This in reply to your interesting "storing basic grains" link:

Pugsley's Alpha Strategy is an interesting guide to personal survival in hard times, if you can still find the book. How long will an unused bar of soap last? (Not forever.)

Of the canned goods matter, I haven't had very good results, as food juices tend to corrode the cans internally. After a year or two, some of the cans begin to swell suggesting microbial activity within.

I work with a wise old Chinese man who lived through very hard times in China, in his youth. He tells me that white rice grown in the US will last virtually forever. Granted, white rice has been scrubbed of some of its nutritients. But it'll keep you alive. My Chinese friend tells me that for long periods of time, in China, people ate nothing but rice and vegetables and now and then, a little shimp paste.

I myself have been buying and storing stuff for years, during this golden era, in which we have lived our lives.

Rice, beans, salt, and sugar are still pracitically free, in the US.

I'm growing supplementary greens in my yard. And I keep many jars of vitamins under refrigeration for possible use.

Fennil is delicious, by the way, and grows all year long, here in Californnia. (It is also plentiful, growing wild.)

One could gather kelp at the beach, although I hear it's not legal for divers to harvest it.

And of course, there's dandelion greens...

I keep bins of water as well as bleach and iodine to sterilize it.

Along the coast, here, near San Francisco, summers ar cool. No need for A/C. And the winters are mild enough that you could squeak by with little or no heat.

Housing has been expensive, but there are now houses going for under $100,000 in decent areas in the East Bay.