You can have enough food stored to ride out whatever Armageddon may come, but it won’t do you much good if it becomes infested with insects.
Sadly, most of the items that are available to take care of any infestations are almost as harmful to you as they are to those pesky critters.
So what do you do to keep roaches, ants, and weevils from making a meal out of your survival food?
One thing that I have personally found that works is Diatomaceous Earth. Diatomaceous earth or D.E. is a fine white powder that to us feels much like talcum powder, but to an insect it is like walking over broken glass.
The powder is made up of ancient fossilized shells and silica. It works by cutting through the waxy coating that insects have over their entire bodies.
As the coating erodes the insect is no longer able to hold water and quickly begins to dehydrate.
The best thing about D.E. is that unlike chemical insecticides, the insect cannot build up a tolerance to diatomaceous earth and it never expires.
Keeping this stuff around can help to stave off an insect invasion that would otherwise render your food supplies inedible.
The only drawback is that this is a mechanical insecticide, which means that it has to physically come in contact with the insect in order to work.
Essentially, you would need to sprinkle it anywhere that the bugs are likely to cross.
For roaches, this means under and on top of cabinets as well as around sinks, where they would go for water.
Ants are particularly tricky as they tend to avoid the stuff. You can fool them by adding a big of corn starch or sugar to the powder and sprinkling it on top of the mound, they will think the D.E. is food and swallow it, drying them out from the inside.
If you choose to keep Diatomaceous earth around, make sure that you only get the Food Grade version of it and not chemical or pool grade. Using anything other than food grade can be toxic and should never be used around food.
The brand that I use is Perma- Guard, they are EPA certified for use against a bunch of critters that would be interested in your food cache.
Do you have any other suggestions for Pest control in a post SHTF scenario? Let me know!
