Try to be clever about tube placement. For starters, never hide tubes in the septic system or sewer. It’s the first place federal agents look! Inside cities attempt to place cache tubes as far from the retreat as practically possible. Every doubling of distance creates four times as much territory to examine. That’s enough that if you haven’t bragged about the cache’s existence: authorities may be discouraged and give up on the project.
Cities are also full of cables, wires, buried junk, pipes, and other metal clutter. Near these obstructions are wonderful places to bury caches in contrast to the country, expert metal detector users claim.
But leaving cache tubes to revisit storage methods and philosophies, I am often asked how one can go about implementing a foolproof storage plan that won’t leave big holes in one’s storage inventory after it is too late to add more items. There is a plan that is something of a Golden Rule of Storage Accumulation, but it only works when there are at least 14 months remaining to crisis time. Survivors in Kosovo, for instance, could no longer make any use of this plan.
Start by working your way through your own basic Rule of Threes. For instance, what supplies are required to implement your own development of three energy, food, shelter, and water requirements? Carefully calculate all the tools and implements needed that can either be scrounged after commencement of the crisis or, more realistically, should be on hand before it hits.
In the instance of water, this might include five or six covered plastic buckets to carry water, five or six plastic tarps to collect water, a large supply of nylon rope with which to deploy the tarps, a wooden carrying rack for the buckets, plastic barrels, pipe, bleach, chemicals to make bleach, filter racks, sand, handpumps, well pipe, and whatever other specific items might be required to run a three-element water enterprise.
Do the same for food. Specific recommendations were covered in the food chapter. No need to list these again.
But what about livestock-keeping supplies, including cages, feed, water dishes, and sources of breeding stock? Some of these should be stockpiled now. What about guns and ammo to collect wild and semi-wild game? Will traps and snares be required? Better plan for these as well.
Energy requirements are similar. Many of us rely on a pipe to bring natural gas into our homes, or on oil, firewood, or even heat pumps. Will there be generators to power freezers and some minimal heat and light? Should large LP gas tanks or diesel fuel tanks be purchased, buried, and filled? Some city survivors have as many as twelve or fifteen 55-gallon barrels of diesel fuel or gasoline tucked away in mini-storage units listed under an assumed name. Burning scrap wood is a fine plan for city survivors, but what about a stove or simple device in which to burn this wood? Are there sufficient matches to last a year or more?
Are portable tents and sleeping bags one element of your shelter plan? Several tents in good repair, as well as eight or 10 plastic or canvas tarps should be placed in storage. Rope, it was mentioned, is always in short supply. Currently it is easy to stock up on it just go to the hardware store and buy what is needed, all to be placed in storage.
Often city survival sheltering is more a matter of preparing for several different possible city collapse situations, and of being sufficiently flexible to camp here and there. This is more important than making a great, long list of needed supplies. After tents, tarps, rope, and a few tools, that’s about it.
All this notwithstanding, there really is a Golden Rule of Survival Storage that infallibly leads to each survivor having pretty much all of the stuff he or she needs for his or her own use and for trade. As mentioned, this plan works wonderfully, but not overnight. This plan involves double-buying all goods, commodities, and supplies in the current scheme of one’s normal shopping. Absolutely every time a purchase is made, that purchase should be evaluated for survival storage and trade potential. When it fits, buy two or more.
In real life it worked like this, just last week, for me. Our shopping list included the following:
• A 2-gallon yard and garden pressure-type hand sprayer. I bought one extra to trade.
• Fifty pounds of wheat flour. A 50-pound bag of flour lasts us 7 months. We already had one extra, but I decided to purchase two more.
• Light bulbs. Always a valuable commodity. I bought a whole shopping cart full, mostly to go into trade goods.
• Freezer wrap paper. I bought two extra rolls as well as five extra rolls of tape.
• Sugar. We are pretty well stocked ahead, but it’s currently very inexpensive, so an extra 25 pounds went in the trade goods.
• Frozen pizza. Probably would be valuable trade goods, but after thinking a bit, I decided I didn’t want to fool with it. Nothing extra purchased.
• Box of wire—one for me and one for storage.
• Ballpoint pens. Always a use for these. One dozen to the office, one dozen to the shelf.
• Tomato and cream of mushroom soup. I bought a case of each to rotate the older cases out of storage and into the pantry for current use. Some of these have been on the shelf for almost 6 years now.
• Gallon can of olive oil. We didn’t have this in storage. One gallon for use and one for the shelf.
• Canned capers—we enjoy these a lot but in an emergency we can do without. Nothing more purchased.
• Fifty pounds of 16-penny nails. Disaster averted, as I just used the last of my previous supply. Now we are back up to 50 pounds again plus 50 on the storage shelf that are only touched in an emergency This reminded me to check other nails and screws. I also bought a gross box of 2-inch #8 wood screws and 50 pounds of 6-penny nails.
• Toilet paper. I don’t know how much of this we have in storage, surely quite a lot. This is always an item that will be in demand. I bought three additional 24-roll packages.
There were several other items that I considered, but they have already been forgotten. Not even the brightest man in the world could list everything without leaving holes. But, no doubt, readers get the idea.
Paying for all these goods is always a limiting factor. That’s why purchasing a little at a time each week has so much charm. Perhaps looking at all this as an investment that will eventually pay great dividends will help. Also, expenses cycle a bit. After being in the program for a time, weeks will go by when nothing extra is purchased.
Other months there will be expensive batteries, fuel, gloves, jackets, flashlights, buckets of soap, tarps, rope, and a million other items.
It all depends on your level of commitment and dedication, and your personal will to survive.
Chapter 10
Trading
Trading is a significant component of city survival. The past 100 years’ experience demonstrates that those who understand and prepare for the process do well. Others don’t.
Our understanding of how we might use trading to survive in the city has changed dramatically. Survivors must be extremely practical people. They absolutely must engage in activities that work, even if it means breaking moral or religious codes. A Moslem who wants to survive, for example, would have to ignore his religion’s taboos about pork if that were the only food around. How do we know what actually works? Again, by looking around us at actual city survival situations.