Meals, Buckets and Cache

By GS

Individual Meals


The first thing we will cover, is homemade survival meals. This meal should be made now, as time has run out. We can still order, and still have deliveries, but we should plan on them quitting anytime, and the chores still have to be done.

If you can order more food, do so, if not, then pay attention to this quick way to build meals, that will keep you from starving.

I developed these meals, when I was doing major time in the wilderness, and had to cover many miles, and utilize many hours of daylight, for my work. Not having much time for meals these meals were developed to sustain and supplement with wild meat when available.

I dried my own veggies, in a commercial food dryer, and cured most of my own meat in a smoker I had made. I practiced meat drying for ease of storing, persevering, and maintaining the protein within the meat itself.

Here is what you will need to start making your own MRE's,

(1) vacuum seal a mealer (go with quality, and figure about 200$ to get one)

(*) Plenty of seal a meal bags, start with the pints, first, until you get good enough
sealer. The bags can become expensive, so you will have to pay attention to
detail and not make mistakes.
(*) Dried veggies, cut in small pieces, and when drying, dry an extra 4 hours to en-
sure that all the moisture is out of veggies.
(*) Bullion cubes, (place two cubes in each meal)
(*) 25# of rice and barley

When I started making these meals, it worked out about 18 cents apiece, I think now they would be little higher, but still very cheap to make in mass. When sealing the open end, I always doubled the seal to insure they did not leak. You have to be gentle when packing these meals, so they do not loose there seal, but once packed, they last a long, long time.........

Now if you can't dry the veggies, you can go to health food stores, and large chain stores such as Albertson, Winco, etc,... and they have bulk foods, and you will find the veggies there already dried ready to be used.

With a pint size vacuum seal a meal bag, I place 1/2 cup of rice and barley in bags, add 1/3 cup of dried veggies and two bullion cubes and seal. There is your meal, already to go, with 20 minutes of cooking you have enough to stave hunger, and you can throw in some squirrel meat, or fish to get more protein. I always pack my dried meat in another package to ensure nothing went bad. With these individual meals, you can put about 45 meals in one 5 gallon plastic bucket. That could be one persons food for about 20 days and it would weight in about 4 pounds.

I myself have broken down my foods and resealed them in vacuum seal a meal bags, for several major reasons, one, is like supplies you do not want all of them at one place, same with food, if you had 10 1/2 # bags of sugar, instead of 1 pound container, you are less likely to spoil, or loose all 5 #.

You can very quickly put together a pack full of food that will pack well, not spill, or get damaged. I can put 25 meals into my ruck and head out........with #10 cans, you will have to take care in moving them without them being spilt. Remember you will have animals smelling and tracking you. In say 5 minutes you could issue 2 buckets to each person in your group and head out. You can combine these individual meals into one big stew, but there is more positive to making these meals that there is not. And trust me, if you have to get into these meals, or buckets, you will most likely be very happy to each rice and veggies.

Survival Bucket

I had developed the survival bucket or cache bucket in the late 80' working in the field and wilderness of the pacific northwest. Something I have realized, in developing these buckets is they can be used for anything, last a long time, weather proof, can be sealed tightly, and successfully stored in two positions, right side up and upside down, which will be covered in depth later in this essay.

First you want to find a source of free or cheap buckets with lids. Most chain stores who have bakery's can furnish you these buckets on a regular bases. Some might want to charge a little, but that is okay as well. You want to make sure they have no holes in them, a lid with a rubber seal, and a good handle for carrying. Wash out bucket with hot, hot steaming water with lots of soap. Most of these buckets held frosting, so you need to get the smell out as much as possible, to keep bears from digging these valuable contents.
Container distributors are everywhere just check your yellow pages, and when you buy bulk, it comes much cheaper.

The contents of these buckets can be most anything. I would start with placing some of these homemade meals in these buckets, and also put water purification, toilet paper, and matches to make sure there is water, fire and food available.

I have made radio buckets, battery buckets, first aid buckets, toilet paper buckets, ammo buckets, food buckets,......books buckets (how too books) and the list can go on and on.

The one thing you do want to do, and that is evacuate all the air (oxygen) out of bucket before sealing so as not to cause condensation which can cause damage to electronic, medical and special gear.

