Iron Rations

Until the civil war, I didn't have any particular problem with macaroni. Ever since, I haven't been able to face the stuff - most of the time macaroni was all there was. I have no idea where they were getting it from, but when there was food, nine times out of ten it was macaroni. It got to the point that even the padre was sick of it. Looking into his mess tin one night he sighed, rolled his eyes to heaven and muttered:
"Hebrews thirteen eight" … not his usual grace by any means.
I looked it up after the war … seems our padre favoured the King James Version.

The Rising John Gott

Basic Information

In pretty much every RPG ever made (with the obvious exception of WoDs Vampire games and their like) the PCs will purchase … or be given as part of a startup package … some Iron Rations, on the assumption that these will be consumed down a dungeon somewhere. Very often, that is the last that anyone hears of them … except when all the days have been crossed off and it is time to buy some more. For most of history, long life food has indeed been something best not considered too deeply, but for those that fancy the roleplaying colour they might consist of the following:

Ancient/medieval

• Hard tack biscuit and similar cakes and preserved breads
• Dried, smoked or salted meat (jerky, biltong etc.)
• Dried, smoked or salted fish (dried salt cod was very common - if not popular - in medieval Europe)
• Parched wheat
• Dried (or otherwise preserved) sausage
• Hard cheese (often waxed)
• Dried fruit
• Nuts
• Potted meat or fish (cooked meat sealed under a layer of fat or wax)
• Porridge oats
• Flour (for cooking flatbreads and dodgers in the field or for things like tsampa¹)
• Rice (inevitable in Asia)
• Couscous (in North Africa)
• Dried beans or peas
• Pemmican (a mixture of shredded meat and fat, sometimes with dried fruit, much used in cold climates)
• Wind dried potatoes (in the Americas only)
• Sago (mainly around the pacific)
• Dried mushrooms
• Beer (ironically old-fashioned beers were virtually liquid bread and were as much food as drink)
• Sugar (initially as lump or loaf)
• Honey
• Itrion - the ancestor of the cereal bar.
• Clarified butter and other preserved fats.
• Dried curds
• Dried pasta or noodles
• Pickled meat, fish, vegetables or eggs (pickling may use alcohol, vinegar or brine, although the latter two are more common) - some cultures may even partially ferment the food to preserve it (this seems a relatively common approach with fish…).

Some of that can be eaten without preparations (like dried fruit), some must be cooked (like rice) and most falls in between (dried meat can be eaten as is, but benefits from being cooked long and slow to soften it). Obviously all of the above benefits from the presence of a skilled Camp cook - not to mention foragers who can supplement it with fresh meat, fish and vegetables.
Wise explorers - and skilled cooks - will do their best to pack dried herbs, spices and condiments as far as they can (salt is usually a good start) and/or know how to season with foraged herbs … preserving food tends to take a lot of the taste out of it. Some of those substances have the drawback of needing to be stored in relatively fragile (usually ceramic) containers, but unless they are rattling about in a badly stowed bergan that should normally be manageable².

For those in fixed locations, with the right terrain, there is also the prospect of "bog butter" - an adipocere like substance created by burying animal fats or butter in a peat bog for a prolonged period. This seems to have been a primitive way of preserving a high value food stuffs which might otherwise have spoiled.

Drinks in the pre-modern period will generally need to be alcoholic to resist spoiling - although tea, coffee and coco/drinking chocolate can all be kept for long periods. Cordials will also be developed in this period, although to varying degrees of effectiveness.

Early Modern

…all of the above plus:

• Tinned meat and/or vegetables (watch out for lead poisoning in the early years)³ - this may go as far as tinned stews and similar things
• Portable soup (slabs of dried soup allegedly similar to a modern bullion cube, more reputably similar to hoof and horn glue) and the like (the Union side issued a dried, compressed stew to its troops during the War Between the States … this was about as popular as you might expect⁴).
• Jams (jellies to our US readers) and other sugared preserves.
• Condensed fruit juices (as a more widespread version of cordials)
• Tinned fruit (often preserved in a sugar syrup)
• Tinned bread
• Tinned cheese (survived into living memory - in HM Forces at least - in the eldritch form of "Cheese Possessed⁵")
• Condensed milk (again, usually in tins - although modern examples seem to favour a foil tube as a sort of anti-toothpaste)
• Boiled sweets (aka. hard candies)

The above still tend to be short of key vitamins, although the inclusion of pickled vegetables (we're thinking sauerkraut) and the condensed fruit juices (such as the Royal Navy's inpissated Lime Juice and Lemon Rob) help to supplement this. Such inclusions tend to be more a function a better understanding of nutrition rather than new technology, although improved industrial production techniques make them more widely available. Generally the early modern period sees increasing levels of mass processing of food and standardisation (especially in the case of tinned food), although quality often takes a dive to begin with. It still helps to have a good cook in the party (or crew if travelling by ship) and to keep your shotgun handy in case anything edible passes by.

