I don’t know if the in-game MREs are based off the ones used by the US military (In theory they would be) MREs contain a package that when water is added heats up and cooks the MRE. Which brings me to my point.
In the same manner that sealed jars of food are activated to eat is it possible to make MREs activatable to produce a heated, expire-able food? I know that sealed they don’t go bad (For a long, long time at least?) But once opened they probably don’t last long.
Thoughts?
The MREs I use when opened start to heat up immediately and if not eaten quickly the food will burn inside the heating wrapper.
The wrappers catch fire after use, so I’d assume that you would have to eat the food immediately. Unless over there the MREs are the box kind with a packet of heater.
The wrapper catches FIRE?! That doesn’t sound safe…
Figured you could apply a heatpack to the MREs, you find a bunch in military surpluss stores & the like, took me a while to put 1 & 2 together. Haven’t tried it yet though, but yeah.
[quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:3, topic:3382”]The wrapper catches FIRE?! That doesn’t sound safe…
Figured you could apply a heatpack to the MREs, you find a bunch in military surpluss stores & the like, took me a while to put 1 & 2 together. Haven’t tried it yet though, but yeah.[/quote]
You can, but from what I remember the heatpack is included in the MRE, little brown box filled with a plastic bag that has some chemical powder that reacts with about a 1/4th of a cup of water to heat your meal
Huh, well if it does work, figured it’d be close enough. Could just imagine humidity got to most of them, so the heatpacks one finds are the only ones that still work.
/le shrug
Military MRE’s come with a water reactant heat pack, sealed in plastic twice. I have a bunch of left over ones from when I drill. The also come with a packet of matches. Tea, coffee, or some kind of drink mix. Alcohol wipes for your hands. Napkins. Usually some sort of snack food
spread: peanut butter, various jelly, apply butter, cheese, and jalapeno cheese PLUS Crackers or wheat snack bread.
or sometimes you can luck out and get something decent like combos.
Also some sort of desert: skittles, cookies, mms, etc…
Each and every item is separately sealed even after you break the main seal on the MRE itself.
But that’s all a bit much. So if I were to modify the current MREs I’d try to KISS.
Eat MRE you get in addition to having assumed to eating the main meal:
Matches
1 dose of tea or coffee mix
Chocolate bar
Plastic bag (the MRE’s case)
I have about six MREs in my house that I keep for emergencies. I can have one for a meal if you want some pictures. 
I want pics. 
That actually does sound pretty cool- plug MREs into the same system the sealed meats/veggies you use now come in, and add what you said- meal, heatpack, additional items.
That would make MREs pretty valuable.
I never knew it like that. See, here the “MRE” is more known as something more of a “Dry Daily Ration”. So really, a field ration; filling and not much else.
I’ve seen the MREs with the field heater, and I think they’re pretty cool, even if the food in them tastes awful.
Yeah, the american MREs I’ve had before came with a big plastic baggie with some chemical stuff in.
Pour in water, boom instant heat enough to cook some rats. It gets damn hot, I nearly burnt myself.
The english ration packs I’ve had were pretty nice, but at the time we still had to cook them in a mess tin with a fire, although I’m sure active forces have gotten some kind of heatpack now. Nothing quite like entering a battlezone-- only to have a relatively nice meal finished up with treacle pudding.
Still, gotta remember though MREs can be eaten cold and they’ll still provide enough nutrition.
Maybe have an option to use water on MREs to make them cooked, Hot and more enjoyable?
And remember folks just because the food isn’t to your taste, it’s to ensure a soldier in an active environment gets enough calories and doesn’t end up starving halfway through a firefight. Imagine, you’ve been trekking for hours through some inhospitable PiTA desert, up to your asscrack in sand, your convoy just hit an IED and the natives have been taking potshots at you all day-- I’m pretty sure even the most terrible ration would taste like Ambrosia. Besides, most of them come with Tabasco sauce to drown out the flavour.
…Oh, and by the way, ignore all that. Cold or Hot, that treacle pudding is fucking horrendous.
the MRE being issued in the US army apparently has around 3k calories if you eat everything… you could probably get fat off them if you sit around like me
Fixed.
But on a side note yeah, they figure if you are sitting down to eat you might want some fire. Also it spits warnings like no tomorrow it catches fire. It has a plastic part and a paper part, you flip the paper part into the silvery powder and there is a match x2 inside the powder. You strike the match(es) and throw them in the powder and it starts smoldering. It gets quite hot during and you throw the for that needs heating into the powder and it heats up, you get your plastic tongs and pull it out. Bam! Instant chicken noodle/beef ramen/vegetable soup/nacho cheese. After about 5-7 minutes it catches fire and the label says the fire is safe to cook food over so I did a couple of hotdogs aswell.
Can we get some of the auto-heating (activable) variety for Cata, then?
I can see making a “MRE Pack” item that has a bunch of the stuff that normally comes with an American MRE (which is certainly what you’d be finding in Cata), when you apply it useful stuff shoots everywhere like a pinata.
Yess!!
Good thread Ikarus.
Images as promised. 
MRE - Chili with Beans
Unopened
Contents
Gah! That came out huge… Oh well, now you can read and examine the contents.
Oh and whatever you do… DON’T EAT THE DAIRYSHAKE!
Expected you eating one. Oh well, now we know that there’s a whole bunch more to a MRE.
BWHAHAHAHAHA!
It says “Warfighter”.
Is that joke outdated now?
