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Prepper Antibiotics

In our last post we talked about the shelf-life of standard prescriptions and how many times a pill that is well beyond it’s expiration date can still be potent and useful in an emergency or survival situation. Today we want to talk about some alternative ways to add the often life saving medication of antibiotics.

Stockpiling medications for emergencies or even a major societal collapse is pretty straightforward when it comes to non-prescription medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen, antihistamines, anti-inflammatory meds etc. These items are cheap to buy and readily available. However, it is not so simple to acquire and stockpile prescription medications like antibiotics which are required to treat infections both small and large.

Having a healthy stash of antibiotics in a long-term survival situation or a collapse of society would be extremely useful – if not vital. Infections will be a major problem in these kinds of situations; for example – take away our power, water/sanitation and groceries; replace with – fires/camp stoves, survival food and untreated water. On top of this, give us knives, axes and guns (which we are largely unaccustomed to using) to chop wood, hunt and defend ourselves and it is easy to see the need to have access to antibiotics. Lot of cuts and stomach bugs…

The question is – how do you prep prescription antibiotics in case of emergency? A pharmacy heist, or trying to convince a doctor to give you a large amount of common antibiotics are solution that will most likely end in failure. The solution i have for you is much simpler – head to your local pet store.

Believe it or not, many of the common antibiotics we are prescribed are also used to keep fish healthy in aquariums. Skeptical? I bet you are, but it is true! Most of the antibiotic medicines used to treat bacteria in aquariums contain just the one ingredient – the active antibiotic, and in many cases this is exactly the same antibiotic used for humans, nothing more, nothing less. The other strange thing is these aquarium antibiotics come in the same common dosages which are used on humans.

We have checked several sources, some of which were created by medical doctors and below is a list of aquarium branded medicines which contain commonly prescribed human antibiotics:

Amoxicillin

FISH-MOX

FISH-MOX FORTE

Keflex

FISH-FLEX

FISH-FLEX FORTE

Metronidazole

FISH-ZOLE

Penicillin

FISH-PEN

FISH-PEN FORTE

Keep in mind that all of the prepper antibiotics above require a prescription from a doctor and usually a doctor will only prescribe a single course of treatment to cure your illness. However, they can all be brought in large quantities from pet stores without prescription. This means you can stockpile these common antibiotics, something which would be impossible to achieve under normal circumstances.

Bottom line– we should probably head to the doctor over the pet store when we have a sniffle, but bear in mind, if things go wrong in the future, we will have to improvise many aspects of our lives, especially our medical care. We may be nervous about taking aquarium branded antibiotics today, but having them in the future could save our lives.

What do you think? Are there any other options or ideas that we missed? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.