# How many of you



## catsraven (Jan 25, 2010)

Have been hungry? I dont mean, gee I missed lunch Im starving hungry.

When I was much younger, there was a time when I did not know if I would get a next meal, let alone where it would come from. I lived in a tent in an oil field. I had no control over the situation. There were no jobs and I was very young, 16 to be exact. The alternative was unthinkable. Town was a mile away. I had to walk it every day to get water. This was my first SHTF.

Im not telling you this to get sympathy. I put myself into this situation.

Im just curious how many of you have been in the same boat? How many of you know what it feels like to be hungry?

Prep Prep Prep. You can survive 2 to 3 days with out water depending on the weather. 2 to 3 weeks without food. You need water to digest food.


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## Ezmerelda (Oct 17, 2010)

I spent most of my childhood hungry. That's why, today, I have trouble with over eating. I have to remind myself that I WILL have another meal, that I DON'T have to stuff myself because I might not eat again for a while. I get a panic response when I feel hunger pangs.

Another result of my childhood is that I've always been a stockpiler. If my pantry gets a little low, I get very nervous.

Now, my fear is that we won't have sufficient water if things get really bad, but I'm working on that.


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## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

Well thankfully I have never been in that position.


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## spleify (Oct 4, 2010)

I too spent most of my childhood hungry and on the poor side of things. As I got older I used those memories of my past to help drive me to succeed and work that much harder.


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## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

In 1996 I knew hunger. My first husband ran off with another woman and left me with 5 kids ages 2 to 9. For a whole year he sent no money. I cleaned houses so I could take my kids along, and I made around $60 a week. I moved to a house a friend's cousin owned, and they didn't charge me rent, but I had to pay electricity and my car expenses. No phone because we couldn't afford it.

The kids and I literally lived on rice and beans with whatever we could supplement it with...veggies we grew, salad greens we foraged for, wild berries when they ripened. Having enough money to buy a jug of milk was like celebrating Thanksgiving.

The worst thing about it is it got downright boring. We craved everything you can think of. When times got better and we could actually buy food I was afraid to eat it. I wanted to see it sitting there on the shelf and know that it was there. I nearly cried everytime we used something, afraid we'd never be able to buy it again.

I still have problems with that. The man I've been married to for the last 9 years has had to reassure me that it was okay to eat the food, that we'd be able to get more. 

I just don't even want to spend more time thinking about it right now.


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## *Andi (Nov 8, 2009)

UncleJoe said:


> Well thankfully I have never been in that position.


I'm with Uncle Joe ...I've never been there and hope that I never will be ... :crossfinger:

Prep Prep Prep ...


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## partdeux (Aug 3, 2011)

I have had a wonderful life... up until recently with unstable job situation. Thankfully have never known hunger.


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## StrayDog (May 2, 2011)

We grew up hungry just my mother and I for a few years. We stayed with her parents and they kept us fed while we were there. Then we moved to a new home and new family life when she got married. Things were tight but we managed. Went to bed many a time hungry but we survived. Since then I have always tried to keep a little extra around, have grown what we can, and we don't usually go hungry. It is getting tougher and tougher these days so who knows. We may be back there again at this rate...


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## lotsoflead (Jul 25, 2010)

I went to bed hungry and got up hungry most of WW2 and til about 1950, when I went on my own, my number one priority was to stock up on food and keep the garden going. Even back in the 50s, our cupboards wern't filled with dishes, they were filled with food.


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## The_Blob (Dec 24, 2008)

I have a medical condition where I am 'always hungry' for lack of a better term, so I can't situationally use that as a benchmark; growing up we had very little, so it made me appreciate everything we had even if I was too young to express my gratitude. It did make me prioritize where the $$$ go first (food), and that having money is much better than not having money, and made me a bit mercenary in my dealings with others. I started recycling everything I could that would put $$$ in my pocket, I would do chores for neighbors, I sold my Halloween candy. I would set traps for animals (both live & lethal). I would go knock on people's doors and ask if I could fish their ponds, in fact one of the houses I stopped at, the guy that lived there saw what I was fishing with (a 3-piece bamboo pole with kite string and a safety pin bent into a hook, my gramma didn't think I was old enough to have a real fishing hook  ) he gave me a small tackle box (8x4x4) with 'real' hooks and 'lures' (some jigs, small spinners, plastic worms, flies etc), a spool of 4 lb mono, a stringer, and a daiwa pole with open faced spinning reel! He then showed me how to fish with it & while doing so he caught a (not so) HUGE fish (<2 lb largemouth bass :lolsmash: ) that he gave me! He told me that he had 'too many fish' and that I could have as many as I could catch & carry.


