Amazon and Costco are selling emergency kits that can feed a family for a year — and it reveals a disturbing new normal in America

pulse

March 9, 2018 8:31 PM

2017 was a record year for losses to natural disasters, and experts say things could get even worse.

Amazon and Costco are selling emergency survival kits for up to $6,000.
The kits are designed to help families survive disasters that last a matter of days to as long as a year.
2017 was a

Americans preparing for anything from a hurricane to "an emergency of Biblical proportions" can find what they need to survive on Costco and Amazon.

The retailers are selling a variety of emergency survival kits, some of which can feed a family of four for up to a year.

Options at Costco include a $5,999.99 kit containing 600 cans of food designed to to feed four people 12 months, based on a per-person diet of 2,000 calories a day. Costco'scheapest kit,at $999.99, contains 96 cans and can feed one person for a year on a diet of 1,200 calories a day.

The kits contain freeze-dried broccoli, green beans, corn, dehydrated apples, and other grains and proteins that have a shelf life of up to 30 years.

Some experts say the record-high rates of natural disasters represent a new normal.

"Some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come," Torsten Jeworrek, a board member for the reinsurer Munich Re, told The New York Times in January.

"Our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often," he added.

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