Storage can also imply hiding and secrecy, but not to the extent of caching. Traditional caches usually contain relatively few supplies. But all these supplies are absolutely critical. These may include a gun or guns, ammunition, silencers, maps, and to some extent optics, radios, and other electronic gear. These last items are much like placing medicine and medical supplies in caches.
Vietnam notwithstanding, caches usually imply long-term storage-sufficiently long that cached electronics gear, glass, and medicines are likely to go out of condition. In France it was often 5 years or more between caching and actual deployment.
Common items in city caches might include a rifle, pistol, ammo. small tent, jacket, flashlight, MREs (having better cache life than other foods), a compass, gloves, and batteries. Some other suggestions might include an aluminum cook kit, rope, magnifying glass, matches, solid-fuel tablets, a pen, paper, and vitamin tablets.
Storage is also for goods over the long term. But storage items generally include goods that are not immediately labeled as contraband, as well as larger quantities of these goods for longer term use. Storage items may also include stocks of trade goods and semiperishables that must be rotated at set intervals. This could include bags of flour or sugar, or 55-gallon barrels of gasoline. But some items, like two-cycle oil, store nicely over the long term and don’t need to be rotated.
Let the record note that both storage supplies and cache tubes will always be compromised in our technological society when it becomes politically expedient to do so. In times past, many of us spent a great deal of effort confusing storage and caching. This led to deep-storage techniques involving carefully hidden supplies sealed in plastic garbage cans. This was both a hiding and preservation technique that would have been more easily accomplished by obscurity, caution, and purchasing more suitable storable items.
In that regard, boxes of medical supplies, sealed bags of dried peas, lentils, beans, rice, oil, and salt can more simply be stored on well-built steel or wooden shelves placed in an obscure but dry temperature-controlled portion of an apartment, garage, or basement. About the only real precaution is to keep these goods from rats and mice and from exposure to casual view.
For the first time in recorded history, rats and mice are controllable. Modern, scientifically formulated rat and mouse poisons allow us to store bags of commodities in the open on shelves. Modern rodent poisons are even taste-tested. Rats and mice consume it in preference to anything else, and mortality in the group doesn’t produce bait shyness.
As mentioned, purchasing cleaned, treated, sealed bags of commodities rather than raw, farm-run grain, wheat, or dried peas and beans takes care of a great many potential problems. All dirt, chaff, vermin, and whatever have been cleaned from these commodities and, rather than dealing with farmers, this stuff can be purchased at the local grocery.
As much as we don’t want to admit it, modern technology makes it possible to find virtually any cache, whenever it is politically expedient to do so. In contrast to World War II and even Vietnam, when modern, super-sensitive underground metal detectors were first coming into use, it is relatively easy to uncover a cache tube today, especially out in the country. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it is dramatically easier and less expensive to construct and hide an effective cache.
Almost all cache tubes are put underground, underwater, or under something. I especially like cache locations under roads. Blacktop and rural gravel roads are especially easy to dig for cache tubes.
During World War II, aluminum cache tubes hidden in salt water were ruined in as little as 4 months: they easily became crinkled, damaged, and leaky, most quickly losing their seal. Currently, cheap, easy-to-use cache tubes can be safely placed just about anywhere. I recently saw one that was kept in a fireplace wrapped in heavy reflective foil and rock wool.
Cache tubes can be made at home using SDR (sanitary drain, refuse) plastic pipe, available in virtually any full-service plumbing shop. In the 4-inch size, there is a heavyweight and lightweight grade. Six- and 8-inch tubing comes only in heavy and extra heavy grades. Because of price and portability, first-time cachers generally try to get by on 4-inch tubes. Eventually, everyone comes ’round to using 8-inch pipe.
An 8-inch cache tube 60 inches long will hold a real load of stuff! Eight-inch tubes hold at least two full-sized rifles, four assault rifles, four or five pistols, and several dozen magazines. These magazines can be loaded two-thirds full, or loose rounds can be dropped in as a kind of packing. Other previously mentioned items such as tents, road tarps, MREs, and flashlights might also go in the tubes, depending on one’s circumstances. Some of these tubes get up around 200 pounds each when packed, perhaps arguing for smaller, more portable tubes. Smaller tubes are not generally considered because of their inability to hold some bulky rifles.
As an interesting aside, the French Resistance generally kept larger supplies of ammo and explosives cached separate from guns. Immediately before use, they were all brought together. It is lost in history exactly why. Perhaps it was part of their security plan.
Heavy duty, 4-inch SDR pipe retails for about $.95 per foot. Six-inch pipe costs about $1.55 per foot, and 8-inch—our most commonly used size—is still only about $4.15 per running foot.
End caps must be placed on the tubes. Cache tubes are virtually always buried vertically. This minimizes readings from modern metal detectors that can locate a ¾-inch steel pipe 35 feet down in the ground!
Once buried vertically, cache tubes are impractical to dig up and use again. Bottom end caps are usually permanently sealed to the pipe with ABS cement. Plain, slip-type end caps for 4-inch pipe cost about $1.50 each. Six-inch caps are $7.00, and common 8-inch slip caps cost a whopping $21.00 each. Top caps are simply slid onto the pipe; no cement is used. In place of ABS cement, use regular automotive grease. Properly done, a positive pressure builds inside the pipe when the cap is slipped on the tube, acting as a deterrent to moisture.
One more precaution before burying. Place a stout disk with a sound piece of nylon cord attached to it at the bottom of the tube. This allows the retrieval of small items that may fall to the bottom.
To bury cache tubes, first purchase, borrow, or rent a 10-inch auger-type posthole digger. In times past, 12-inch hand-operated models were available that made this work easier, but these went with the dinosaurs and family farms. But, by slopping the auger around a bit, a 10-inch auger can be made to work with an 8-inch tube. Renting a power unit that bores true 12-inch holes is also possible.
The big problem with either hand or power diggers is getting down a full 6 feet. Cache tubes must be placed no less than 1 foot underground to the top of the pipe.
Lengths of ¾-inch steel pipe can be used to extend handoperated auger diggers. Most rental outfits have standard auger extensions they send along, allowing for much deeper holes when using their power augers. Boring one of these holes by hand is labor intensive and time consuming. At best, plan for one or two cache tube holes per afternoon.