My neighbor Craig is a prepper. For years, he’s been telling me the world is coming to an end, and for years, I’ve been ignoring him. Then one day I saw him digging with a shovel in his backyard. The bank gave him a second mortgage, he told me, and he was going to build a bunker forty feet beneath the earth. I accidentally laughed at him, and the two of us haven’t spoken since.
But then ChatGPT was released, and there were all these articles about AI taking over the world. And then Trump was running for president again, and that Ohio Senator called for a civil war if Trump loses. And then I saw an Instagram post speculating that Coscto was encouraging consumers to stock up for the apocalypse, because they were selling Readywise Emergency Food Buckets, and it dawned on me that maybe Craig was right. Maybe I should be preparing.
My credit rating is, according to Equifax, fucking abysmal, so I knew a bunker bank loan was out of the equation. But I do have a Costco card, and I figured the least I could do to prepare for the End Times was drive over to Costco and buy my own Readywise Emergency Food Bucket.
Each bucket is about the size of a five-gallon pail and has a lid that keeps the food packets inside. Grabbing one by the handle and pulling it off the pallet, I was surprised at how light the bucket was and how easy it was to carry around the store (or, I would imagine, tote forty feet below the earth if you’re lucky to have a decent enough credit rating for a bunker bank loan).
Costco’s website boasts that each bucket contains 150 servings of a “variety of delicious meals,” including Tomato Basil Soup with Pasta and Potatoes & Chicken Flavored Pot Pie. The shelf life for the food is an impressive twenty-five years. And while the website doesn’t explicitly mention preparing for Armageddon or Judgment Day, according to Costco’s heady verbiage, the buckets are a “tangible expression of your dedication to ensuring you and your loved ones are cared for, no matter what lies ahead,” which is more or less the same thing.
After purchasing the bucket, a part of me was excited to get home and crack it open. I figured since the bucket cost eighty dollars, the food in the bucket would be worthy of the term “delicious,” something to savor as nuclear fallout poured down outside. If Costco can sell a decent-tasting hot dog and soda combo for $1.50, I guess anything is possible. However, after suffering through several of the options, I would recommend sampling the food in the bucket only if you’re facing starvation.
Most of the meals are freeze-dried or dehydrated. To prepare the packets, you need to add water (preferably hot water, although cold water would technically work too). Perhaps I am a bad cook (I am), but calculating how much water to put into the meal was a bit confusing, and sometimes I ended up with a watery, goopy mess (Pasta Alfredo), and at other times, no matter how much I stirred, I still had chunks of dehydrated powder (Chicken Flavored Noodle Soup.)
Also, you know how in a bag of Doritos, every once in a while you come across a chip blasted by so much seasoning you taste not just a chip but the very essence of the Cool Ranch flavor? Most of the meals in the food bucket are as salty as those chips. Yet somehow the food is also bland. Without using the labels on the pouches as a guidepost, I’m not sure I could guess with any accuracy what I was supposed to be eating.
Take, for example, the Creamy Pasta & Vegetables, which looked and tasted a bit like Elmer’s Glue and could have just as easily been called Macaroni & Cheese or Potato Salad, or hell, Tuna Casserole. Even the Orange Drink Mix, a sugary, slightly acidic beverage, left me wondering if Readywise omitted orange flavoring, figuring that those dying of thirst during the apocalypse would have forgotten what an orange tastes like anyway.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what the food tastes like. On their website Costco mentions the buckets offer the “peace of mind that comes from knowing you’ve taken proactive steps to secure your well-being.” And I would agree. I even went back to Costco and bought another Readywise Emergency Food Bucket. I plan on using them to barter. When doomsday arrives, and I stumble over to Craig’s yard lugging the two buckets, the only thing that matters is that after begging for forgiveness and offering him the buckets, Craig opens his bunker hatch and lets me in.
