Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Eating 60 Year Old Rations

Steve1989 is a legend among ration reviewers. This isn't even close to the oldest ration stuff he has eaten. The worst/most dangerous in my mind was when he consumed a good bit of some tinned beef from WW 1 - a century old. He also ate one of the very few remaining original Civil War hardtack rations.

He is perhaps the world's expert on rations and survival gear. His collection is incredible, and some of his videos are used by museums as validation evidence. He's also a great guy; I met him at ration fan get together last year. (We ate a lot of rations that weekend!)

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Some of the C-rats we got when I was in the Army ('77-'81) were leftovers from the Vietnam War. They were still regarded as "edible", though that was in some dispute. They weren't good when they were new, let along ten years later. Especially the fruitcake. The pound cake WAS good, though.

It’s easy to heat C-rats. C4....

MRE’s are more better.

The reason you got V'Nam rations was simple: in Nam, we were eating Korea rations.

Yours were NOT C-rats, however. You may have called them that, but C-rats went out with WW-II. You and we had MCIs - Meal, Combat, Individual. They were the last of the canned rations. Everything after that has come in retort pouches, either Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) or freeze-dried MCW (for Meal, Cold Weather.)

Oldest C-rats I ever had were early 1950's, Korean War era stuff in late 1969. Don't recall them as being any worse than the newer stuff. As far as C-rats go, neither was considered great but it beats hunger pains. What's the big thrill in eating 60 yr. old stuff ? Only way I'd try it is if my only alternative was starvation.

Back in 1982, I was stationed in Pohang Korea at the ROK Marine base, CNFK. One day, My OIC LtCol Abare (SIC) ordered me to go with an Navy officer to an earth covered bunker we had full of the MCI's. The LT was a Veterinarian DR. He would randomly select some and we would open the cans, inspect, and I would have to tastes them. I remember them all tasting normal. Ham and eggs were the best, beans and weenies were OK, Some of the rest were like typical crap. God love the Corps, Semper Fi...

It is one of the idiosyncrasies of the US Army that the official responsible for food safety has always been a veterinarian. The original reasoning (I have been told) was that a vet is the most likely to be able to judge the quality of animal meat intended as food. True or not, to this day the Army's arbiter of food safety is a vet - even though they quit slaughtering their mules and horses for chow a while back.

Been there..little green cans in a box dated 1959.. beef and bolders.... i ate them in the early eighties...good stuff the cow a taters were dead and in the can 3 years befoe i was born ...yum.....

That's what I said to myself while watching it.

Cleaning the pumphouse/pantry a few years back, I came across a mason jar of fried pork sausage that I supposed I had canned in 2006 or as the magic marker on the lid said..06. Can't throw that away, I thinks, so I pried off the lid, tink, still good vacuum, smells ok, looks unappetizing but being frugal by nature it goes in a sausage potato and onion casserole. the little flower gets home next day or two, and asked me , what'd you do with that old stuff in the pumphouse? Made it into a casserole, ate most of it. Flower says, how do you feel? Fine, why? Dipshit , you canned that in 1990...lid in the garbage says '90. It was an estimated 26 years old. Not much compared to some of the storebought you guys are dealing with, but...it wasn't processed by the lowest government bidder either.

Fun video hawkeye. Thanks

You can still safely eat rations canned in bottles for the armies of Napoleon.

Before they started messing with the algorithms in 2016, you could google up all sorts of pictures of it. They really broke google.

We didn't have any of that "haute cuisine" in the Wardroom. No wonder I left the Corps

I wouldn’t eat one, it is probably ok but not me!

I miss "Ham and Eggs Chopped". "Beans and Muthas" also.

Now I'm fugging hungry......
Thanks TRH....

Back in 1962 or 63, dad brought home a bunch of rations. I loved those big crackers in a can along with the peanut butter.

Had C Rats in basic at Benning/ Harmony church summer 83.
Towards november we started getting MRE,s
Still got a P- 38 on my truck keys from back then.


Worst ever MRE.


Shrimp Jambalaya menu #22

Everyone hated that mofo.
Even the brothers hated that schit...
Rat fugg box full of main course shrimp jambalaya
No one ever grabbed a #22 main menu for a snack.


Literally
And I mean literally .
A starving dog in a bombed out Mig 21 bunker on the airfeild in Mosul would not eat that schitt.
Give her anything else she would gobble it down in a heartbeat.

More proof that dogs are intelligent.


Had ta be some Liberal Socialist Democrat congress scum that got that crap sourced in their district probably from somewhere along the gulf coast.