This is how it works. You carefully select some survival items, put them into a bucket or any conatainer that can be sealed shut, and bury it somewhere hidden from other eyes.

In emergency , you may retrieve it or use it where it is to make shelter. It is good if you are caught unprepered or only have your humble PSK. However, I when I skimmed through th eother thread about shelter or the hills, I can see that a cache can help there too. You hide your things, and go to the shleter. Nothing on you that deserves to be confiscated or looted. If you deicde later to go on your own, or the shelter is no more hospitable for some reason, you head to your secret location, retrive the cache and try the hills.

I think about 3 years ago there was a member here who talked about hiding things in 5 gallon paint buckets all over the place.

I mean sounds like a good idea except that it is not very practical in the city. This would be more of the suburbs or country side deal.

Now my biggest worry would be how the items are going to perform after being underground for a while.

One immediate problem, in at least a third of the country, is that for part of the year the ground is frozen, and that time of the year is when emergency items are most likely to be needed.

If you could, it sounds like an outdoor basement would be the best idea. You could still access it in winter, but it would also be visible too. Even if you hide the entrance, the temperature difference inside the basement would probably cause snow and ice to melt quicker above it, thus revealing its' location.

In Florida, this is impractical because of our high water table (don't worry though, in about 20 years, the booming population will suck every last drop out of the Florida aquifer, and our landscape will look like a teenager with really bad acne. Or maybe not).

Plus, it tends to get REALLY REALLY wet here. That tendency is increased in some years between June and December.

You might be better off storing it in a Self Storage Area, I don't think those got looted. Who would put a 72" plasma screen in self storage? Let alone anything truly valuable?

When was the last time any of you had a dog house burglarized? IMHO something like the Dogloo (you can Google this term), or even something you build yourself, has an attraction as a cache on your own property. 1) not apt to be lost in a fire or earthquake 2) you can make it as insulated as you want 3) if you don't own a dog, you can borrow a few dog toys and a bucket of dog poo as camo.

Don't forget to rotate your stock <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

If you dig below the frost line, and ensure that your container is properly sealed, no problem... batteries, water, or anything else that doesn't have a long shelf life aren't good candidates for caching.
Nobody ever said it was easy <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Troy

How are you going to get at them in February? I'm guessing a backhoe will attract some attention.

Too big of a hole and too long to build, everybody'd know it was there. The whole idea of a cache is privacy/secrecy, if your neighbors know about it, you've blown it.

Troy

Good idea, but go one better, bury it under the dogloo, get a big mean looking dog to live in it, and you've just added a certain amount of security to your cache as well.

Troy