Cache Storage of Food

[Scythe13]

Okay guys, another fun one.

As you all know, I'm starting to look towards caches.

The equipment being stored won't be an issue, but food.......there's an issue.

What's the best way to store food for a cache?

Freeze dried, dehydrated, canned, vaccum sealed packaging, MRE's, or what?

[Skean Dhude]

All of the above are fine but the important single aspect is in a cool dark place. No lofts, garden sheds or back rooms really. Burying is really good for OPSEC and conditions but a basement is probably the best available to most. There is a reason most old houses have a root cellar.

[Scythe13]

(17 January 2012, 15:59)Skean Dhude Wrote: All of the above are fine but the important single aspect is in a cool dark place. No lofts, garden sheds or back rooms really. Burying is really good for OPSEC and conditions but a basement is probably the best available to most. There is a reason most old houses have a root cellar.

I'm combining knowledge between my other post, about making caches, and this one about storing food in/for caches.

In each cache I want to hide 2-3 things. In 1-2 of those blue barrels from the earlier post.
1. Would be equipment, like clothing, toilet paper, medical supplies, weapons, books, batteries, torches, etc.
2. Would be food, water, and seeds.
3. Would be fuel. Which would be in the seperate blue barrels NR recommended.

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All the cache's would be burried underground. So the cool conditions wouldn't be an issue. I'd also try and get some of those iron packets you get in beef jerky, to stop oxygen reacting with any of the items in the food storage barrels.

[Skean Dhude]

Be carefull what you mix and match. You don't want your food contaminated by chemicals for sanitation use nor do you want to your weapons near things that are sticky or encourage rust. Make sure they are wrapped seperatly and securely and you don't want all your eggs in one basket either. Someone may find or damage that container.

Plan it down to the finest detail and make a note of what is where.

[Bobby]

Hi Scythe
I've been thinking about doing this myself, but don't know were I'm going to bury them yet. Where do you get these blue barrels from ? I've seen them around farms etc and someone told me the bakery use them, it that right ?

[Scythe13]

Hi Bobby,

Good to see that great minds really do think alike.

I made a thread about best cache storage system. You'd probably benefit from the info it brought out

http://forum.survivaluk.net/showthread.php?tid=824

It also shows where to get the barrels from.

But if you google Blue Food Barrel, you can use that to find somewhere near to you.

[Spandex228]

I once saw the old fashioned sweet jars plastic type for burying and storing food and gear, if well sealed any advice please good/bad idea ?

[NorthernRaider]

(29 January 2013, 23:01)Spandex228 Wrote: I once saw the old fashioned sweet jars plastic type for burying and storing food and gear, if well sealed any advice please good/bad idea ?

Careful, some modern plastic sweety containers are biodegradable.

[Prepper1]

In my old house that had no heating, my stored tins were starting to rust from just being in a cold and damp atmosphere.

Weapons recovered from old buried IRA arms caches were generally rusty, again because of the cold wet damp conditions.

Long term weapon storage i.e.firearms is best done by greasing the weapon in cosmolene or some such heavy gun grease.

Probably a waterproof marine grease may do the job also http://www.bosunbobs.com/en/Unipart-Mari...tAodSREABQ

Best advice is to vacuum seal everything if you can thereby removing the cold damp part.

Weapons of any kind, i.e. knives axes or just generally tools must be heavily greased and possibly have an oxygen/moisture absorber in a void in the vaccum pack so as to absorb any remaining moisture

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Keep in mind water table levels in both summer flood condition and winter flood conditions etc.

Make sure any caches are buried well away from any services, ie water pipes, electrical etc that may be dug up for repair.
Also posts and gates these may also be dug up or moved at some point leading to the discovery of your cache.

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Make sure when burying your caches that your not watched, sounds pretty obvious but...
also make sure you mark the place physically in case you loose the map to its location.
Make sure its something you and only you know is your marker.

[Straight Shooter]

I to am going to make a start on this ....thanks all for good advice