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## Genevieve (Sep 21, 2009)

I've been hungry before. Back in the 70's when I was hitch hiking all over the country. I would sell my plasma for $7 a pint so I would have money to buy peanutbutter and some bread. I've also scavenged in dumpsters. I wasn't alone either. There were some women with their children there a few times. If I found a pile in there I would signal them to bring their bags and we'd divide it up.


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## lhalfcent (Mar 11, 2010)

My now 74 year old mom who lives with me grew up in the great depression era. she knows what doing without is like and even today she tends to hoard things. 
I have heard stories of her having to eat lard sandwiches and soups made from one slab of bacon etc. So mom knows what hunger is like. 
Took me awhile to understand why she is so fearful of being without.
She grew up living in a homemade shack without running water and an outdoor toilet. her dad (my grandpa) became an alcoholic and spent what money they had on booze. So my grandma was the one who kept their family together and worked. 
To this day mom gets nervous if things run low and yet when I put our gardens in she loves tomatoes so I always plant alot of those cuz she eats them like candy! lol
Growing up me and my siblings always had what we needed but sure is interesting to hear how the depression time was. 
My great grandma turned her house into a bed and breakfast when her husband died and my mom has stories of when she, her brother and my grandma would live there when grandpa would leave for periods of time on a drinking binge. The kind of residents who came to live there on temporary jobs mom sure had an interesting life. lol
great grandma apparently was quite the seamstress and such too and would make beautiful clothing for sale for rich folks and did mending etc. 
Mom even tho a little girl had to do lots of ironing shirts and such to help out.
My mom said I am just like her doing all this self sufficient stuff. 
kind of cool thinking about that.
but anyway, all i have heard about the great depression times if we continue down the path our country is going an awful lot of people are not going to do well. And by all indications it sure seems it will be worse than back in the depression. I tend to think we are already in the start of a great great depression it just hasn't hit all sectors yet in a meaningful way.


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## HozayBuck (Jan 27, 2010)

*I've never been hungry*

*except while on survival / escape /evasion training in the Corps... I've eaten monkeys, snakes, and other things better left unsaid.. but hungry ..no.

My dad was KIA in WW2 so it was just me and Mom, I was 9 months old when he went to war... but my mom grew up in the depression and kept us sheltered and fed.. I remember when she made 25 bucks a week for 5 and 1/2 days a week... in a dry cleaners..

I asked her once as part of an English assignment to tell me about the Depression... we had to write an essay on it... She said " Honey, we were so poor we never knew the depression started and we was so poor we never knew it was over..." I wrote that and turned it in...got an F...lol...guess my teacher never knew what poor was..

I did ask her why they didn't grow gardens and she said something like "We never had a thing to grow with"... but in later years I know she mentioned her moms garden... If I learned anything in all that it was always have some tools to dig with and seeds to plant..and something to live on till the garden produces..

I'm not a gardener.. but by God if it comes to it I will be one.. and if I have to haul water by the bucket , I will.. I have no doubts I can feed us meat from the woods around us.. might get tired of Squirrel but that and beans and rice will keep one alive...

I believe in preps, and I believe in thinking well ahead.. but I also think the Will to survive and the ability / knowledge to do so are just as important as a barn full of food...

Surviving may mean doing things you normally wouldn't do.. being able to do whatever it takes is important , regretting it is a sign of humanity , both are going to be needed ..

So, no, never really been hungry , I plan to never have to be , but I can if I have to...for a while.*


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

There were times when I was growing up when there wasn't much to eat. My mom struggled with mental illness most of her life and didn't handle what little money she had very well. But I never went without eating. It's going to be a terrible time in this country after it hits the fan and people are starving. I think it's going to be dangerous to be even be outside your house in broad daylight even if you live in a small town.


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## PamsPride (Dec 21, 2010)

I have never gone hungry but I live in fear of telling my kids there is nothing to eat so I try to prepare as much as I can.


