty of time to get some water just by turning on a tap, since there is enough water in the tower to last several days.
Beefy guys with guns who try to break in houses are likely to end up dead. However, you are absolutely correct that the ability to get along with and help neighbors will help keep one alive. Also, once people start to suffer from actual starvation they become so weak and apathetic that they lack the gumption to go out and take food by force. In Europe at the end of WWII there was actual famine, but very little use of force in the stealing of food.
Hi @nottelling – do let me know if you need another celebrant to really make it a party on her 21st!
We have a two week “real” supply started after the big floods hit this area. There is probably another three weeks supply in the pantry, though it would get a little odd. The best I could figure was to assess what kinds of risks we were likely to face where we’d shelter in place (for us, flood & blizzard) and then think about what we’d need for either one. Blizzard with no power is the hard one – while we have gas for cooking/heating, we’d soon get pretty cold since the furnace requires the fan to be on in order to have heat. Still working on that one, and might actually install the generator needed to support that, powered with our existing gas line.
In case of forest fires we’re booking it and leaving food behind.
Water filtration and purification tablets are relatively cheap and easy, and a major extension to the bottled water supply.
We also keep an extra bale of TP and paper towels, some cash, and we’re month ahead on medications. In the event of a major flood we could easily be cut off from access to drug stores and grocery stores, and if power is down, credit cards don’t work. Cash can be pretty handy at that point.
“Can lake or river water be boiled with the expectation that it will (then) be potable?”
Only if the river water does not contain chemical contaminants that cannot be removed by boiling. Boiling kills most biological pathogens.
We have about a week’s worth of food on hand. I suppose I could stretch it for about 2 weeks, if I needed to. A package of rice or quinoa goes a long way. I think we’d be eating grains, frozen veggies and cheese. And diet Coke.
When the whole east coast was without power I ate from my freezer and didn’t throw anything out. It always stayed refrigerator temperature at least. I wouldn’t last that long - we have very few canned goods, rarely eat pasta, or much bread. There’s meat in the freezer bought on sale, and too much cabbage and eggplant from the CSA currently. I could probably eke out two weeks. We have bottled water so we’d be okay there. And we could always drink wine, we have lots of that! Maybe three weeks with the wine. 
=))