Your Grandma Was Sweet, Not Sterile

A Costco pallet stacked with 5,400 emergency servings sounds impressive, but does the math—and your storage plan—actually work for you? We open with the numbers, then shift to the skills that turn stored food into real resilience: first aid choices that keep small problems small when the lights go out and help is far away.

We break down stubborn myths with clear, usable guidance. Butter on burns seals in heat and germs; skip it and use cool water, gentle cleansing, and loose sterile dressings. Snakebite suction and knife cuts don’t remove venom; immobilize, keep the limb below the heart, and seek medical care. Hydrogen peroxide and isopropyl alcohol can damage healing tissue when overused, so reach for clean water first and disinfect sparingly. From eyebrow lacerations that bleed like crazy to hard-to-bandage palms, we share calm, step-by-step approaches that reduce panic and conserve scarce supplies.

Allergy readiness gets real: check EpiPen expirations, know when to use them, and add antihistamines when appropriate. We make the case for a pulse oximeter in every kit to spot dangerous drops in oxygen saturation during asthma or severe reactions. Shock care is practical and human: lay flat, legs up, warm blanket, steady talk, and grounding questions that pull focus back from the edge. We cover over-the-counter meds—ibuprofen for inflammation, acetaminophen for fever—and how to think about expiration dates, especially for liquids and creams. Most of all, we double down on hygiene: wash hands, use friction if soap is scarce, dry with something clean, and treat wounds early to stay ahead of infection.

Ready to prep smarter, not louder? Hit follow, share this with someone who needs a clear first aid plan, and leave a review to help more practical preppers find us.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Storm Alert And Opening Banter
• 0:50 Costco Pallet Food Deal Math
• 2:37 Year In Review And Listener Stats
• 4:08 First Aid Myths Debunked
• 11:28 Basic Burn And Wound Care
• 15:12 Managing Bleeding And Kids’ Cuts
• 17:17 Allergies, EpiPens, And Pulse Oximeters
• 19:49 Shock Support And Mental First Aid
• 21:51 OTC Meds, Expirations, And Scarcity
• 24:53 Hygiene, Handwashing, And Infection Risks
• 25:22 Contact Info And Subscribe CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

The National Labor Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:50

I found something on X that I want to share with everybody. So Costco. Costco is selling a pallet, a pallet of ready-wise, freeze-dried food. Each bucket is 150 servings. 36 buckets. And according to the website and my fuzzy math, that comes out to 5,400 servings. 36 buckets on a pallet for$2,993. Price per bucket, if you break it down, I believe is$83 per bucket. Now that sounds like a really good price. And it's difficult to compare this particular bucket with other buckets like on Amazon and a few other websites because most of the ReadyWise buckets of food are made for Costco specifically. They'll say it on the label, made for Costco. So it's it's kind of difficult. Well, I'm just going to find out how much this bucket costs on Amazon or Walmart or a different website. You can get pretty close, but this has 150 servings in a 25-year shelf life. So it breaks down to about$83 a bucket. Now, the odd thing about this price is you can find these buckets, these exact same buckets on sale at Costco every once in a while. It's really hit or miss, and they're about$67. Technically, could you go into a Costco and say, I need 36 of these$67 buckets? Do you have it on a pallet? And you know, I'll pull my truck around or I'll pull the minivan around. I guess you could. But I think for convenience, and I wish I had room for a pallet. No, let me take that back. Even if I had room for a pallet, I think it'd just look cool. Better have a big pantry. You open up your garage and there's a pallet. 36 buckets, 5,400 servings. Gracious. Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. So year-in review, I got my little year-in review email from Buzz Sprout, who hosts my podcasts, and I want to share a couple numbers with you. So in 2025, I had listeners in 74 different countries and 2,099 separate cities. I realized the reach was getting out there, but I didn't realize it was that far out there. So thank you so much for all 2,099 cities that listened in. Oddly enough, the cities where the most listeners came from, I guess you could say, Chicago, Illinois, number one. I lived in Chicago for several years, lived in Oaklawn, 79th in Pulaski, 79th in Cicero. Some of you folks on Chicago South Side will know where that is. Number two was Sydney, Australia, Sydney, New South Wales. So hello to my friends down under. I really do appreciate that. You are number two as far as the number of listeners and downloads coming from a specific city. And then number three, Charlotte, North Carolina. That one kind of snuck up on me too. I really don't go too deep into what cities and towns. I mostly just look at downloads and some trends, how long people listen to the podcast. Try not to make them too long or too short. I don't want to make them too long and start losing people halfway through the podcast. And I certainly don't want to make them too short because I really appreciate everybody taking time out