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## jnrdesertrats (Jul 3, 2010)

I was talking with my sister a few years ago about how mean my mom was for sending us to bed without dinner lots of times when I was very young. She gave me the strangest look and said she was not mean and we weren't bad kid's. We just had to take turns going to bed without dinner, because she could't feed us all. I was the youngest so I never really connected the dots.


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## SageAdvicefarmgirl (Jun 23, 2011)

Our family was poor but never destitute. My dad grew up in a soddy house in Kansas. They used to eat Jackrabbits and foraged the Flint Hills for food.

When I first got married (1978), we lived on $7 a week groceries in Temple, OK! I'd buy milk and eggs from a neighbor. Later we moved to renting a small farm in AR where 3 of our 4 kids were born.

Our kids never had much growing up, mostly clothes given to them and we ate lots of rice and beans, tuna and macaroni. My youngest daughter thought her friend at school was "rich" b'cuz her mom had a bowl of Little Debbie snacks on the counter all the time. My husband is an avid hunter, trapper & fisherman, we ate fish, venison, beaver, muskrat, nutria, grew many of our own veggies, chickens, eggs, had dairy goats for milk and also butchered the young male goats. Our kids learned to eat what was put in front of them, and like my dad would tell us growing up, you get hungry enough, you'll eat it!.

Tomorrow is opening day Deer Bow Season, so by afternoon we'll probably be butchering a deer!


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## wolven (Sep 7, 2011)

*hungry*

Yes as number 6 our of 7 kids we all went hungry several times in my life. Its a constant nawing and nausious feeling that leaves you weak and shaky, when it gets really bad and you do get food, your stomach wants to get rid of it.

All of my siblings have a paranoia about not having enough to eat and keep our pantry's full. We all have gardens and can or freeze what we can out of it.
My oldest remembers a time before I graduated from college and got a good job how we ate green beans and potatoes for 4 months straight, it was all we had left from our garden that winter and we were thankful for it.

I have 3 freezers full and hopefully several months of food stored and will continue to add to my supplies and quickly as I can. I think time is running out. I think soon it will ether be to costly or not available. Between the flooding in the spring this year and the storms and the drought i believe lean times are comming


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## texas_red (Sep 9, 2011)

*Been there...*

As a kid growing up, family finances were always tight. I had a very humble diet through age 17, eating whatever was cheapest and available. My folks didn't want to spend even $10/week for a family of six. So, I had many very crummy meals. Got a good holiday meal at my grandma's each Thanksgiving and Xmas, though. But I never really went hungry until I went to SERE school while in the military. After three very active days with nothing but water, I found out that even insects can make a small meal.

I don't recommend it, though.


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## brucehylton (Nov 6, 2010)

After a three week stint of pinto beans as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I swore I would never run out of food again, or eat another bean. 40 years later my pantry always has a 50 pound bag of beans in it. And a salt shaker this time.


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## Clarice (Aug 19, 2010)

DH and I both grew up poor. He is the son of a share cropper and #6 of 12 children. Things were always tight at their house but they always had a garden and were able to hunt and fish. My family of six was always poor then my father died when I was 13. My older sister and I both got jobs after school to help out. I can remember when min. wage was raised to $1/hr. Sister's paycheck went to help with utilities and mine bought groceries. I made $16/wk. Lots of nights supper was cornbread and milk or tomato gravy and biscuits. Never had much but can't remember going to bed hungry.


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## Nadja (Jan 12, 2011)

brucehylton said:


> After a three week stint of pinto beans as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I swore I would never run out of food again, or eat another bean. 40 years later my pantry always has a 50 pound bag of beans in it. And a salt shaker this time.


Salt, breakfast of champions. You may want to get some chili seasoning and rice to mix together also. Even cold, rice and chili make great sandwhiches !


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

I've been blessed. The only time I've been truely hungry was for about a six month period in my early twenties. I'd like to say it taught me something, but it wasn't until I was much older that I realized this: I make stupid decisions when truely hungry. 

Much more recently, the second time my DH was laid off was an eye opener. We didn't go hungry, because we'd already been shopping at Sam's and putting the extra in the basement. We lived off that bulk food rack, and I learned that in a pinch a lot of unusual combinations can be made to make a meal. But even though we didn't go hungry, this experience woke me up - because we'd been so close, and this time I was a responsible for a family. That was the beginning of my conversion to prepping. God willing, I will never be without extra food in the basement for my family - I'm just more organized (and militant) about it now.

