Why and How to Prep Calmly

Thursday night I went to Costco in DC and stocked on three weeks of supplies. No one else was preparing for a potential COVID-19 quarantine. Was I the weirdo? Maybe. Here's why and how to Prep Calmly—it costs effectively $0 to eliminate risk by sticking to a reasonable calorie and supply count.

The why behind prepping is clear when the danger is imminent—but if there's a small chance of danger, you may feel over-reactionary. The math just makes sense, though. If you plan out what you will need for a few-week period of being self-sufficient and purchase the right things, your bill will come out to ~$200–400 per person. If you end up needing the supplies, then that is money very well spent. If you don't need the supplies, then you will still eat all of that food and use those supplies. Your grocery bills will be lower each week, and it will be a wash. In other words, except for the upfront "loss in liquidity," you minimize all downside risk for free.

Would you have the same outcome if you are prepping in a panic? Probably not. The shelves will be nearly empty, what is left will be flying off the shelves, and everyone around you will be in a frenzy and stir you into one as well. You may not have had the time to rationally plan out what you need and how to optimize for secondary let alone primary needs. If you prep when no one else is, you can keep your wits about you and make good decisions.

My recommendation for how to Prep Calmly is to purchase supplies that will be enough food with the right macro nutrients to last three weeks comfortably and up to four with a stretch, as well as any accompanying medicines and hygiene products.

You can calculate your own calorie, macronutrient, and other food needs pretty simply. For a comfortable 3-week scenario, I assumed my wife and I would need 5,000 calories per day (we would actually need less), so for a 20-day period, that's 100,000 calories. A good macro-nutrient breakdown is somewhere in the realm of 25% protein, 30% fats, and 45% carbohydrates. At calories per gram ratios of 4, 9, and 4, respectively, that amounts to needing 6,250g of protein, 3,334g of fats, and 11,250g of carbohydrates. Outside of these requirements, I assumed we would need some types of fruits and vegetables for vitamins and minerals, and flavorful easy-prep meals, sauces, and sweeteners to stay sane.

For protein sources, consider canned tuna, sardines, anchovies, spam, chicken, and beans, as well as beef jerky and protein powder. Pick and choose what you like and based on how much you're willing to spend—tuna is economical, but canned chicken even more so. For your carbs, a single, large bag of flour or rice goes along way—one 25lb bag of flour at Costco is $6.69 and has about 41,000 calories. I recommend getting a single staple in a large quantity like that, and then supplementing with oats, pasta, rice/flour, etc. You will then want dried fruit and canned vegetables, which will provide needed vitamins and minerals and also add some carbs to the mix (though sugars, mostly). If you get enough protein and carbs from "whole" foods, you are likely good on fats, since most foods that have protein have fats, and some with carbs also have fats (oats, e.g., have a ratio of 5-3-27 protein to fats to carbs). For fats and just generally, be sure to also buy plenty of nut butter (if no allergies) and some evaporated or powdered milk.

To calculate how you're hitting your macro-nutrient goals, take as an example hitting 6,250g of protein based on a single item, tuna. A can of tuna has 42g protein, 1.5g fats, and 0g carbs. You would need 148 cans of tuna to meet 6,250g, and since Costco sold packs of 8 cans, that's about 19 packs. At $15.99 each, that's $300 to have your protein solely from tuna. Luckily, you get protein from other more economical sources such as beans, lentils, nut butters, grains, and so on. While I calculated certain staple items' macro-nutrients, I didn't calculate every single thing I picked off the shelf in a spreadsheet as I went. I would imagine I got close to 1/2 to 2/3 of the protein target, around the same for fats, and 120,000 calories overall (with 41,000 from flour alone). We will be more than fine for three weeks, in other words.

I did not include water as a requirement since this Costco run was for an isolation scenario where we should still have running water, but I believe the requirements are 1 gallon/person per day. 20 days for two people would thus be 40 gallons.

Medicines and hygiene are largely personal, so make sure to get the things unique to your needs to last three weeks. Plenty of items are universal, though—toilet paper, toothpaste, feminine products, soap, and so on. If you know the event you are preparing for might need certain types of medicine—say, to address flu-like symptoms known to COVID-19—then you should buy things like cough suppressant, cough drops, fever reducer, decongestant, expectorant, sterilization products like rubbing alcohol or Purell (if there's any left), and so on. The whole point of prepping calmly, though, is to buy only what you might need for the anticipated timeframe. You don't need a toilet paper roll per person per day, for example. An additional option—purchase a bidet hose for $25 off Amazon. This would make toilet paper supplies stretch much further in a pinch.

Am I missing something? Probably. Will I be completely wrong about the risk of quarantine? No. The reality is that there is a risk, whether or not it happens. If it happens, we can live very comfortably for three to four weeks, uncomfortably for five to six weeks, and ultimately survive up to eight weeks. If it doesn't happen? Then we can eat this food and use these supplies gradually, effectively leading to $0 spent to minimize the downside from the risk of quarantine.