In all my buckets that I have sealed, and will not open again till needed, I have used an only technique to force all the air out of bucket. Have on hand, in the freezer some (dried ice), once you have placed all that you plan on putting in the bucket (as full as you can get it), place apiece of dried ice in the bottom of the bucket, then place lid on the bucket, but do not seal just yet. The dried ice will create a fog that will force out all the air in the buckets, once that is done then seal bucket on just 4 sides. Wait another day, burp the lid, and reseal immediately, and the bucket will be sealed and secure until you need it. Now you can stack, store, bury, or even place underwater until you need it.

Here is some ideas when you build these buckets, first of all paint them something earthy, anything but white. Also scrub the buckets before painting, with ammonia to neutralize the smell of humans and or frosting then paint.

I would also urge all to make an inventory of what you have placed in buckets and mark them so you will know what is inside without having to break the seal to the bucket.

You might want to rub some Vaseline petroleum jell on the rubber gaskets in the lids. Replace any that is broken, cut or not whole.

Once you get into the field of bucket preps you will see all the advantages of exploring this field and becoming involved.

Now think of all that you could do with all the empty buckets you have now at your base camp................so it has gone from a container, to now a tool, whether it be for hauling water to the garden, porty potti, to storing next years food you have preserved this year.............................

Caching

Cache: to store, hide, keep hidden, when needed, safe for the future

Heck the word cache, means just what it says, doesn't it. The pioneers that first set foot in this country, always divided their supplies and secured them in a cache through out their area of operation. They did this for the protection of their supplies, against man and animal (bear), and with out caching their supplies, it would of taken another 100 years to settle this great land. During the pioneer day in the lower 48 the caches were usually burdied or hung in trees, or in caves or in among large rocks, more to have ready when needed, or resupply their possible bag... and in some cases when they were overwhelmed within their forts and had to escape and evade the attackers they could go to there cache, resupply and escape. In Alaska cache were more to keep the animals out of your supplies, than it was humans, and so they built their cache 12' to 15' above ground.

Cache means an entirely different reason for us in the very near future than what it meant say 100 years ago. Cache for us will be a resupply of items and supplies that can not and most likely will not be able to replace anytime soon.

Here is an outline for what you might want to do, if you was say burying buckets, and the order in which this should be accomplished. Further along in this paper, I will also share ideas on where, how, and when to do this cache effort.

(1) Deciding what you want to cache,
(2) Picking a seal proof container to store your supplies
(3) Utilize your inventory so that not all your cookies are in just one cache, ie: DO NOT put all of your ammo in one cache, spread it out among all of the caches.
(4) Figure where you want to put your cache
Not in flood plan
good digging soil would be nice
Plenty of cover and concealment to allow you privacy to dig hole, or recover gear
coordinate actual placement of cache and camouflage of same.
(5) Actual guidelines for preparing hole. separate topsoil and place on tarp removing dirt to accommodate the buckets or things to be cached. removing displaced dirt from site to attract attention

(6) replacing dirt and top soil and camouflaging site to look undisturbed
(7) Marking the site of cache in such a way only you and your group would recognize the sign that a cache is near.
(8) Being able to find cache in all four seasons, day or night.

Now you have filled and recorded all that you put in buckets, you have evacuated the excess oxygen within the bucket, you have painted the buckets an earthy color. Now you are ready to bury cache. You have located the area you want to cache the buckets. Making sure nobody has seen you move the gear to this site and dug hole, you have spread a sheet of plastic near intended hole, you very carefully take off the first 4 inches of top soil in squares and place the top soil on the plastic and set aside.

Now you dig the hole and all the displaced dirt from hole, you will place on a sheet of plastic as well.

If you are going to place just a single layer of buckets into the ground, so you will need to dig hole about 30 inches deep. Place buckets rightside up in hole very tightly, once you have gotten the buckets all stacked properly within the hole, you now place another tarp or sheet of plastic over all the buckets and tuck the excess plastic along the sides of the hole, to add another layer of protection upon the buckets. Now you sprinkle ammonia, and bleach all around the hole and the cache this will remove all the human scent and not attract all sorts of wild animals,.