of their busy day to listen to what I have to say. So Chicago, Sydney, Charlotte, North Carolina. Thank you to those cities and thank you to everybody all around the world that listened to the podcast. We've talked about trauma kits, first aid, but I want to talk about some of the myths, some of the first aid myths that are out there. If I can say the word myth, that's kind of difficult to say. Myths. I remember my grandmother told me that you should rub butter on a burn. And I still joke about that to this day. So grandmas are great, don't get me wrong. But my grandma was also the same grandma who told me that when I eat lunch, I have to wait an hour before I get back in the pool and go swimming because I could get a cramp and drown. My grandmother told me an hour. Some people say it's only 30 minutes. Their grandmother told them 30 minutes. It wasn't until I was like 35 years old when I realized I've been eating all of my life and I've never had a cramp. I've never just been watching TV after dinner, driving home from the restaurant, in a plane flying somewhere and eating dinner. I never cramped up. I never cramped up in a little ball in my entire life. And I'm thinking, is it something to do with the water? The foods floating around in your stomach, and you're you're more susceptible to cramps. I mean, you don't you don't doubt your grandmother. I mean, she's your grandmother. My grandmother and my great-grandmother, they told me the same thing. My great-grandmother, God rest her soul, when I screwed up, I had to go out into the backyard and pick my own switch. The older generations out there, you're probably nodding your head, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So I picked my own switch and it needed to be a pretty firm switch. It wasn't like a log, but it's gotta be pretty firm, but it's gotta be whippy. You know, she's not gonna hit you with like a stick. She's gonna hit you with a the whippy little switch that has a little fling to it so you can hear it coming. And don't run away. If I tried to run away, she would just grab my hand and I would just run in a circle and she would just keep switching the back of my legs. It was like my calves, probably five or six times, and I'd cry and just go run off. But you know, grandma, your great grandma took a switch to me. Well, I deserved it. No butter on burns, no offense to grandmas. Go ahead and eat your lunch, get right back in the water. Yeah, I better put a caveat on that. I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice, because that's all they need is someone, oh, it's all a wives' tail, honey. And their kid jumps in the pool tomorrow and they get a cramp and they're like, we're gonna go after that podcast guy because he doesn't know what he's talking about. All right, so no butter on wounds, cool, clean water if you have it. And again, in an SHTF situation, one gallon per person, I recommend two gallons per person per day. So if you have the water, rinse it well, sterile gauze, sterile bandages, a wrap if you have it, and put it on kind of loosely on the particular burn. If you have burn cream that's specifically designed for that type of injury, go ahead. Another wives tale. If you get bit by a poisonous snake, don't have your buddy like make a little cross on the wound with a knife and then like suck the poison into his mouth and then spit it out because that's just gonna cause the poison to course through your veins a little bit quicker. And of course, now your buddy or significant other, they've got poison in their mouth. The best thing to do again, soap and water, clean it as best you can, wrap it, keep it below the level of your heart. So if it's your forearm, then if you're sitting in the chair, sitting on the ground, make sure it's below your heart. We don't want to make it easier for the poison to course through your body. We want it to have to defeat gravity to get where it's going. And unless you've got a bunch of anti-venom sitting around in your fridge, you're gonna have to seek medical advice. So peroxide. Now, this one I had to double check this growing up, and even to this day, if I have a cut, I'm gonna get the peroxide. And how my parents and grandparents and everybody explained it to me, you pour the peroxide on it until it stops bubbling. That means it's got all of the infection out of the wound. Well, it made sense back then and it made sense until about 30 minutes ago. And I double checked this and I and I understand where they're coming from. Too much peroxide also kills some of the good tissue that you're gonna need to help that wound heal. So I get that. But I'm 59 years old, I'm still here from dumping peroxide all over me. So I'm probably gonna go ahead and use the peroxide a little more liberally, you know, make sure it gets the wound clean, maybe not all the way till it the bubbles go away. And then again, wrap it, sterile gauze, band-aid. You could always use sterile water, clean water beforehand, and then the peroxide. If you don't have peroxide, then obviously you're using water. Rinse it as best you can, but be mindful if your water supply is limited, just be very mindful of that. If you have a wound, especially an open wound, don't pour Jack Daniels or vodka on it. Alcohol, like Jack or vodka, is not strong enough. I know it sounds cool, you know, in the movies