Cool Storage of Insulin if Power Goes

[Watchman]

This is something many of us are going to have to address - cool storage of insulin in the event power goes completely for an extended basis. How do you plan to store yours? We're not looking for a "natural cure for diabetes" here but how to store insulin.

[Toepopper]

Thats a good question. After reading about this in the book Lights Out I have thought about the storage of insulin since I take 2 types on a daily basis. Some type 2 diabetics may be fortunate enough to go without using insulin and still survive due to an increase in activity and weight loss if their diabetes isn't severe. Others, like type 1 diabetics are dependant on insulin and must have it to survive.
There are usually people in your area who own a travel trailer. These usually come equipped with a small refrigerator that operates on propane and not electricity. When the lights go out and the electric refrigerators quit working it will become a matter of life and death to keep insulin cold prior to use. Ask your neighbor if it would be alright to store your insulin in his campers refrigerator. Or, you could purchase your own small propane powered refrigerator and have it sitting there ready to start up when the grid goes down. These refrigerators don't use much propane and a 5 gal tank will last about one month. So supplying propane or storing it will be your next problem to overcome.
The next best cooling method would be to dig a deep hole in the ground, preferably into the side of a north facing hill so you can walk into it and store your insulin in a secure container in the hole in the ground. If you can dig a hole 8' into the hill and 8' deep it will remain at a temperature of 68 to 70 degrees even on the hottest days. Covering the hole to make shade will help keep it cool and you can dig the floor at an angle so the water runs out. This would be a crude last resort type of a cooling method and would require much physical effort and exertion to dig with hand tools.

[Watchman]

Well, the whole premise of this forum is to get answers and that is one. Another possibility is using a running stream to keep things cool. This is a theory on my part, nothing else. If we took the vial of insulin and placed it into (say) a baby food jar with very little air space, but some, and tightened the lid.....see where I'm going? The baby food jar with the insulin vial may be protected from impurities in the stream water, placed in a larger jar filled with water to offset the buoyancy in the stream. Of course this method is only one of many possible and will only be practical if you have a stream nearby.

Come on, there has to be many more answers out there. Lets go on one of the worst case scenarios, that the economy crashes and propane is not available, that we are forced back to an 18th century way of life. Think people.

[fern]

I think Toepopper's idea of putting it in the ground would be the best overall approach.

[Toepopper]

That is a good idea, however, here where I live the streams dry up at this time of year and the ones that are still flowing have warmed up, but are still cooler than the ambient air temperature. This is one subject that will have different answers according to where you live. Winter storage is no problem here because it rarely goes below freezing so outdoors or in a garage/shed would work here, but other places in the country your insulin would freeze solid. The higher mountains usually have snow until mid July and up above 9000 feet the snowpack remains all year. The trick would be getting up to the snow pack and back down with a truck full of ice. If fuel is an issue this would be out of the question. If not then you can build a plywood double walled ice box with 6" insulation and place ice in it along with your insulin. Six inches of insulation will keep the ice from melting for quite some time. We used sawdust for insulation in Viet Nam and this worked good in temperatures above 100 degrees. Shredded tree bark is another good insulator from mother nature if no other commercial insulating material is available.
My propane tank will power a refrigerator for about 15 years. I keep it topped off and this system is EMP proof as there are no electronic components to be fried. I will run out of insulin long before the propane stops flowing unless the tank gets shot full of holes. If that happens it won't matter anyway because I intend to put as many rounds downrange as I can before they kill me.
Should the power go off for any length of time, say over one year, either by some contrived black op or an actual EMP attack, there will be a mass die off of humans, the elderly, the sick who are dependant on meds, and the people who are addicted to psychotropic drugs like zoloft and prozac as well as street drug addicts. This is a fact of life. Before the advent of the internal combustion engine and the electrification of the country, the average lifespan of an American male was 48 years and this was due to being worked to death.
Without electricity we will revert to the lifestyle of the 1880s.

