Favorite reverse bias protection for battery circuits

[Martin Brown]

Hi Joerg,


<grin> As a kid, I spent a few months living on C-rations (research).
It's hard to imagine doing that for a prolonged period. Even the
"chocolate" was abysmal!

Do you really mean that or do you mean it actually tasted of *real*
chocolate instead of Hershey bars brown sugary rancid fat product.

ISTR chocolate and boiled sweets tins were about the best surviving of
the timed out rations. And even though UK rations are nothing to write
home about the tinned stuff was OK long after its official junk by day.

I am surprised, though, that things *can* stay preserved, canned,
for such a long period of time. I imagine it depends on the
foodstuffs involved, the materials from which the cans are made,
any *coatings* applied to the insides of the cans and the
mechanical integrity of those cans.

Keep the air out and make sure they are sterile to begin with and they
will last without bacterial decay until the seal is broken. US army
reckons nearly 50 years. The contents may degrade somewhat though in
terms of texture and taste. The infamous tinned meat Spam seemed to last
pretty well without changing at all long after the expiry date.

I would imagine vacuum packing something like beans in glass
(or metal) would also have a very long shelf life -- but I'm
not a big fan of legumes! :-(

Some goods tinned for early Antarctic expeditions still exist and are
nominally edible.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Joerg]

Joerg wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote: [...]

BTW, some canned goods were found in 'Old West' ghost towns that were
about 100 years old. Other than loss of flavor, they were supposed to
still be safe to eat.

We had some stuff like that in the army. As for flavor, that was rather
debatable even when "fresh"

It wasn't intened to be 'good', it was meant to keep you alive.

Well, we sometimes had helpful friends around to kill the stale taste.
What were their names .... oh yeah, now I remember. Jack Daniels, Jim
Beam ...

Alcohol is a painful way to die, in sub zero temperatures.

Well, we didn't empty the whole bottle

 

[Fred Abse]

As a kid, I spent a few months living on C-rations (research).
It's hard to imagine doing that for a prolonged period. Even the
"chocolate" was abysmal!

Isn't there supposed to be a time limit (28 days?, can't remember) on how
long they can be used before you have to feed the poor grunts some real
food?

 

[Fred Abse]

Some of the ones I got while in the Army were over 20 years old. When
its -20 to -30 degrees and the only food for 15 miles, you don't
complain, if you want your next meal.

Helps seal you up so you don't need to go outside so often ;-)

 

[Fred Abse]

have you ever tried to dig a latrine in frozen tundra? We had to put
a ground rod through it, which required an oxyacetylene torch to hit the
tip, so the rod didn't bend. Heat it red hot, drive it a few inches,
pull it out and repeat. It took all day and used most of the full tanks
of Oxygen and Acetylene.

At least, if you fall in, it'll go BUMP! rather than SPLAT! ;-)

 

[D Yuniskis]

Isn't there supposed to be a time limit (28 days?, can't remember) on how
long they can be used before you have to feed the poor grunts some real
food?

Dunno, I wasn't in the service. I was 12 at the time.
In "research", the rules are whatever you make them to be ;-)

 

[D Yuniskis]

Do you really mean that or do you mean it actually tasted of *real*
chocolate instead of Hershey bars brown sugary rancid fat product.

I'm saying that as a 12 year old kid, after 3 months of eating
*only* C-rations, there was absolutely *nothing* that I
"looked forward to" in those little green cans!

 

[Charlie E.]

Some of the ones I got while in the Army were over 20 years old. When
its -20 to -30 degrees and the only food for 15 miles, you don't
complain, if you want your next meal.

Like I said, these were EXPIRED C-rats, IIRC, it was 1973, and they
were manufactued in the 50's...

Charlie

 

[Hammy]

Some of the ones I got while in the Army were over 20 years old. When
its -20 to -30 degrees and the only food for 15 miles, you don't
complain, if you want your next meal.

My Father used to get Canadian military rations for me. I used them
for hunting and fishing trips they weren't that bad. They provided
incentive to catch fish anyway's. ;-)

The meat Taco Bell uses kind of reminds me of the Salisbury steak you
get in C-Rats. I ate at taco bell once.

I don't know about US rations but Salisbury steak was just ground
hamburger or a poor facsimile of it smothered in what is supposed to
be gravy.


On the plus side you always got some stale chiklets or a chocolate
bar.

 

[JosephKK]

Isn't there supposed to be a time limit (28 days?, can't remember) on how
long they can be used before you have to feed the poor grunts some real
food?

I'll bet that it is at least 6 months. Of course by then the unit (or
even one determined individual) will have gotten to everything else
available within reach of half a days march or more.

 

[JosephKK]

Joerg wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
Joerg wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
[...]

BTW, some canned goods were found in 'Old West' ghost towns that were
about 100 years old. Other than loss of flavor, they were supposed to
still be safe to eat.

We had some stuff like that in the army. As for flavor, that was rather
debatable even when "fresh"

It wasn't intened to be 'good', it was meant to keep you alive.

Well, we sometimes had helpful friends around to kill the stale taste.
What were their names .... oh yeah, now I remember. Jack Daniels, Jim
Beam ...


Alcohol is a painful way to die, in sub zero temperatures.

Well, we didn't empty the whole bottle

All it takes is one big gulp to kill you. It can freeze the contents
of your stomach and cause a painful death.

That was one of the things they stressed during our survival
training. One moron interrupted the training right after it started
with the statement, "I don't have to worry about freezing, cause I'll be
full of antifreeze". They he threw a hissy fit when the instructor
stated that people with black skin would freeze faster that someone with
white skin and called him a racist. The moron wouldn't believe it had
to do with black body radiation, and the fact that the instructor had
almost black skin. The worst thing was that I had to work with that
drunken idiot for a year. He was SUPPOSED to be a broadcast engineer,
but couldn't make the simplest repairs. He couldn't run the boards, do
camera work or anything else in the studio or control room, so they
stuck him in the film library, and he couldn't even do that right.

Affirmative action at its finest.

 

[Fred Abse]

I'm saying that as a 12 year old kid, after 3 months of eating
*only* C-rations, there was absolutely *nothing* that I
"looked forward to" in those little green cans!

I bet you were looking forward to a really good dump ;=)