Honey lasts a long time and is a good prep item. I think we used to use molasses as pancake syrup when I was a kid. I'm not sure why, because we had sugar maple trees that my dad tapped, too. I don't remember hating molasses, but then I didn't mind Karo syrup when I was a kid either, but I've tried both of those in the past few years, and they were disgusting. While it might make sense to have some for an emergency, I'll have my pancakes with maple syrup.
@Ken Anderson , the kind of molasses makes a difference. The blackstrap molasses has a sort of bitter taste. The other kind is milder and sweeter.
The water I buy comes from Benner Springs north of here and it outflows freely to form a creek so it is not being depleted. The PA Fish Commission uses the same water for their fish hatchery. As far as the plastic bottles go, they get recycled.
They say the only thing that will survive a nuke war are the roaches. Not sure how that can be since food will not be available.
To answer the question posed in the thread title, I have always prepared for 6 months. There is no such thing as sustainable living anymore. There is way too much waste and inefficiency to be truly sustainable. Everything has gone way too far. The first thing necessary to make any country sustainable is to grow, manufacture, and use your own necessary living products. It is impossible for an individual or small group to achieve any notable sustainability because of dependence on modern technology and the high cost of having and maintaining real estate. I like that many are trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle, but if they are doing it to save the earth, then they are delusional. What is kept secret is how the earth heals itself and adapts to changes. Remember when small towns were mostly sustainable? Mom and pop businesses with craftspeople repairing and making things? The idea of more sustainability led to the hippie movement and communal living. This exercise in socialism failed because there are always leaders that led a plush life doing little work other than jacking their jaws, and the rest are stripped of individualism and become laborers for a cause based on a utopian concept. Looking back on my preparations made during the 1970s and 80s, I see the fault in my vision back then. I didn't factor in all the changes that would take place on planet earth and that each and every change took us further away from true sustainability. What was sustainable back in the 70s, isn't today. The trouble started when the word of college-degreed big city environment scientists took precedence over the common sense of the American Indians, European Americans, Asian Americans, and African American homesteaders. Also when sustainability became a political tool, that was adios to any real sustainable living. 1985 age 35 living semi sustainable The front porch of the cabin I built & homemade (treadle sewn) bikini Makeup was homebrewed. Huckberry juice made a nice lip balm with beeswax Solo it made a blue eyeshadow that lasted and with added activated charcoal and beewax and a bit of egg white and a few drops of goats milk made a great nontoxic mascara. Charcoal with just the egg white and a bit of beeswax made a nice dark natural nontoxic eyeliner. Iron oxide made a nice reddish brown with many native roots as well as garden vegetables such as beets and carrots adding to my color pallet. Manual labor commencing in my front yard donned in homemade clothes from recycled thrift shop finds.
I dure don't need more iron, so thanks for the info Faye. My iron has always been high as a Mans. Which is good for us smokers I guess red blood cells oxygenate the blood.
We have been pretty self-sufficient at some periods of our lives here as well. We did buy commercially canned stuff, though, although we could've canned it ourselves.
Knowlege is the power for sustainability. I have food storage, some water, a pond and creek, I have lived as if we had less money than we had so we eventually had more. No debt. I know of wild foods, alternative living, I have a bee hive in my barn house. I make syrup from silver maples. Know how to make cordage from stinging nettle, can can and dry food... But we might lose everything if the government increases property taxes and/or all taxes or changes laws.
That is part of the plan, @Mary Stetler. Part of Biden's latest "Build Back Better" plan has a provision to tax "Phantom Income" which is unrealized capital gains. It is supposed to be directed at investors, but will affect anyone who owns a home unless Congress changes it. If implemented, it would price almost everyone out of their homes as the value increases. It is part of the "You will own nothing but will be happy" part of the agenda.