and stuff like that. It's not gonna do any good. And if it's like a flavored vodka or a flavored liqueur or whatever, I don't drink, so I don't know. You're then dumping all the other, then you're dumping the flavorings and all the other ingredients into the wound. We're gonna use alcohol, 70% isopropyl alcohol, but again, be careful. Now, this one I do understand. Be careful about how much alcohol you're dumping into that particular wound. The alcohol will help, the isopropyl alcohol will help, but it will also kill some of the good tissue. And going over this stuff, and I did double check it, it like flies in the face of everything I've been told. So we're not sucking out snake venom. I knew that one. No butter, I knew that one. Just figured out the whole you can go right into the pool after you have lunch. And we're gonna be careful about using hydrogen peroxide and isopropyl alcohol on wounds. My opinion, go ahead and use a little bit of it, maybe get a cotton ball or another sterile piece of cloth or a sterile gauze and maybe kind of dab around it. But in an SHTF situation, all the medical supplies you have, that might be it. So treat it like it's gold, or in this case silver, at$82 an ounce. I can't believe it. Treat it like gold and don't waste it. I mean, that kind of makes sense. It's self-explanatory. So don't dump half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide on a superficial cut. If it's not bleeding, a scrape, I would use water, sterile gauze, clean it out as best you can, wrap it if you think you need to. I always try to let the air get to it, let it scab over, and then let it start healing from the inside. All right, now that we've got some of the myths out of the way, let's talk about some of the very basic kind of first aid stuff. We again we've covered trauma bags, trauma kits, all the crazy stuff. But here's just the basics. And a lot, this is very rudimentary, probably not a news flash to a lot of people. But if the power's out, and if you have kids, even when the power's on, kids are running through the house, they fall, minor cut above the eyebrow on the head, they're gonna bleed like a stuck pig. There's not a lot of fat between your eyebrow and your skull. Even a very minor cut is gonna look, it's gonna be like this open gash, this like avulsion, I guess you could call it, this open wound, and it's gonna bleed a lot. Don't freak out. If you're a parent and you've been around for a while as a parent, you've probably patched your kids up more than once. The kid is gonna get really upset. Even maybe even an adult who's not had that kind of wound. Maybe they're gonna freak out, and then we're just gonna add shock to the equation, which probably isn't the best thing to add to any type of equation, especially a first aid equation. So the kid's running down the hall, gets that cut, it's gonna bleed like crazy. We're gonna get our gauze, our sterile cloth, maybe a little peroxide, maybe a little alcohol, and something like on the eyebrow, you know, it may be a butterfly bandage, and those are always kind of tough. A laceration on the palm of your hand or like you know, the webbing your fingers or around your thumb, you're you're constantly moving your hands, you're constantly using your hands. It's very difficult to get a band-aid or even a butterfly to stick. So just be mindful of that. Now, we've talked about tourniquets before, we've talked about how to use tourniquets, so we'll just we'll skip that part. Allergies. If you have a severe allergy to peanuts or eggs, dairy, whatever it happens to be, and your allergies are severe enough that you need to carry an epipin or have an epipin at the ready, make sure that you're checking the expiration dates on those. And if the doc can give you a prescription for two, because a lot of times they'll come like at a two-pack, go ahead and get both of those and be mindful of the expiration date. Now, if I'm with somebody and they hand me their epipin because they're not able to inject themselves and it's three months expired or six months expired. If that's what you got, that's what you got. And we're gonna go ahead and stick them, go right into the thigh and hold it for 10 seconds. Okay, it's pressurized, hold it for 10 seconds, make sure that the epinephrine gets into their bloodstream. And then go ahead and if there's if it's bleeding, stick a band-aid on it. Again, we're talking about a severe allergic reaction. The last thing they're really worried about is the little bloody spot on their pants from the injector needle. How many of you out there have a pulsometer or a pulsox? It's that little thingy that the doctor puts on your the nurse puts on your finger when you're at the doctor's office and it measures your O2 sats, your oxygen sats. They're relatively inexpensive. I'm gonna check Amazon here later on tonight or tomorrow. And if they're five, six bucks, I'm gonna go ahead and grab one. They're real small, tiny, tiny. I'm sure it runs on like a watch battery. You can probably get a USB-C charger and charge it next to your cell phone. Not a bad thing to have. If somebody is in respiratory distress, asthma, or several other conditions, you want to check their O2 sats. Anything below 95, and that is a big problem. If they have an inhaler, obviously get them their inhaler. They need access to