Modern/Sci-fi

By now, pretty much anything can be cooked and freeze dried or retort packaged so that it lasts for years and is still at least edible once dished up.
Tinned and packaged food and dried soup are still common, but their quality and safety has improved massively since the techniques were invented.
The military in particular start to develop scientifically designed 'ration packs' containing the necessities of life (and, in earlier years, comforts like alcohol and tobacco as well) in a more or less palatable form - these make their first obvious appearance in the War Between the States (arguably still "early modern"), but then submerge again until the Great War, after which they become more or less a fixture. Dr Ancel Key's invention of the "K-ration" in 1941 is another landmark in the development of the modern prepacked ration.
Vitamins are also well understood by now and will be designed into the ration, ideally by fortifying some of the more palatable elements to ensure they are consumed - although mis-steps with powdered beverages are common early on (and remain so in some cases⁶).
On land, you have to be very remote indeed to be more than a few weeks from re-supply and if you are in a fixed location (or travelling by ship) refrigeration can keep even unprepared food fresher for longer.
When soldiers and explorers grumble about their rations now, it's more likely to be the monotony than the quality that bothers them.
This is also the era in which the chocolate bar is invented, providing high grade, concentrated energy in a palatable form (albeit one which doesn't really tolerate hot climates) - other concentrated energy bars and drinks powders (which serve to make purified water more palatable as well as adding nutrients) follow in due course. Subsequently the chocolate bar is succeeded - and perhaps in some cases superseded - by "snack bars" containing scientifically designed mixes of nutrients. The manufacturers of these bars often market them as capable of serving as a complete meal replacement - which would tend to make them a more palatable version of the protein item.

Some of the more notable products of the freeze-drying revolution will include:

• Powdered egg
• Powdered milk
• Instant coffee and, more debatably tea
• Stock cubes (seasoning that can also produce very effective instant soup).
• Actual powdered soup

Foods like pasta and noodles can now be prepared, with flavouring, and then flash-dried into a form that can be quickly rehydrated with hot water rather than needing to be cooked, creating convenient, long life foods. Retort packaging also allows complete meals to be cooked and then sealed away in a form that only requires reheating to be more or less edible again years later - once re-heated such meals can be almost indistinguishable from the sort of commercial ready meals in general circulation.

Packaged drinks, including long life milk and fruit juices and tinned sodas are also available to accompany the food.

Where the improvement in standards is cancelled out by the meme that In the Future, Everything is Worse, the Iron Rations may be replaced by a Protein Item. Some modern emergency rations consist of ration bars with a distinct similarity to a protein item.

Animal food

As noted, the above is mainly about food for humans … however, we have also found it useful to preserve food for animals, whether to keep livestock alive over the winter or to keep working animals alive in places where they cannot feed themselves effectively. A lot of what is used for feed animals will depend on their species - dogs can be fed on dried meat and biscuit and herbivores can be maintained on grain, dried pulses and "horse bread"⁷. Allegedly the "icthyophagi" encountered by Alexander the Great fed their goats on fish as well as themselves (although seaweed is at least as likely a food source). The following are also noteworthy sources of preserved animal feed:

• Hay (dried grass)
• Silage (grass preserved by anaerobic fermentation)

Modern long life animal foods often consist of a mixture of more or less dry pellets - colloquially known as "kibble" which are typically re-hydrated to provide a notionally balanced diet for the species in question (although bulk livestock food is often "wetter" and may not require rehydrating, typically consisting of pressed hay and pulses with high energy versions being doped with molasses). Dog kibble is, technically speaking, edible for humans and has been known to serve as a food of last resort. Kibble actually designed for humans is a common feature in dystopiae and tends towards the protein item.

Miscellaneous

Scales of provision are suggested here, in an article reproduced from the Missouri Gazette advising those taking the Oregon Trail as to their requirements in the way of supplies.
This chap decided to live on fRPG iron rations

Sources

The story of the antique tins...
Some Germans selling state of the art "iron rations" … including supplies with a guaranteed 25yr shelf life…
Something similar from the UK, including military field rations and a variety of other PC friendly supplies.
Something rather more basic on general foods suitable for long term storage.
"Desecrated Vegetables" in the War Between the States

