It's a good question and it's one that can come into play in hurricane-prone areas, though the blackouts typically don't last much more than a month.
Even if you get all the water out of beef jerky it can still absorb water from the air and eventually become moldy if additional preservation measures aren't taken. I live in moist New England where jerky tends to become moldy within 1-2 weeks depending on the weather even if thoroughly dried if not smoked or salted, no preservatives are added and it is not vacuum-sealed or frozen. Thoroughly drying also means having to apply heat longer (whereas some rawists prefer to minimize the amount heat used) or air-drying for a really long time. I find that using the lowest heat setting (95 F) on my NESCO dehydrator to thoroughly dry jerky produced a product that tasted overdone to me.
"Commercially packaged jerky can be kept 12 months - home dried [and cured] jerky can be stored 1 to 2 months."
http://www.route66beefjerky.com/faq.htmlSmoking and salting would extend the shelf life somewhat further. Vaccum sealing might be the only way to get more than a year shelf life out of it without freezing it. If you have your own power source that you think will still function after the coming Gotterdammerung then you could freeze the vacuum-sealed jerky and it should last over a year.
You could also vaccum-seal dried fruit and raw or dried nuts. These folks claim their super-dried fruit will last 5 years:
http://survivalacres.com/information/shelflife.html. It's stored in air-tight cans and mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.
The traditional way of preserving meat was pemmican (
www.traditionaltx.us/images/PEMMICAN.pdf).They preserved pemmican long-term by putting it in a parfleche (rawhide bag that was also used as an arrow shield) and seal off the top of the pemmican from air with a layer of tallow. Since to preserve pemmican the tallow must be heated above what is considered "raw" temperatures, it is generally seen as a second-rate food at best in this forum.
I don't know how long high meats can last, but I know that Eskimos have reported preferring high meat and stink fish that's over a year old.
Raw honey will last indefinitely, but from what I've seen, traditional peoples gobbled it up so quickly there was never any to preserve long-term. I doubt I could store much honey without being tempted to gobble it up either.
I guess you could read survival articles and test small quantities to learn how long you can make things keep without using preservatives or heating above 104 F (40 C).
Canned foods are high-heated according to Tyler, BTW, and it does tend to taste overcooked.
