Pro­tect­ing your preps (Secu­ri­ty) is one of the basic five basic sur­vival pri­or­i­ties, and is usu­al­ly one of the last things we think about when it comes to prepa­ra­tions.  One way I have been look­ing at pro­tect­ing some of my preps, is to begin caching them along my Bug Out routes… The rea­son for this is that, my phi­los­o­phy in a SHTF, is that because of the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in north­ern NJ just out­side NYC, I am get­ting the heck out of Dodge.  That said, depend­ing on the Bug Out sit­u­a­tion, I may or may not be able to bring more than a Bug Out Bag with me…  If that is the case, resources are cer­tain­ly lim­it­ed, and some of them are dis­pos­able resources that you may need or want to replen­ish along your route, whether by BOV or on foot.  

So that said, you may want to look into caching some of your sup­plies. i.e. a small­er por­tion of your beans, grains, and rice some­where on your route to a ren­dezvous point or a BOL. I am start­ing to give more seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to it myself. In fact, I am look­ing at mul­ti­ple cache loca­tions along mul­ti­ple routes. This is a more expen­sive ven­ture, but not as expen­sive as it would be in the event I did­n’t have the caches… As a sin­gle per­son, quite pos­si­bly bug­ging out of the sub­urbs on my own to a more rur­al area, I fig­ure I can cache sup­plies such as the below in a 6″ or 8″ PVC tube as long as it is prop­er­ly sealed for bur­ial or hang­ing in a tree.  Thank Scott Williams, for that idea from your book.

Each con­tain­er would con­tain the fol­low­ing:

  1. One 5lb pack­age of brown rice (shrink wrapped with food saver)
  2. Five 1lb bags of dried legumes (assort­ed bags, 1 chick peas, one black beans, one peas, one pin­to beans, etc.) — shrink wrapped with food saver
  3. One .22 cal­iber long rifle, oiled and shrink wrapped with food saver (either assem­bled or dis­as­sem­bled) Pos­si­bly a Hen­ry AR‑7 or a dis­as­sem­bled Ruger 10/22
  4. One brick 500 Rounds of .22 Long Ammu­ni­tion (coat­ed rounds like CCI, because the Hen­ry likes them bet­ter than a stan­dard lead round), shrink wrapped
  5. One pair of BDUs and/or Jeans, Shirt, socks, under­wear, hat, and gloves, shrink wrapped
  6. One, knife, such as a Mora or Ka-Bar
  7. Fish­ing lures, line, hooks, bob­bers, etc.
  8. Stain­less Steel water con­tain­er to car­ry and boil water, beans, and/or rice in.
  9. EDC items such as a mul­ti-tool, firesteel, match­es, lighter, first aid items, etc. Pos­si­bly an exact dupli­cate of my EDC Altoids kit.  (http://suburbansurvivalblog.com/my-altoids-edc-emergency-kit)
  10. Emer­gency Space Blan­ket(s)
  11. Emer­gency Pon­cho
  12. Light Sticks
  13. Com­pass
  14. First Aid Sup­plies and Hygiene prod­ucts
  15. Para­cord

These things should take care of sev­er­al or all of the sur­vival pri­or­i­ties for me:

  1. Food
  2. Shel­ter
  3. Fire
  4. Nav­i­ga­tion
  5. Sig­nal­ing
  6. Secu­ri­ty
  7. Water
  8. First Aid

For me, the eight list­ed pri­or­i­ties are of equal impor­tance if I ever need a to dig up a cache. What might be miss­ing would be a pis­tol that can share the same ammu­ni­tion as a rifle for some added secu­ri­ty. This cache finan­cial­ly would run me approx­i­mate­ly $350.00 — $400.00 each. Not inex­pen­sive if you are caching two or three sys­tems, how­ev­er, cheap if you need them.

10 pounds of dehy­drat­ed beans and rice would last me at least a week, and I am sure I could pick up a squir­rel, rab­bit, etc, along the way if need­ed… Small game is the way to go if you are Bug­ging Out and much more acces­si­ble if hoof­ing it.

If you already have the sup­plies, then it costs you time, and pos­si­bly the replace­ment of some of the items you are going to cache…

On the flip side, if you don’t “need” them and you pick one or two of them up along the way, you have increased your resources as well as may have some barter items for the future.