[Toepopper]

I just checked and unopened insulin needs to be stored at a temperature between 36 and 46 degrees to keep it from spoiling. Spoiled insulin will have clumps and it will seperate making it uninjectable and uneffective. The water temperature of my well water is 62 degrees. I had thought about placing the insulin viles in a mason jar and setting the jar in a minnow bucket, then placing the bucket down in the well water. This would be better than nothing but will not be cold enough for long term storage.
There is a new product on the market called a portable insulin fridge, designed for travelers to keep their insulin at the correct temperature while on vacation. It can be powered by a 12 volt automobile cigarette lighter or standard 110 wall current. So, the 12 volt aspect would allow you to run this mini fridge off of a single solar panel that was connected to a car battery. Might be worth checking into. You can look for these mini fridges on the web.

[Watchman]

Every suggestion has merit! What I personally am looking for is "when technology fails" and "when we run out of fuel to operate a car" or "when we have no other power supplies". There must be SOMETHING that can be done. Is there such thing as a small solar-powered cooler?

[Toepopper]

Yes there is and they make a small half high low power draw refrigerator for solar power use. In your climate you could build an ultra insulated small ice house in the backyard and use the ice from the winter months to get you through the summer season. Are you old enough to remember ice delivery trucks? How did they manage to store the ice before electricity? They cut the ice from frozen lakes and used horses to drag it over to the ice storage house where they cut it up into deliverable pieces for grandma's ice box.

[fern]

Looking For Permanent Solution to Cooling Problem. Band Aids are great for temporary transportation or storage but we're looking for a non-technological permanent cooling solution. If the internet is gone and stores are empty none of these will do you any good for a permanent remedy.

I. E., if we revert to 18th century America!

[Toepopper]

Look all you want to. In the 18th century people built stone buildings over a spring or a small stream and planted fast growing shade trees to keep the building in the shade to help keep it cool during the summer months. These spring rooms stored cans of milk, cream, cheese and hung meat in that room to keep it from spoiling, along with wine and other spirits. Obviously this approach is not as good as having an electric refrigerator but thats as good as it got back then. So far the portable insulin refrigerator looks like the best chance at keeping your insulin cold but you must have a 12 volt battery and a small solar panel to keep it cold. Lets face reality here, if we are thrown back into the 1800s lifestyle there will be a great die off of human beings so prepare yourself to deal with this.

[Watchman]

I did a good read on these solar-powered coolers. One drawback is that they cool the contents down to 30 degrees cooler than the ambient, outside temperature. Well, if the temperature is 100 degrees then that means the cooler will be around 70 degrees which isn't anything.

I've also been reading medical sites regarding storage of insulin. They all recommend storage at around 46 degrees - do not freeze. We used to keep unopened vials of insulin in a cupboard, in our pantry, which is continuously dark and never higher than about 60 degrees and had no problems. Then we read that all unopened vials need to be kept in the refrigerator with the caveat that they NOT be kept in the door because the constant opening and closing screws up the average temperature.

Hell, I don't know! This is a killer - literally!

[fern]

http://diabetesfrio.com/

The above link is what I posted previously. What is written above supposedly by me...is NOT written by me!

[fern]

I keep mine in the door of the frig but in the butter keeper which is covered. I dont trust the rest of the frig as sometimes things seem extra cold to me. I dont care if the butter gets extra cold!

[Watchman]

The whole point of this post is NOT where to store it in the refrigerator but how do we cool it if there is no longer any power. That is a death sentence and all of us must resolve it! Even if we have a propane refrigerator, if the grid goes (permanent, as in an EMP attack) and there is no longer any manufacturing, how do we keep our dwindling supply of insulin cool?

The length of our life directly equals solving this problem!

[fern]

I just started thinking about what my Amish friends in PA do to keep their foods cool and frozen. I may have posted something about this before...but again i cannot find it.

They had a shed and a cellarhouse that was full of old chest freezers. They glued the interior walls and lids with thick styrofoam insulation so it was an airtight fit. A couple of the chest freezers held ice they would make and cut to fit in the winter but two of the freezers held their meat and homemade bolognas. They placed the ice on the bottom, piled their meats on. They used a second layer of insulation and would keep perishable foods on top such as milk and garden goodies.

They assured me the ice they made would last the entire summer. Perhaps this is a valid method of keeping not only insulin but also food. If you have a basement in your home, this would work well there too.

In my research today, i also found this info:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3683635.html