Heck, messing with garage door springs scare me, so doing the whole hi tension twisted rope thing, well, Trebuchet!
Not sure which is worse really those door springs bite worse than a pit bull.
Don't kid yourself though a trebuchet can still make your day a bad one especially a larger one (pictured is about a 16' arm if I remember correctly which is about the smallest I'd bother to build, it could toss mid size pumpkins about 300') - do setup a decent release system and be careful. Overbuild ALL of the bracing and figure out how to anchor it down well in many directions/places (it will rock and sway in unfortunate directions otherwise). On the one I used we'd crank it down and then clip on a safety cable, setup the trigger, load the sling and then release the winch. Once all that was done we'd triple check for clear, release the safety cable and then back waaaaay up to the side and pull the trigger release to let fly the pumpkins of war.
More practically (and perhaps on topic?
) for food storage I'm a big believer in eating what you store so you:
- know you can stand it (although honestly you get hungry enough and a lot of "can stand it" goes straight out the window; fun facts the big grubs that live in cottonwood trees tasty nutty if you roast them a bit and ants have a delightful tang when mixed with honey or chocolate - I was a trial to my parents in so many ways in retrospect)
- know how to cook it (seen plenty of people stocking up on whole wheat kernels who said they were going to "make bread" oh yeah? - you ever ground enough to make bread by hand?)
- rotate stock
- Actually costs less.. regular food is usually cheaper than special food
We keep a fair bit of bulk food as part of the daily grind just because its CHEAP and its convenient cause we always have something in the house. We use a lot of 5 gallon buckets with Gamma Seal Lids (TM?) to keep it in - the gamma seals are the best things since ..well 5 gallon buckets really
For quick food we keep a few cases of sardines and peanut butter (plus other nuts in the freezer - vacuum sealed and frozen they last years, bought in bulk they're pretty cheap) and some crackers and a bit of trail mix type things.
A lot of the other dry goods are moderately energy intensive to cook (beans, wheat kernels, rice) but there are a few that aren't to bad. Bulgar for instance isn't that hard to make from wheat kernels (if you have a mill) - its essentially coarsely cracked wheat that's steamed and then dried; it can be rehydrated just by soaking and wheat is a relatively complete food (unless you're gluten intolerant). If you have time/water bean sprouts are a good low energy alternative way to prepare beans and lentils are faster to cook than beans so take a lot less energy to prepare. Hemp nuts or Chia seeds are both pretty high energy foods and are tasty in and of themselves and don't really need cooking. Quick oats are delicious with a few nuts or raisins and also make ok cookies in the interim.
Worst case I have about 200lbs of barley malt
and last time I figured the wine/beer stored.. I could at least not care a whole lot for a few months.
Not that a couple dozen MRE's wouldn't be a good idea if you had to bail, but I'm personally not totally convinced they're better than a bag of nuts and a dozen cans of fish.
edit: I see you're already on board with the gamma seal lids