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• This is mainly *ahem* flavour … useful if the players ever speculate about what exactly is in their iron rations, or to mark cultural traditions when the iron rations they buy change from country to country.
• If you have a character with dietary restrictions or food intolerances then the content of iron rations may be very important.
• In extremis, your character can also eat (or at least cook with) a tallow candle. Even in the modern era, any candle that appears in a survival kit will probably be made of tallow for this reason.
• If your game has morale rules, you can apply a minor penalty for eating only iron rations too long (or have the PCs start developing scurvy if it's before the modern era). It's not quite as big as the penalty for not eating anything, or for eating the stuff the Lethal Chef made, but still enough that they don't want to spend any longer in the dungeon than necessary.
• Like orcish ale, a taste for iron rations could be a sign of an odd character background.
  • This applies particularly to modern military rations - many of these are actually quite palatable, but most veterans can discuss them at length with one another and in some cases will have a pronounced (sometimes over nostalgic) liking for specific items, some of which may be quite repellent to the average civilian (again, cheese possessed springs to mind for some reason…).
• Iron rations - and long life food in general - is the type most likely to still be kicking about after the end, whether scavenged from the shelves of a zombie infested Wal-mart or found stashed away down a dungeon.
• They are also likely to be found stored in all sorts of fortifications as siege supplies.
• Remember to add them to treasure tables - much fun may ensure if the chest the orcs were guarding turns out to be the tribe's flour chest or contain the chief's supply of cherries in brandy rather than being full of cash.
  • Better iron rations than, say, fresh fruit in a tomb hundreds of years old. You know where Bethesda is…
  • Added respect to the precursors if the food - or even the food production equipment - is still capable of sustaining life millennia later. Of course, what the precursors considered food may not entirely fit with modern expectations.
• Some survivalists suggest carrying a bag of dog kibble as part of a car's cold weather kit. Properly stored it lasts for years and can serve as expedient traction grit or food as required.
• Military grade condensed milk was (and probably still is) interesting stuff - rather than the liquid that civilians are used to, it is a thick, toothpaste like substance, heavily sweetened that can be used as a spread, a sweetener and a whitener for drinks (generally tea khaki drab and military grade coffee) - it can also be made into a drink in its own right with hot water. Often a little too sweet for unaccustomed users, it remains popular with children and those in need of extra calories. Poorly labelled tubes of this material have sometimes been mistaken for white paint.
• When designing iron rations involving unusual preparation methods⁸, contents, or consumers, remember FAT TOM:
  • Food: Decay organisms need something to eat, just as regular organisms do. Low-protein foods decay more slowly than high-protein, and making the food toxic (but somehow still edible) can also preserve it.
  • Acid: Most decay organisms can only exist in a fairly narrow pH range. This is the approach used in pickling, honeying, and fermentation.
  • Time: Another factor that's hard to control. It's mostly important here to remember that nearly everything will go bad eventually.
  • Temperature: While most users of iron rations don't carry their own freezers, simply keeping them outside might preserve them well enough in a dangerously hot or cold environment. Applying heat to kill microbes is also a normal part of most preservation methods.
  • Oxygen: Most decay organisms need oxygen. Storing the rations in an airtight container is the method used in waxing, potting, and canning.
  • Moisture: Nearly all decay organisms need more water than the decay process itself generates. Smoking, salting, sugaring, and drying are all methods for removing moisture.
  • This gives hints at ways that a fictional culture might preserve food. You might, for example, have orcish iron rations made by a treatment with lye (Acid, or rather Alkali), while the dwarves seal theirs in an airtight flask with a length of burning match (removing Oxygen).
  • FAT TOM also only applies to organisms adapted to the same environments as the person eating the stuff. If you have extremophile decay organisms, you may need more exotic measures (but on the other hand, extremophiles might not recognise your supplies as food and/or be non-pathogenic as your body isn't extreme enough for them to thrive).
• In the modern era, freeze dried food appears to be the favourite for long life food, with supplies rated for 25 years being routinely available whilst style retort packaged meals provide easy, if expensive, fresh meals for the adventurous.

Footnotes

1. A Tibetan staple made by mixing flour into a bowl of Tibetan tea.

2. But good fodder for skill botches, bad luck rolls and the like.

3. Lead poisoning is known to have done for at least one Arctic expedition (Franklin's) but if that could be avoided, even early efforts at canning could be fairly long-lived: tinned food from a river-steamer that sank during the War Between the States was recovered in the late 20th century and found to be microbiologically safe to eat (if not very appetizing) over a century after it was sealed up.

4. Officially described as "desiccated vegetables" : the adjective "desecrated" was quickly substituted by end users.

5. The manufacturers had stamped "Cheese, Processed" on the tins. We knew better…

6. For example "citrus flavour" beverage powders, typically fortified with vitamin-C and other supplements) are a common obsession with ration designers and a source of horror for users…

7. A crude form of bread containing high percentages of straw and chaff, often adulterated with milled pulses and generally made from barley rather than wheat - approximately the cheapest form of bread to be had and sometimes eaten by poor humans as well.

8. For a game or a story. Do not try out a new preservation method unless you actually know what you're doing.