Costco Is Selling A Year's Worth Of Emergency Food For $1,000

Survivalists and doomsday preppers love good deals and stockpiling enormous quantities of food, and Costco specializes in both those things. Now everybody's favorite source for big-screen TVs and $4.99 rotisserie chicken is helping people stock up in case of a disaster by selling a emergency food kits that promise to feed an adult for an entire year for $1,000.

"The idea came about making a great starter kit for a family who wanted to prepare for any kind of disaster. This is a great value with shipping included," a Costco spokesperson told the Detroit Free Press.

The Costco 1-year Emergency Food Kit is priced at $999.99 and includes 96 1-gallon containers of wheat, rice, granola, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, lentils, beans, soy protein designed to taste like beef and chicken, instant milk, sugar, and salt. Each can has a 25-year shelf life, and the kit says it includes 6,200 servings of food that can provide at least 1,200 calories a day for 365 days.

For $3,799.99, a Costco member can buy the same meal kit sized for a family of four. An even larger version with 600 one-gallon cans of food is available for $5,999.99. None of the kits come with recipes, though, so it might be a good idea to look over some of our best bean recipes before placing an order.

Costco did not say how many people have purchased emergency food kits. But one customer who purchased the largest emergency food kit "just in case" left a review saying he was pleased with the 100 8- to 36-pound boxes of food that arrived "in discreet plain brown boxes."

Retail expert Ken Dalto told the Detroit Free Press that demand for emergency food kits might be increasing as people feel scared or insecure about the future.

"You have hurricanes. You saw what that did," he said. "You add to that climate change, and terrorism, and the idea of nuclear war, which is very much in the news with North Korea, and they can develop a missile that might be able to hit California — even Seattle."

A person can't prevent those things from happening, but having 600 gallons of freeze-dried fruit in the basement might make them feel a little safer in the interim.