You back fill the hole with the dirt you had taken out of the hole, and placed upon the plastic sheet. once you have done that now you can place the original top soil back onto the existing hole and make it look like nothing has been done there. The excess dirt you still have left on the sheet of plastic, you will now need to remove approx. 200 yards from where you buried your buckets.

Now I placed the size of print bigger and changed the color to red, because you need to remember this. From the time you dig hole, till you fill it in, and remove displayed dirt, HAS to be the shortest possible time, to evade all the technology that is out there today.

All that is left is to mark it, so you will recognize it when you return, whether if has been for weeks, months, or even years.

For those who plan on staying in place or within the confines of a built up area, there are many places to cache. Most man hole covers within your streets have a crawl space to store many buckets, the trouble here is, you could only use them after the infrastructure has failed. Burying in the back yard, I know a couple who have built there shelter and rootcellar under their homes and barns with connecting tunnels, with the idea that they will burn down their home and barn upon them covering up all known exit except for the one they have planned on using. the exposed pipe from the plumbing of their house will also serve as a breather piper for them to draw in fresh air. Anyone coming onto this site, will see there is no need to poke around because everything above ground has been destroyed.

Many cities and towns, have vast areas already underground and reinforced. From utility tunnels, to sewer tunnels. You just need to research these things out, or talk to old timers and you will learn much.

The only guidance I would give these people is make your caches small, so if discovered you haven't given your idea and supplies away. Always fill in the hole after recovering cache, so as not to teach the bad guys about this trick.

Here again, the active imagination will come up with cache techniques that haven't even been discovered yet.

Now that you have painted the buckets, you did remember to also paint the bottom and tops, and here is why. I have stored buckets in trees hung by a rope, in my elk camps,(reason bear), but like animals, humans in the woods do not normally look up, especially in mountainous country. So painting them on top and bottom, you have reduced the chance that somebody might JUST look up and see the white bottom of a unpainted bucket.

If you do not intentionally evacuate the oxygen out of the buckets, you can attach a short piece of rope say 3 feet, and weight it down to sink, throw outfit into 20 feet of water, and your bucket will ride safely upside down just three feet from the bottom. Here again if the bottom is painted, even in clear water, the chance of these buckets being found in unlikely. Take caution here in what you place in buckets due to the high percentage of condensation due to cold water. Wisdom is used in situation like this.

My rule is never make a cache bigger than you can carry away when you leave.

Always cover hole back in, and return site as close as possible to before you dug it up.

Where I live, there are many old wrecks and old mining equipment in the mountains, and thanks to the relic and antique act the government passed years ago, it has been illegal for years to remove from the woods. So there is plenty of old rear ends or transmissions laying around, something so big nobody would want to haul it out, but something that would be there after a forest fire. You need to take extra care in picking a spot for your cache, as seasonal change and disasters such as forest fires, flood or landslide, can change the landscape.

If you have an old wreck in the national forest near you, why not dig hole next to it, place your buckets in hole, fill up, and use comealong to pull old wreck over your cache.

Every farm has a dump, and you can bury much under them, and nobody will bother them, not in the short time left.

I even know a guy who buried his cache deep in the sand traps of his golf course he lives next too. He knows what hole he needs to go to, to get something special, good prior planning.

OLD VERTICAL MINE SHAFTS, OLD WELLS, AND CISTERNS

Do not use compass to plot your cache, use natural terrain instead. The compass will not be reliable in the very near future, because of pole shifts. Where I live now, the runway azimuth has changed 23 degrees in the 5 years I have lived here. So use landmarks that only god can move, you can use pace count but learn to not rely on the compass.

There is a section in Steve Quayle's website with a downloadable manual on Cache used by the Special Forces. There is also many other books on cache, but the best cache is the one not thought of yet.

Something that might happen to you, when you are out scouting locations for cache. You could very easily stumble upon one not done correctly by somebody else.

Stay way from grave yards, because many grave yards will be dug up and looted for the jewelry, when there is no law to stop them.

If you booby trap your cache, remember a booby trap is not prejudice, they kill anybody.

There are many things you can do to protect something you want to bury or hid. Just plan on the worse thing happening and you will be set. If the worse happens you at least planned on it, and made arrangements to solve problem. Anything less is considered a blessing from the only true I AM...........




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