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and even the food and water need regular refreshing.

I've had my noodles stocked for over 3 years before i ate them, and they still tasted good. Just my experience.

Keeping them in ideal conditions (no heat, no direct sunlight exposure, no moisture) is essential, however. Do mind these things.

Also on iodine, there was a product out there called "Polar Pure" that I fucking love

Unfortunately, it was basically just a bottle of pure iodine crystals, so they got caught up in some new anti-drug regulations and got shut down because iodine can be used to make meth.

But it was a great product, and if you look around you can still find new old stock. It has an indefinite shelf life (iodine crystals don't go bad) and one bottle was enough to treat something like 2,000L of water.

You filled the bottle up with water, some of the iodine would dissolve into it, and you'd use a capful or so of that concentrated iodine solution to disinfect your drinking water. It had a special bottle design to keep the iodine crystals trapped inside when you poured the liquid out.

Pure iodine crystals aren't exactly an easy thing to get your hands on, but if anyone is able to that's probably a good way to go.

One nice thing about being old, I don't need to buy potassium iodide tabs any more. They say not to bother if you're over 50, the cancer won't catch up to you in time.

So I guess I'm on the radiation cleanup crew if it comes down to it.

But don't stockpile iodine for water purification, household bleach is cheap and doesn't permanently fuck up the flavor of the water

Definitely good advice and we are cycling things.

Our plan is focusing on dry goods that probably would last a couple years (maybe with some loss of nutrients/quality) just sitting in your pantry as long as it's reasonably clean, dry, and no bug or rodent issues. I can't say that I've ever had things like flour, rice, or beans go bad on me, and I've definitely pulled some out of my pantry that have been sitting there for a couple years.

And we're further hedging our bets vacuum sealing them in mason jars with moisture and oxygen absorber packets.

For anyone doing the same, a paper cupcake/muffin wrapper in the top of the jar allegedly helps keep your vacuum sealer from sucking up any dust from your food. It didn't seem like that was a major issue when we were doing it without, but I figure it can't hurt either.

The thing we struggle with is cycling emergency water supplies. We don't tend to use any sort of bottled water, water quality from our tap is actually pretty good (if a bit hard) and we put it through a filter anyway, so we never really think about cycling out whatever jugs or bottles we try to stockpile. I may have to bite the bullet and order a couple cases of that stupid blue can water or something.

I hear that, and in parallel, mostly essentials only, minimum amount of purchasing for months now. Not paying a dime into their precious “economy” if I don’t have to.

See, that's where they got me: I would've liked to do the same as you, but instead I bought a bunch of stuff I would've normally waited until later to get, in anticipation that the fuckwad's idiot tariffs would jack up the price if I waited.