JD Meier wrote today about not saving the worst parts until last, and it reminded me of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs).  I should probably lay claim to being the Northern Virginia Master of Obscurisms right now while I have your attention, but let me elaborate for a minute.

A case of MREs is 12 individual meals.  That means that one person can, by the book, live off one case of MREs for 4 days assuming that they eat 3 times/day.  That’s a little excessive, since most people can only eat 2/day because of time constraints.

Inside a case of MREs, there are 12 individual meals.  Some are decent, like spaghetti or tuna with noodles.  Some are not, like omelette with ham or corned beef hash.  Keep this in mind, we’ll be using this little kernel of knowledge later.

So imagine this:  You’re out in the woods for 2 weeks with just your 5-member team and your MREs.  Let’s do the math on what you’re eating:

5 people x 14 days x 2 meals per day = 140 individual MREs or roughly 12 cases.

Now inside each case of MREs there are 2 foul-tasting MREs (omelette and CBH), which means 24 of them total.  If the muldoons eat their favorite MREs first and work down the cases in order of most favorite to least favorite, then the last 3 days we are eating nothing but omelette and corned beef hash, and after being in the woods for 2 weeks, I just can’t bear it anymore.

Bad news does not get better with age.  Neither does the MRE selection!

Moral of this story:  Take the MRE that I throw at you and don’t read what the label says, it’s the luck of the draw.

Secondary moral of this story:  You can’t store up badness and expect to tackle it later.  You have to take it as it comes.

Tertiary moral of this story:  Don’t join the army or work in IT. =)

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