(Organic Prepper)—I love my stockpile! I also like to reflect on it periodically. I value the time I spend seeking out new information on sites like the OP. It makes me a better prepper. For this reason, my stockpile has changed and evolved over time as my knowledge has improved.
This month, I decided to take a close look at my stockpile from the perspective of my top priorities. I thought I would give folks a “peek” into how I’m thinking about my preparations for SHTF at this time. I’m hoping that you will find some “food for thought” in terms of your own priorities and possible weaknesses. In this article, I share three of my top priorities for my stockpile. As my stockpile is large and mighty, look for future articles on other priorities.
Priority #1: Avoid Limited Shelf Life
How well do you know your preps and how long they will last? Yeah, I’m willing to admit that there was a time when I thought that stockpiling bleach was a great idea. Since then, I’ve streamlined my thinking and my preps: I have limited space, and it is a top priority to avoid all preps with a limited shelf life.
Doing the research for this article, I did still see websites recommending putting away bleach. Now, if you have soooo much space, perhaps you could store bleach….but it will not be worth much in a year. According to the Clorox website (and I’m imagining they might know a thing or two about bleach!): “After a year, the natural breakdown of the sodium hypochlorite bleach active into salt and water rapidly accelerates, and the active ingredient concentration becomes too low for EPA registered uses like sanitizing or disinfecting.
So, you might be saying to yourself, “Duh! Bleach is a no-brainer!” But how about povidone iodine? This product is likely to be good for a year or (perhaps) three unopened in a good brown bottle, but do you know what the “kryptonite” of povidone iodine is? Heat! Just three months of storage in a hot room of 104 will reduce the effectiveness of this crucial disinfectant by a whopping 37%. Even storing at less extreme temperatures of 90 degrees for a period of time can render it useless.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not counting on having AC during SHTF. Have you considered how your local climate could affect the longevity of your preps in an all-out SHTF?
For a complete contrast, let’s compare vodka. This is basically shelf-stable, good forever. Even opened, it’s good for 10 to 20 years! The alcohol in this, well, “alcohol” is very good at preventing spoilage. The only exception to this is those flavored vodkas, which don’t fare so well. The added chemicals mean that they only last a year or two, even unopened.
Yes, it does pay to know your stockpile expiry dates and weaknesses…..How well do you know yours?
Priority #2: Small Items Mainly for Trade
What I stockpile for trade is not what I stockpile for myself. In my trade stockpile, I emphasize items that are small and don’t take up a lot of space. This is mainly because I don’t have a lot of storage in my small cabin. However, I also learned a great deal from reading Selco’s stories, where he emphasizes items for trade that can be easily stored in multiple locations on the body.
I want to have low profile items available in a high volume that will keep me being the grey gal. Here are the small items I stockpile for trade and why:
- Zip ties – So many uses (repairs, building), they are strong and mighty
- Batteries – I don’t personally rely on these, but recognize their potential value to others in SHTF. Be warned: buy cheap and lose! I only buy the top brands that advertise that they keep their charge for 12 years in storage! That’s a long SHTF! (If you don’t have a battery tester…why not? They’re very inexpensive at this link. I think it’s important to test at least a sample of stockpiled batteries each year to ensure what you’re storing has any value. Imagine showing up for a trade with a bunch of dead batteries…you could lose your credibility, and that could also be dangerous.)
- Buttons and sewing supplies – Yes, my secret stockpile weapon is my massive button collection. Something for everyone! Where else are you going to be able to get these?
- Large heavy-duty freezer bags – I dunno: This is just a hunch I have. You won’t be able to go to the Tupperware lady any longer. These bags can be washed and reused. They are waterproof. They can be cut up to make other things, like a fruit fly trap. I always keep a good amount of these on hand.
- Lighters – Small and useful. I do go the cheap route on these with the small Bics. I know I should invest in a better quality one or two for my BOB. Let me add that to my list of things to do!
Priority #3: Have for Health and Security, Possible Trade
I have items on hand for my own health. I don’t plan on trading these, but I might if it was an emergency. For this reason, I have some extras of these around at all times.
- Iodized salt – It’s a simple thing, until you don’t have it. Getting decent nutrition is going to be hard enough in SHTF. Having some of this on hand will help.
- B12 supplement – I recently wrote about how serious a B12 deficiency can be. I found a high-quality supplement, where one bottle of the tincture lasts an entire year. It’s less than $30. What’s not to like?
- Alcohol – Seeing as I’m a non-drinker, I use my alcohol for making plant medicines in the form of tinctures. In a pinch, could it be an antiseptic, like in the old war movies? Heck, ya! Would I be willing to trade some in an emergency…maybe. Do I know someone in our rural area who makes his own. Yes!
- Povidone Iodine – I keep small bottles, where the price is right, on hand. I store in a cool dry place and I know it will only last a few years. However, when in short supply, this could become a valued trading item. Yes, I keep some extra on hand.
- Ammo – I would have to be in pretty desperate straits to be ready to trade some of my precious ammo. But, yeah, I do have a lot a lot a lot of this on hand. So…..maybe I’ll trade.
Taking Stock of Your Stockpile
The more thought you put into what you’re stockpiling, the more helpful it could be. Do you agree with the priorities offered here? Why or why not? Do you have one of your own stockpile priorities that you can share with us? Please tell us in the comments section.
About Rowan
Rowan O’Malley is a fourth-generation Irish American who loves all things green: plants (especially shamrocks), trees, herbs, and weeds! She challenges herself daily to live her best life and to be as fit, healthy, and prepared as possible.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.