that. Benadryl, if it's something that's affecting their breathing that they're allergic to, Benadryl is also a great tool for allergies and allergic reactions. But I'm gonna check the little pulse ox and see how much they are. I think that's a good thing to throw into your medical kit or your first aid. So speaking of first aid, let's talk about mental first aid. So someone's like just staring off into space, their voice is really thin, call it the thousand yard stare, cold sweat, potentially they're in shock. Now, if they're part of your group or part of your family, more than likely somebody's going to witness the event or the episode or the mechanism of injury that caused little Johnny or little Susie to go into stress. Take their shoes off, their boots off, lay them flat on the floor, legs up in a chair. We want the blood flowing back towards their core, get a blanket, coat, anything, cover them up, talk to them very slow, tell them they're all right, ask them what day it is, ask them about the weather, ask them if they remember what happened, to get them to focus both mentally and visually. Ask them to name three things in their current field of view. It could be, well, I see you, Keith, and there's a lamp, and we should probably dust under the couch because there's a big dust bunny. So ask them to point out three things. It takes their mind away from the situation, gives you a rough idea of their current mental state. If they're stuttering, can't tell you what they're seeing, or they're unable to formulate those words, you may have something a little more serious going on. So let's talk about pain inflammation that you can take care of with over-the-counter drugs. Ibuprofen, 200 milligrams every six hours. Try to drink a lot of water, at least a half a bottle of water. Again, water could be scarce, so plant accordingly. Acetaminophen for a fever. Now, about the meds themselves, about the pills themselves, ignore the expiration date used by date. Two and three years after your ibuprofen expires, still use it. I would still use it. Now, the effectiveness may have declined, but if that's what you have, that's what you have. If you have any sort of liquid acetamenophen, like your day quill, your nyquill, if it's a liquid, I would probably pay a little more attention to the expiration date. If it's several months past expiration, I'm not so sure that I would use that only because of the liquid, only because of the liquid suspension that it's in. There may be a preservative or a coloring or something that is more sensitive to the expiration date. Now, creams, ointments, I probably would not use them too far past the expiration date. But again, you got what you got. I don't think necessarily, again, I'm not a doctor. If you have some antibiotic ointment that's six months past expiration, and you have a cut, and that's what you need to use on the cut, I'm gonna use it. Okay, I'm not going to not use it because you just have to weigh the risk versus the reward. Now, if this is a temporary SHTF situation, power be back on in a few hours or the next day or the next two days. Decide not to use the expired meds because you you're going to be able to get to medical help relatively soon. Then I just go ahead and forego the meds, especially if they're past the expiration date. But again, all situations are different, everybody's different, everybody's medical conditions are different. You just have to be familiar with the folks in your group or your family and what medical conditions they might have. Probably something to talk about at some point when you're talking about or when you're talking with your family about prepping, you're doing little drills, you're talking about current events, talking about this podcast, oh, this first aid episode. Oh, it reminded me, Linda. Linda's maybe the aunt. Don't you have an allergy to strawberries? Oh, no, no, no. It's lemons. Oh, well, thank goodness. Because here's some iced tea, or watch out. I put lemons in the iced tea. Whatever this situation happens, oh, there goes Linda. Somebody get the epic somebody get the epi pen. But no, but know the medical conditions. Obviously, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, kids, you already know that. But if you have friends, neighbors, folks that you don't hang around with all the time, and let's say they're coming to your house, you're the rally point, as it were. If they're gonna stay there one day, two days, five days, they need to bring the medication with them. Don't get yourself in a situation where Martha's like, oh, I need to run back home because I forgot my insulin. And you look outside and all hell's breaking loose. Probably not the best situation to go out into. Nausea. I keep candied ginger in my first aid kit, my backpack, when I go hiking, and in my get home bag. Candied ginger has a terrific effect on nausea. Unless it's really severe, candied ginger knocks out my nausea symptoms almost instantaneously. Plus, it tastes good. Broken arm, we're gonna splint it like a magazine rolled up tight. You've seen all the different first aid videos, magazine, wrap it nice and tight and grab some duct tape or whatever and just wrap it up. Make sure it's immobilized as best you can in the circumstances and in what you have on hand to make a splint. In the event of an extended SHTF situation, even