In the last year or so I heard someone say how important it is to prepare, because it is when we are unprepared (and hungry) that we are vulnerable to making wrong/poor decisions. It was an epiphany - because I looked back on that time in my twenties and saw just how true that is. I am so thankful to see people prepping - hopefully none of us will be in that vulnerable position of making poor decisions.


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## 101airborne (Jan 29, 2010)

HozayBuck said:


> *except while on survival / escape /evasion training in the Corps... I've eaten monkeys, snakes, and other things better left unsaid.. but hungry ..no.
> 
> So, no, never really been hungry , I plan to never have to be , but I can if I have to...for a while.*


Same here with my army survival school, again during ranger school. I remember that after a couple of days without.... grubs and tree bark tasted real good.


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## ashley8072 (Apr 26, 2011)

I never worried about going hungry when I was little. When me and hubby married, we had some hard times. Lots of macaroni and cheese, and ramen noodles. But we always had a home and a place to eat if it got too bad. Luckily we've had the Church food pantry to help us, and then we get Indian Commodities once a month. There's always a way for us to put food on the table. 

However, we've taken in quite a few people over the course of 11 years that had no place to live, no place to eat, sleeping on top of business store roofs and asking for food outside of restaurants. A cousin that still visits once a week for supper, acts like it's his last meal and eats anything left after we're done. Hubbys family adopted him and his sister after they had been basically homeless til they were almost teens, which he took complete care of himself. It amazes me of the stories he tells of getting food and water for them both. I always try to give him a sack of canned goods once a week, because now as an adult and married, he seems to be stuck that being homeless is a way of life to him.


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## goodmedivice (May 7, 2010)

I lived in cars, slept in launromats, wore the same pants to school, was on welfare but I never was hungry- the welfare in our state is great , Steaks and crab more often than the regular joe, im not lying.

I wonder why you were not elegible for food stamps in your state. 

Fact- The poor people in the USA is more likely to die of Obesity than hunger.


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## Turtle (Dec 10, 2009)

This is one of those rare threads that really makes one stop, think, and appreciate. 

Reading the title, my initial thought was, "yeah, i've been hungry before! There were months when I had to get by on a loaf of bread and a pack of bologna for a week or so!" 

However, upon reading some of the things that some folks have had to go through to survive... truly makes me appreciate how easy I have had it. I've gone to sleep hungry before (as Alexandre Dumas once said, "Sleep is the poor man's supper"), but 8i've never had to wonder if I would survive.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

goshengirl said:


> I realized this: I make stupid decisions when truely hungry.... I am so thankful to see people prepping - hopefully none of us will be in that vulnerable position of making poor decisions.


*THIS..........* this is the reason why so many prep - - it's not just you and yours that you are protecting, but remember all the unprepared idiots wandering the streets that are hungery make VERY bad choices... choices that can land them a bullet in the head.



PamsPride said:


> I have never gone hungry but I live in fear of telling my kids there is nothing to eat so I try to prepare as much as I can.


There are too many people in the world that are NOT thinking the same way. But... when it comes time, they WILL get violent if their kids are hungry, and they WILL hurt someone to get some food. Those are the ones you will have to be strong to resist, their pleas for handouts will tug at the heartstrings of nearly anyone.

But you must feed your own family first!!!!


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

No, I have never been in a starvation situation. I have been in situations where I had to ration what food I had to stretch it until I could afford more. This was not a one cracker a day thing but having to stretch a can of tuna for 3 meals and a pound of pasta for a week, 3 meals a day kind of situation. I remember being happy to find a several year old, 5 pound pail of Boy Scout popcorn in the closet. My black lab, Sweetheart, ate it with me for a week. She thought it was great to be getting ‘treats’ in her dish day after day! Me, it takes a lot of popcorn per day to keep yourself full enough to be satisfied and keep working.


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## Salekdarling (Aug 15, 2010)

There were times I remember we'd eat potato soup (cheap to make) and bread for a week straight but I don't recall ever starving. My parents would send me to bed without food if I was being bad...but in all, we were blessed to have food on the table. (Thanks to my wonderful Daddy) 

My Father joined the military so he could take care of me, my unborn brother and my Mother. He met my mother and I when he was 16 and adopted me at 19. We had some hard times but we pulled together as a family. I love my Daddy sooo much.  Plus, I got to see the world thanks to him! <3<3


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