PSA: Fear porn? No Sale.

h/t Odd Job

I just left the ER. Where I work in Greater Southern Califrutopia.

We are officially far from being crushed by COVID. We're mainly annoyed at the stupid fuckers who keep spreading it, as if it just "went away" or something. Our COVID tents are going back up, to keep dipshits who know they have an active symptomatic case of it from walking inside and hanging out with family members before they think it's important enough to tell us this. (After the first five times you have to decon the entire waiting room and triage area, it's just not funny anymore). And we've gone back to full N95s all the time, within the ER, because of the recent spike in herd stupidity.

COVID is making a small comeback; nothing like last December/January when we WERE being crushed by it. We just got our first cases since February, starting about two weeks ago. And one jackass employee who came to work sick, and exposed an entire department to it, instead of taking sick days. Not all fucking morons who come to the hospital, and deserve to be clubbed about the head and shoulders with table legs until they bleed from their ears and eyes, are the patients.

Our ICU is half-full, because half the nursing staff left or quit after COVID 1.0 due to workload burnout. So half the beds are full, with the normal ICU patients (intubated, post-surgical, heart attacks, strokes, major trauma, etc.). The other half are unstaffed, nightly, because we can't find replacement ICU nurses at anything less than exorbitant rates, so they are unusable beds. AFAIK, we don't have a single COVID patient in the ICU, but if we did, it wouldn't be more than 1 or 2. The bigger problem is that this backs up ICU patients into the ER for days on end, and so new patients can't get in for hours, even for serious problems.

Our new COVID cases are about a 50:50 split between fully vaxxed, and totally unvaxxed.

That's the difference between reality on the ground, and bots and idiots spreading CDC b.s. talking points on Facecrack and other socialist disinformation websites.

And BTW, to date, the "Delta variant" doesn't mean Jack or Shit to us.

You either have active COVID, or you don't.

You either have it bad enough to need hospitalization, or you don't.

(The latter would mean "COVID hypoxia so bad you can't go home without oxygen", FTR.)

Anything else is officially in the IDGAF file, pretty much in perpetuity.

If this changes, I'll pass along updates.

h/t Peter

(For those who missed it 50+ times in the comments here and multiple other sites, I'm not vaxxed, and don't intend to be in any foreseeable future. I won't be a beta-test guinea pig for an experimental not-a-vaccine, with questionable safety, and no liability to the makers. And even if they put skin in the game - which none of them have, to date - I can't sue anyone if I'm dead. N95s and hand washing got me through the last 18 months with frothing fulminant COVID patients at halitosis range just fine; I see no need to change course at this point, come hell or high water. When someone makes an actual vaccine, with absolutely the same level of safety as a flu shot, or tetanus booster, that isn't a frankenvirus DNA experiment, we can talk. Until then, pass the hand sanitizer, and stay your sick ass over there please.

And for the Just-The-Flu-Bro morons who keep pimping that monumentally jackassical level of stupidity, a relatively pissant 1.6% CFR rate (only 16x worse than annual flu) among the almost 4M Califrutopians (i.e. 10% or so, no more) who ever contracted it means, that while 98.4% of those who did, didn't die, the over 60,000 who did is more deaths, in a year and change, just in Califrutopia, than all US deaths in the Vietnam War, from 1954-1975. It's not "just the flu, bro", it's "Just The Vietnam War, every year, bro". If that cluebat of reality upside the head isn't enough to put it into proper perspective for you, you're really too stupid to be on the internet without adult supervision, aren't you? And the pat you're about to get on the back won't be anything like what you thought was coming your way.)

Run and hide? FUCK NO.

Just stop being stone-IQ fucking morons about what's really out there.

And stop acting shocked and butthurt when TPTB use that Reality to go Miles Beyond Full Retard to ratchet up Tyranny, like they have, like they will.

It's what they do.

Tell them to fuck off with that shit.

If they won't listen, shoot the sumbitches in the face until they do.

(It was amazing how reasonable the Nazis got when we took their whole country away, wasn't it?)

So maybe more of that, and less Coronatardation and Covidiocy about kooky black helicopter chemtrail theories, please. If reality hurts your head, that was the 2x4 hitting the back of your skull a few times.

Pay attention faster next time.

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

 

Sunday Music: Jane's Getting Serious

 

As a record producer with a ton of great albums under his belt. Jon ("Don't Call Me Rick") Astley, Pete Townsend's brother-in-law when this charted in 1987, became an '80s one-hit wonder when this quirky but fun little number snuck onto the pop charts, so everywhere in the US it was even snagged as the soundtrack for a Heinz ketchup commercial (with then-nobody Matt LeBlanc). Liked the tune, loved the music video. Back-up apes? Genius.

"When We Hang The Capitalists, They Will Sell Us The Rope..."

 

Mr. Anchovy and Survival's Dirty Little Secret

 

Bourne/Bond Corollary:

Go to Zero's place. RTWT. Watch him crush all the Walter Mitty survivalist fap fantasies in a 20-ton shop press of Reality.

And then, watch the whole skit, for entertainment.

The fact that it's survival truth is just icing on the cupcake.

(Supermodel not included.)

Rifle of Color Coffee Company Redux

 

Nuremberg Defense 2.0

See  previous comments.

"I'm smart enough to run a multi-million-dollar nationally-known company, and I'm conservative, - no, really, cross my heart - but as God is my witness, I didn't know the NYSlimes might bend someone's words."

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Pull the other one; it's got bells on it.

I'd advise the execs at the company to start drinking heavily.

Nuremberg Defense 3.0, 20:1 odds: press release tells us CEO Hafer is going into Stupidity Rehab, to come out sheep-dipped in 30 days, and certified 99 44/100ths Stupidity Free.

As if.