a small laceration, try to get it cleaned up, try to get it wrapped as soon as possible. You do not want to get into a situation where infection sets in because that's gonna cause a fever and it could just go completely pear-shaped from there. What ended up being a minor cut is now a major medical situation that you have to get this person to an area that has advanced care. I mean, we're talking hospital. We're talking ER. And give it a situation, is the ER even viable? Is your local hospital even online? Did they have power? Had the generator stopped? So do everything you can. Assume that your three-day situation is going to be a six day situation. When the power company says you'll have power on in 48 hours because of the hurricane, I would assume it's going to be 72. So, especially in extended situations, make sure you're taking care of those minor wounds because if infection sets in, do you have antibiotics? I don't think I have any. Of course, like I've said before, I'm the typical guy. I don't go to the Doctor, unless I'm losing a limb, I never ask for directions. And when the doc gives me 30 pills of whatever and tells me to take them all, I don't because I'm a guy, I would have five or ten left over. I just checked my pantry and I don't have any left over. So apparently, last time I took antibiotics, I actually did what the doctor said, which really kind of surprises me. But we don't want those small lacerations or small wounds becoming infected because now you're just really backing yourself into a corner. Whenever you treat any wound on anybody, even if you're treating something on yourself, wash your hands. That is the very first thing, most important thing you can do before you treat the wound, the injury, the rash, whatever it happens to be. If you have gloves, nitrile gloves, then you're good to go. But if you don't, wash your hands, soap, antibacterial soap, 20 seconds, warm water if you've got it. I read somewhere that when you're washing your hands, it's not as much the antibacterial soap as it is the motion and the friction that you're causing between your hands, between your fingers. It's actually more of the motion and the friction that dislodges the dirt or contaminants that you then rinse off. I'm sure the antibacterial soap has a lot to do with it, but someone told me, and I can't remember where I heard this or where I saw it, the rubbing of the hands does actually a lot of good. So if you don't have soap, you don't have antibacterial soap, and all you have is water and you don't have gloves, then if you could warm the water, that's good. But if you can't, then in my opinion, the next best thing to do is for someone to run the water or pour the water over your hands. You just rub your hands together really hard and really fast to try to dislodge as much of the junk as you can, and then it's rinsed off. You got to dry your hands. Make sure please have a clean, dry towel, paper towel, napkin, whatever you happen to be using. Make sure it's clean, make sure it's dry, and then get your heads dry, and then go ahead and treat the wound. Folks, as always, I appreciate everybody stopping by. I was gonna talk a little bit about Venezuela, but I decided not to. I was gonna talk about the anniversary of January 6th, but I decided not to. I did just read, I checked it with a couple different sources, that within the last several hours, there are several C-17 Globemasters from the US Air Force and a lot of aerial tankers that took off from a couple Air Force bases in the UK and then apparently we're heading towards the Middle East. Now, I don't know, obviously I know what the tankers are for. I don't know if they're gonna be on station and we're going to have some sort of strike against Iran. I'm gonna doubt that right now. We have enough going on with Venezuela, but props to the Iranian people. Every once in a while they'll kick up a little protest, but this one's really gaining some traction. And believe it or not, go on YouTube, go on Google, and look up videos and photos of Tehran, Iran, like 1968, 1970. You couldn't tell a street of Tehran with a couple ladies walking up past a bunch of shops, if you transplanted them on the main street USA, they would not look out of place at all. Completely different than for the last 50, 45, 50 years. So they want freedom. Can't blame them. Iran doesn't have too many friends in the Middle East. Russia likes them and China likes them, but I'm not gonna go down a geopolitical rabbit hole tonight. But I was gonna talk about all those things, but I'm not. All right, folks, thanks again. And again, thanks again for a great 2025. I've been doing this four years now, but 2025 was by far the most episodes, the most podcasts that I've that I've put on, and I really do appreciate it. Again, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. I'm on the Twitters, comments in Practical Prepper. Prep underscore podcast is the handle. I'm on Signal Prepper.99. I don't have any friends on there, so I don't even know if the damn thing works. So if you're on Signal, go ahead and type up a message to prepper.99 and we'll we'll chat back and forth and see if this thing even works. All right, folks, as always, please be careful out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 24:35

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