How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [39]
• One outdoor solution is to find a used, out-of-commission chest freezer. Cut off the power cord. Cover any internal vents with sheet metal. Paint the exterior with flat brown enamel spray paint. Cut or buy a cord of firewood and stack it around and on top of the chest freezer. The same technique can be used if you have a hay barn—use either hay or straw bales. Or you could buy a few hundred used bricks and make it look like a pile of used bricks. And you would of course paint the chest freezer in flat green, flat tan, or flat brick red, respectively.
• Another outdoor solution is to buy an older, used pop-up camping trailer. For some reason, burglars tend to ignore these, whereas they will often break in to traditional hard-wall camping trailers. Pop-up trailers have a remarkable amount of room inside, especially if you remove the seat cushions and mattress pads. If you pay very little for the trailer, you can even go whole hog and rip out the interior cabinets, sink, etc.
• If you have a basement or storage room, you can also use hide-in-plain-sight (HIPS) techniques. One of my favorites is to obtain a lot of used, sturdy cardboard boxes with slip-top lids—such as the type used to ship reams of copier paper. Label them in prominent Magic Marker with things like “Baby Clothes,” “Infant Toys,” “National Geographic Magazines,” and so forth. Fill those boxes with your storage foods (in vermin-proof containers). Pile all of those boxes up against a wall. Then add a layer of camouflage boxes, containing actual worthless junk. If a burglar opens one of these, he will most likely not dig down to the successive layers of boxes.
~ Use your imagination. Craigslist (craigslist.com) and Freecycle (freecycle.org) can probably provide you all the storage containers and camouflage items that you need, for very little money. Many of the items that you’ll need can be found “free for the hauling.”
When planning your concealment strategies, keep in mind that a burglar is a man in a hurry. In most cases, he won’t take the time to go through everything.
The Best Way to Stock Up on Food at the Eleventh Hour
Waiting until the eleventh hour to stock up on canned and bulk foods is not recommended, but if your circumstances necessitate it, then consider it a calculated risk. Don’t hesitate once you see the first warning signs. You have only one day to shop before the hordes descend and strip the stores clean. However, instead of making these purchases at a supermarket, I recommend buying at a membership warehouse store (such as Costco or Sam’s Club). Buy a store-membership card and scope out the store in detail, well in advance.
The case lots that big-box stores sell, combined with the large flat cargo carts that they provide, make large-volume procurement much more efficient than shopping at a typical grocery store with individual cans and small boxes piled into a standard shopping cart. One of the Costco cargo carts—piled up with case lots—can carry the equivalent of about eight full grocery carts. You can buy a lot of food in a very short period of time, and get better prices to boot, at a place like Costco. Items like jerky, batteries, and bottled water will sell out first, so make those your first stops. With proper planning, you could buy everything in less than two hours.
Old Storage Food
Some folks write me who put in supplies twenty years ago, or even inherited preparations from relatives, asking if those supplies are still any good. Some items, such as salt, will store for centuries as long as they are not contaminated by the rust or decay of their containers. If stored dry, hard red winter wheat still retains 98 percent of its nutritive value after twenty years. Ditto for sugar and honey. Most dehydrated foods, however, such as