Today I read the prequel to the book “When the Power is Gone” (which has been mentioned by a couple of other posters in this Forum) then I started reading that book too. Kind of cringed though when I read in Chapter 5 about the ladies using straws to suck the air out of food storage bags filled with dehydrated foods because their vacuum sealing machine was shorted out by an EMP. Seems to me that someone doing that risks aspirating food particles into their lungs. It would be far safer to stockpile a “Pump ‘N Seal” or a hand pump brake bleeder to use to vacuum the air out of the bags – or to just manually press out as much air as possible, and seal the bag with an Oxygen absorber inside.
