These are the Only 5 Amazon Dash Buttons You Need to Survive
For a certain amount of time, at least.
Earlier today, Amazon added 80 brands to its Dash program, which gives you a garage door opener-sized button to stick anywhere in your house that orders and ships a product directly to your door with one press.
The jokes about never leaving your home are coming in fast, especially with the totally weird lineup of things you can buy with Dash buttons — including condoms, luxury pet food, and scented candles. And, in all fairness, Dash buttons are hugely convenient for getting household products that it’s always a struggle to find time to buy — tapping a button when the toilet paper is getting low is a lot easier than forgetting to buy fresh stock for a week straight and then having to call for help through a closed bathroom door. But can you actually live off of stuff you can buy with Amazon Dash buttons?
Turns out, technically you can. We’re not recommending this, but if in some hypothetical situation you’re trapped inside your home with only the internet of things to keep you alive, these Dash buttons will at least provide you with enough food, water, and basic household supplies to hold out for a while, even if you do have to live off of rice pilaf and energy bars.
1. FOOD: Near East Products or Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
Click this for mass-produced vaguely-Mediterranean carbs.
You need carbs to survive. Or maybe you don’t, because you’re one of those weird paleo crossfit types, but look, beggars can’t be choosers in the world of online-shopping-apocalypse-planning. If vaguely-healthy rice pilaf and couscous isn’t your thing, you can go for the Kraft Mac and Cheese.
2. FOOD: Slim Jims
We're not in the business of judging people, but outside of this hypothetical scenario, who needs a steady Slim Jim supply this badly?
Again, you’ve got two choices here. You need protein to survive, but you can either be a questionable-meat-eating Slim Jim fiend or go full bodybuilder and order a shitload of Whey Protein. Your call, but nobody likes the person who brings their weird blender bottle with the slinky in the bottom of it to the office.
3. WATER: Smartwater
This is what the Smartwater button looks like.
Let’s say in this situation the tap water in your home doesn’t work/ is undrinkable. Fortunately you can buy six liters of Smartwater for only $10.44. You should probably save that for drinking, as showering is going to get really expensive, really fast.
4. BEVERAGE: Vitamin Water
This is the Vitaminwater button. It looks like the Smartwater button, but it says vitamin instead of smart.
You can swap this out for any of the other myriad of beverage options, but at the risk of sounding like a Glacêau shill, we’d recommend Vitaminwater. Again, it’s not cost-effective at all, but if you want to prevent scurvy you should probably ingest some vitamins on top of your diet of rice pilaf and Slim Jims.
5. SANITATION/ HOUSEHOLD: Seventh Generation
This should meet all your cleaning needs, if you're even bothering with that sort of thing.
Look, we didn’t say this would be a comfortable way to live. Still, Seventh Generation’s button can be tweaked to order most of the household products you need to keep yourself somewhat sanitary. There are a lot of other brand options for household products, but after some cursory research Seventh Generation seems like the best option to buy soap, toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, paper towels, and the other various things you would need to keep your body from becoming a cesspool Slim Jim-infused horrors.
All of these should keep you going for a while, assuming you don’t get sick, injured, or the desire to eat anything that doesn’t come out of a box. Again, we don’t recommend this. This is a bad idea. But if you decide to try it, please email us and tell us how it went.
