If the trucks stopped rolling tomorrow, the shelves at your grocery store would start thinning out in a day or two. Your tap water would start running dry in two to four weeks, because the chemicals that make it safe to drink show up on a truck every week or two.
Hold onto that second number. It's the one that makes all this 30-day talk make sense, and it's why the Pentagon is planning for 90.
Here's what's actually going on. Dan Bongino told his podcast listeners Monday to get 30 days of food, water and batteries, and he said the warnings came from the UK. Britain's new Be Ready campaign, which launched October 22, really asks for 72 hours. That works out to 9 liters of water per person plus canned food, cash and a wind-up radio.
The 90 is the Pentagon. Under a program called FORTRESS, every major military base in the lower 48 is supposed to be able to run on its own for at least 90 days, with its own power, fuel and water. Bongino brought it up himself. The Pentagon is building Fortress America, he said, so you build Fortress My House.
So what's everyone preparing for? Nobody's naming a date. But Britain's defence secretary wrote that his country has a little over 1,000 days to be ready to fight, and the Pentagon's planners are working off the assumption that a big war takes out the civilian power grid and breaks global supply chains.
That's where the trucking numbers come back in. The American Trucking Associations ran a version of this scenario years ago. The grocery store goes first because stores keep almost nothing in the back room. The water goes later because treatment plants only get chemical deliveries every 7 to 14 days. A 30-day stash basically gets your family past the point where the tap gets sketchy.
Now do the water math. FEMA says plan on a gallon per person per day. A family of four for 30 days needs 120 gallons, which weighs about 1,000 pounds. Picture half a ton of water stacked in a one-bedroom apartment. The 90-day version the bases are planning for comes to a ton and a half.
That's a big part of why governments keep asking for 72 hours. Britain reportedly held off on a campaign like this because officials worried it would scare people, and three days of supplies fits in a hall closet.
Nobody's building your apartment a microgrid, so whatever cushion you want past 3 days, you're the one hauling it up the stairs.
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