Cacheing Kit.

[River Song]

<2c>

Food will initially IMHO be controlled from the National Strategic Reserve Food Stockpile.
Only when things start going downhill from there, will TPTB use emergency powers to make 'hoarding' illegal. By which time, you should have LONG ago have cached.

[Lightspeed]

Mort's right we have gone off topic.

Caching bulky kit is impractical.

Behind a carefully groomed(?) veneer of dilapidation, our strategy is to hide bulky technical items in plain view. We're lucky having barns and animal pens and these have vast lofts in which stuff is stored, looking very much like junk and rubbish ( which much of it is) but we know what's up there and where it is. These buildings are all within the defendable perimeter, so are not too susceptible to opportunist thieves.

Working on the assumption that raiders, like thieves, want a quick in and out, we hope they would not want to waste time sifting through these piles of apparent junk.

[Midnitemo]

raiders will be looking for supplies mostly not equipment...they've chosen the aggressive route not the passive one and eventually there luck will run out....live by the sword die by the sword

[bigpaul]

raiders will be looking for food mostly, by this stage they'll be going hungry as they haven't prepped themselves, so I don't think they'll be looking for my emergency fishing kit or my red dot sight!

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RS: "National Strategic Reserve Food Stockpile" ?? my immediate thought is, oh you must mean the supermarkets? cant find any reference to this online, have you any information??

[TOF]

The point has been missed again.
Let me give you a for instance. You are part of a team charged with going house to house, most people have a few days' worth of food and little else, you carry on. Then you come accross a property again with a few days food in the cupboards, but there is a wealth of fuel, camp cookers, jam jars a big old preserving pan and other equipment you recognise. Your interest is piqued, you take a closer look, there's a few weapons, some quality gardening tools, fruit and veg growing in the garden. The lack of foodstuff in the cupboards and what you are seeing in the kit department doesn't add up. What would you do then? go on to the next house, or get the boys in and look in every nook and cranny? It wouldn't matter if it were a group of Officials or a bunch of opportunists if the evidence is there, and they can recognise what they see, you could end up losing everything. That is what I'm talking about, where to put the kit that could give away you have more than you would like to be believed, not losing the kit itself.

[bigpaul]

I'm sorry TOF, but I really don't think a house to house search will EVER happen, first of all the population wont stand for it, its not WW2 where the population meekly did as it was told, we have a more belligerent population these days and the result will be riots, the autumn riots a few years ago will be tame by comparison. hide your stuff from obvious sight by all means but I wouldn't get paranoid about it

[Midnitemo]

then you need to cache your equipment when not in use...major hassle having to retrieve and set up everytime you want to use it but i see no other choice

[Scythe13]

Although it's a huge amount of effort, there is always the option of building a false wall. If you have a chimney breast in the house, it'll be simple enough to 'wall' over the sides and make it smooth. You could fit a fair bit of gear in there.

In regards to other equipment, I think that if you have spares at your BOL, your best bet is to destroy or hide everything. For example, you could always pop a dehydrator and the alike into the boot of your car or sit it up in the loft. But that still leads the possibility of it being found. A false wall in a shed would be simple enough to do. That way it can be broken into and still be secure. Aside from that...I really don't know.

[Mortblanc]

There is always the concept of "hiding things in plain sight".

It is a valid method for some gear. Instead of a digital camo BOB in the closet use the commercial backpack. Commercial gear is for camping, military gear is for resistance fighters. Everything should be as nonthreatening and non-tactical as possible.

Lanterns and paraffin lamps can be set around as decorations. Much of the equipment we repurpose from the "old days" is good for decoration as well as survival use. I use much of my gear on a daily basis, and overuse it during camping season. Anyone else around here own a 36 cup enamelware coffee pot to sit over the campfire?

There is also the likelihood that none of the twenty-something search crew will know what a dehydrator, pressure cooker/canner, water-bath cooker or a Mason Jar is. When would they ever have seen one?

That also goes for most of the cooking gear. In a world of take out, fast food and pop-and-peel cans how many people know what a preserving pan is? Or a can opener, jar rack or a canning lid?

In contrast, they will know exactly what an aqua-phonics garden is as well as any indoor grow area or greenhouse. They will also immediately spot a wind turbine or solar panels and battery banks, and I am sure TPTB would want them ripped out and brought to headquarters.

This is also a case where your allotment plot being separate from your home is a plus, unless someone is following you from the veggie patch to home.

It will not work for everything, but it will cover some of the gear with an excuse for existence in the absence of any end product.

There is also the old standby of "lieing like a dog". Someone else already stole it all, I was transporting it to the country and it is all in a car abandoned on the roadway, or the favorite of all American gun owners, "I was duck hunting and the boat capsized and all my guns were on board!"