10 Biggest Movie Myths About The Apocalypse

#6 - Food

Everyone stocks their bomb shelters, extremist camps, and cult lairs with canned goods. Because they last a long time. And quite honestly, frank and beans is a meal I could eat everyday for the rest of my life. Mmm hmm. But do they last long enough to provide a reliable food source for post-apocalyptic survivors years into the future?

The answer is a bit complicated. It varies. If you walk down into a food cellar after fighting a cannibal mutant with a chainsaw to claim your prize, there are three types of things you should consider. First, the jars of pickled items are normally peak for a year. So avoid the home-canned goods. Second, find the high-acidic foods - such as tomatoes - they pass their best quality after 2 years. Finally, low-acidic food - such as meat - are supposedly peak flavor and safety up to 5 years. Bingo! Now consider this - if the ash cloud filling our skies actually does precipitate a nuclear winter then the risk of food spoiling goes down considerably. We'll basically be living in a walk-in freezer. The cold will reduce the numbers of other scavengers (insects, rats, Kardashians), leaving the prime pickings for the human wielding a Swiss army knife. And when you consider that a nuclear war will drastically reduce the human population (50+% live in urban areas) combined with the over production of food (half of the food produced in the USA is not even eaten), there is a distinct possibility that the post-apocalyptic world will be a veritable smorgasbord of delights. So the idea of people fighting with spiked cricket bats over a can of SPAM might not be so accurate. Rather, in our distress over lack of basic television programming, we might all turn to food to numb our emotional pain and end up a bunch of surviving lard asses. But while we're here. What ... about .. the ... twinkie? Unfortunately, the common understanding that Twinkies will last years and years and years ... is actually folklore and urban myth. Their shelf life in the grocery store is a mere 25 days. They do last much longer than that because Twinkies are not made with any dairy products, but from my research all of the sugar and fat in a Twinkie eventually congeals together into something more like brittle hard candy. Ew. If you're struggling with a sweet tooth, your best bet is honey. Apparently, that never goes bad.