One of my favorite pastimes other than “after church services (1)” is calling up a couple friends and/or just loading bogie the basset hound in my old slightly beefed up 4x4 92 ford explorer, throw a camera around my neck and find a jeep trail. I live in the pointy tip of Tennessee, so there are plenty of logging roads and old rail beds in the 600+ square miles of two mountain ranges that parallel the small town where I were’ born. However, I have always felt a bit guilty while bouncing mine and bogies pointy heads off the upholstered ceiling of the explorer, launching high velocity mud bananas out of the tire treads. I would find myself thinking that I should be working at the mission getting it more self sufficient, hanging a piece of Sheetrock in the unfinished trailer home to office space project, or putting some survival goods up in storage instead of indulging in selfish interests. Being self employed I do the indulgent off road instead of working thing often, of course it doesn’t pay the bills, so I am a happy, but BROKE off roader! What’s this have to do with survival and militia stuff you ask? Well, I was thinking the other day while 20 miles away from nowhere "Why not start caching cheap little packages of things to enhance survival?", yes it started out as a guilt buster , but it may be a real godsend and have a practical use one day (God forbid) for myself or friends. So yes placing these stashes would solve my guilt complex (and maybe not too much more) while I indulge my 4x4 fetish for mud banana splits. Even you guys that don’t have 4x4’s could do the same thing in a rural setting, on a bicycle trail etc. I usually throw away perfectly good (M/T) 10-25 pound cat litter containers. These heavy duty plastic boxes would make good durable containers for survival stashes as would even smaller containers like plastic milk jugs for non potable water. (the water could be purified later if need be). I haven’t put too much thought in to what the contents of these goodie boxes would contain, but I would probably stress cheap items. A small five gallon or ten gallon container could easily accommodate a few days worth of cheap (lest it be discovered)food for example. Anything packaged correctly meaning which would mean keeping it dry and away from hungry varmints of the insect or animal variety! A good example in the food category could be a few pound of dried rice and a pound of dried beans bought in bulk, with enough seasoning to cook it. Adding rice and beans together makes it a complete protein. Unless there is a NBC attack there is (purifiable‘) water to be found in most areas around here. Accessories could include that plastic spoon and fork, and napkin from last weeks KFC dinner that you were going to throw away! It may be a good idea to make a separate cache to put OTC meds lotions and or soaps etc Hardware packages would also be cheap. A typical three gal of mine that I am putting together today is (5) Fire starting devices (cheap lighters from the dollar isle at big lots @ .15 ea), one hundred rounds of .22 ammo. About 50’ of good bailing wire (re bar tie wire coated),a space blanket that keeps falling out of my front door (hehe), a plastic drop cloth and a emergency poncho. Just some miscellaneous junk that would come in handy maybe, and if I lost it absolutely no serious problem. The biggest challenge will be to keep an accurate map and to list what each cache has in it. At first I thought a GPS would be wonderful, but then I was thinking that a GPS may just complicate things. It could be used for the high priority stashes though. Just some thoughts. Sorry for the length, I would of put it in a blog, where no one would of read it! So I risked inflicting it on you unsuspecting members here! I hope I have not put everyone to sleep, I just ramble on when I start to cogitate survival issues.... ; }> (1)….I call “After church services” getting together with to some friends at the local outdoor range and shooting as many rounds as we can afford or have time to!
Sounds like prayer time would give some wisdom on this and other questions. First thing in all of my caches is a pocket Bible.
It sounds like you've got some great ideas. If you do stash your stuff, it may just come in handy not only in the face of disaster, but also in the event of a breakdown while you're out makin' mud banana splits ( I've never heard that one before).
May want to nix GPS, EMP will remove the GPS sats and bye bye booty (the pirate treasure booty that is)
I would say the GPS would be a good thing BUT back it up with a good map. A decent GPS will get you within a few feet and in the best of cases that will be touph with a map and if the landmarks have changed in the 5-10 years before you need it (trees grow and die, creeks cut out or change coarse a bit, etc) then it could be REAL hard to find tha 1 square foot container thats burried out in the middle of the woods.
Ok, I finally figured out what the nine hells you were talking about! You mean CACHE as in to put a secret store of goods away.
