Caching Your Goods
Of concern to many survivalists is long term storage of supplies in a safe location protected from both accidental exposure and those aggressively searching for your stash. For this reason, creating a cache (rhymes with stash) of items you believe you will need in a survival situation is a good plan for any serious survivalist.
Captain Dave found creating a cache on a boat is difficult, with
the best option being a variation of the 18th century pirate's
buried treasure. For most land-bound survivalists, however, creating
a cache of emergency goods is less of a challenge, as you will
see below:
There are two types of caches:
These caches can be in a closet, basement, local storage company or other, relatively easy-to-access location. They are normally protected by locks or other traditional security measures and some discretion on your part (you know -- keeping your mouth shut.) The basic stash should include all your survival items (covered in chapters three, four and five). Because these caches are accessible, you can rotate items in and out as necessary.
Basic caches can simply be food, water and other necessities on shelves, in boxes and bags or in cupboards set aside just for that purpose. A lock on the door can keep family members from rifling supplies (when the portable stereo needs batteries, for example) and nosy neighbors or guests from uncovering your preparedness stash.
On-site caches in basements or closets (for those areas such as Florida, where basements are as rare as snowballs in April) are convenient, available in most emergencies and facilitate adding new items and rotating out canned goods, water and other perishables.
Off-site caches, as discussed briefly in Chapter Two, allow you to stash items near your survival retreat. Should you choose a commercial mini-storage unit near your residence, it gives you more room for goods than you might have at home. In this manner, you could keep two weeks worth of food at home, and store several months worth or more in a rented storage unit.
The danger inherent in off-site storage is that you will not be able to protect your stash from marauders (should our system of law and order break down) or natural disasters, such as an earthquake. You must also consider transportation concerns. How easy will it be to reach the 20 cases of MREs you have squirreled away in that storage unit 15 miles outside of town? If the disaster is of such a magnitude that you need them, can you get to them?
Like buried treasure, these caches are protected from discovery by burial, creating secret compartments in walls and floors, etc. To preserve the secrecy, you shouldn't visit these caches more than annually, so there is little or no opportunity for adding or removing items. This means items stored in hidden cache must be suitable for long-term storage, possibly 10 or more years.
One of the key benefits of a hidden cache is that you can store items that may be -- or may become -- illegal to own. You may not wish to give up your fully automatic weapon or that high-capacity assault rifle, but future legislation may be such that you don't want to be caught with it in your home. While Captain Dave does not advocate the breaking of laws, he is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and an individual's right to own a gun, even one with a magazine capacity that exceeds most gun control advocate's IQ.
Coincidentally guns and ammunition are one of the most popular items to be stored in a hidden cache. And why not, when imported SKS rifles can be had for not much more than $100? When specially prepared for long term storage (usually packed in cosmoline or grease) guns can and have been successfully stored for decades. Ammo should be packed in sealed surplus military ammo boxes or sealed in tins. A dab a sealant around the primer is a good idea for those who reload. You can further increase the seal of steel ammo cans by spray painting the sealed can with primer and or paint. If you use colors, these can serve to identify food, ammo and first aid supplies so when you dig them up, you can grab what you really need.
Other items for long-term storage include gold and silver. It is commonly held that paper money will have little or no value after a cataclysmic disaster (plague, revolution, nuclear event, etc.) but that silver and gold will always have some value. Other items with a possible barter value, such as knives or hand tools, may also be stored.
Evaluate your personal needs, cache location and long term survival plan to determine what you need to store. Perhaps a good knife, hatchet, frying pan and tin cup are your choices. Maybe a box of fish hooks, lead sinkers and line is on your list. Use the information presented in this guide to develop your list, but keep in mind that not everything is suitable for long-term storage.
The ideal cache is one that is buried off the beaten path in a location you can remember. There are a number of items sold today specifically for burial. These include sonar buoy tubes and PVC pipes six or more inches in diameter. But it is also possible to build your own storage device our of plywood or other lumber. The tubular design is intended to be buried in a vertical position, to minimize the signature should someone with a metal detector try to locate it, but manually digging a hole two feet in diameter and eight feet deep is easier said than done.
There's nothing wrong with a cube or rectangular box built out of 2x4s and treated plywood. Of course, the box must be strong enough to keep the walls from collapsing, as well as supporting the weight of at least 18 inches of dirt on top. Because a plywood box -- even one lined with plastic -- will not prevent moisture from penetrating, items inside the box must be stored in sealed ammo boxes, plastic buckets or other waterproof containers.
Once you have built your box or purchased your tube, assembled and packed your items for long-term storage, you will need to transport everything to the cache location. While you may be able to make most of the trip by car, you will probably have to trek everything to the site on foot, perhaps under the guise of a backpacking trip (if you are caching your material on public land). Of course, if you have your own retreat, the entire process becomes much simpler. While many would recommend digging your cache in the middle of night, if you pick a secluded enough site, this may not be necessary. Clever camouflage or misdirection can be used to allow you to bury your material without attracting undue attention.
For long term, secret storage, caches should be buried in secluded areas, on ground high enough to avoid flooding, in open areas where tree roots won't be an immediate problem. If you are choosing to bury your goods near your retreat, pick an area where there are metal scrap or junk around that would hide a your stash from a metal detector or an area scan. They have radar and sonar that can identify buried minerals.
If you are using tubes or caches with limited capacity and need multiple caches to accommodate all your goods, bury them in a geometrical pattern. If your caches are buried in a line, 50 feet apart, or a square, finding one cache will allow you to quickly locate the others.
There's nothing worse than realizing you can't remember the exact location of your cache, filled with more than $1,500 worth of supplies.
To prevent your cache becoming a brain twister for future archaeologists,
you must not only pick your spots very carefully, but draw or
mark a map of the location. While you should obviously memorize
the location, storing partial directions in your home survival
stash is not a bad idea. Unless you are hiding contraband, a
complete map should be stored in your safe deposit box. This
will allow your family or loved ones to benefit from your advanced
planning (or at least recover your goods) should you meet an untimely
demise.
While Captain Dave recommends marking a tree or bolder in the areas, painted blazes on trees are likely to attract unwanted attention, and can fade over the years. Carving a set of fictitious initials on a tree, however, will help you confirm you are in the correct location without giving away the store.
To test your ability to find your cache, return to the site two years after burying it and try to locate your loot. You don't need to dig it up, just dig enough to confirm you are in the correct spot.
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