Fire CEO Hafer. Publicly, and for cause. He's either too stupid to be in charge, or actually evil. Probably both. Like Dubbya, he's only a gift to conservative bloggers and late night talk show monologue writers.

Force him to put his shares into a blind trust, and relinquish control of the company for 10 years, if not forever. Bring in someone completely untainted in his stead. Have them loudly proclaim their conservative bona fides 24/7/365 forever, starting with calling out Biden's electoral fraud in such a way that the enemedia has no choice but to blacklist them as hard as they did Mike Lindell and MyPillow. Then double down on conservatism. Until CNN, PMSNBC, Rachel Madcow, and the witches' coven at The Spew hate your guts and want you dead, you're not trying nearly hard enough.

Or else admit the charade, fold your tent, and go sell shovels to shit miners.

There's no other way out of this tar baby for them. And the sooner they quit flailing at it, the better off they'll be.

The Chicago Way

 h/t to Odd Job, who's been just killing it lately with these two:

Which leads to the following three items:

And the money shot:

So how much, and for how long, are you prepared to let TPTB rub your face in shit, and hold it there, before you'll do anything?

That's the $1M Question of the age.

Government Spending We'd Like

We read that the DemoCommunists want to fund a Civilian Climate Corps to combat globull warmism.

Yet all is not lost.

Provided the program proposes to collect up 50,000-100,000 of the most strident of the deluded Chicken Little kooks still preaching that unmasked con-job, and send them with buckets of water to the Sun via rocket ship, we state for the record that we will sign their petition, purchase their newsletter, and march in their parade the day the first hundred or so are duly launched into space for a rendezvous with the morning sun. Will further pledge to add a 10% sweetener to our stipend for the program provided they live-televise the crews' arrival at Sol to begin work to combat rising planetary temperatures at the source. The planetary IQ hereabouts would go up 5 points a shipment, indefinitely.

We also wouldn't mind if they referred to it as the Civilian Climate Corps Program, officially.

The acronym CCCP is manifestly appropriate for anything to do with such Leftarded hogwash.

Weapons Caching

 

If you can do this, do this.

As a follow-up to the previous cache guidance, the topic of weapons comes up. And it should.

Firstly, I would never keep everything of any category I owned all in one neat package.

We all know

Two is one, and one is none.

But it's also true that five or ten is really spiffy. And thirty or forty is quite a party, if you have the means.

Anybody with enough Glock pistols and AR rifles, plus a basic load of ammo, to pass out in quantity is going to become the captain of the local pipehitting team in short order, if things go all the way to sporky.

And twenty guys shooting one rifle apiece is waaaaaay better than one guy trying to shoot twenty rifles at once.

But we're not going to rehash or rewrite the book on weapons caching here.

You should download it yourself:

TC 31-29A: Special Forces Caching Techniques

And this one too:

Modern Weapons Caching by Ragnar Benson (1990)

And, obviously, if you can squirrel away a buried 40' conex container with a Ma Deuce, M79s, and full auto weaponry in quantities to arm a battalion task force, without doing hard time in the federal lock-up, by all means do that.

Of rather more concern today is what else you should probably think about squirrelling away in your cache(s).

The Reasons To Cache Weapons

1) Because keeping everything in one place is short-sighted, and potentially fatal.

2) Because you may need them someplace else in the future, and don't have the ones you did formerly.

3) Because you'll be moving from Point A to Point B, because A is overrun or otherwise untenable.

Nota bene: Your Ultimate Survival hidey hole could be either of those two points. IOW, you could be trying to get to it from some Blue Hive hellhole; or you might have been there, and become dislodged. So having pre-planned, pre-surveyed, and pre-stashed supplies along possible entry and exit routes is always a good idea, whenever possible.

Not all weapons go "bang". And while firearms are great, whichever way you're headed when you need a cache, you might need something quiet, rather than a new rifle or pistol. Having the means to take game silently would be highly recommended about then. 

Some great choices:

A take-down bow or crossbow.

A fishing rig for the above.

A sling, or slingshot. At about $7@ at WallyMart, more is better.

Ammunition for the above: Bolts, arrows, hunting broadheads, steel balls, BBs, etc.

Spare bowstrings, slingshot rubber and pouches, and any other maintenance supplies.

Snare wire. (Hint: They sell green 20g, 22g, and 24g floral wire, as well as 18g and 16g jewelry wire in spools up to 100' long at Hobby Lobby, Michael's Crafts, and any number of other stores, some reels for as little as $4. For under $40, you could buy enough wire to make the squirrels in the local park, or your back yard, or the jackrabbits in the back forty, extinct. Just saying, not advocating. And remember: you nab the neighbors' poodle or Fluffy the Cat, and nobody's going to thank you for it.)

Rat traps, or actual game traps.

Fishing tackle, like trot lines and automatic reels, along with the obligatory weights, floats, hooks, etc.

Fishing net(s).

Spear points.

One gentleman I read of had made provision for ever getting separated from his shooting irons in Canuckistan while out hunting by stashing snare wire and rat traps, along with little tubes or retort pouches of peanut butter all over his hunting AO and back towards his regular home, planning to trap tree rats (squirrels) and rabbits indefinitely and simply walk home, for as long as it took.

Add a cargo pocket fishing kit to than plan, and it'd likely suffice to get anyone from the Yukon to Yucatan, and put on weight all the way.

Some people plan to, or have already, packed away a small arsenal of boomsticks and ammo. NTTAWWT.

But circumstances might dictate that quiet is better than loud, and healthier in the long run.

So when you're thinking about what to sock away, consider that you too might want to pass through an area well-fed, yet without disturbing anyone, or giving them reason to come find you and see what's going on. Or take away your shiny toys - from your cold, dead hands.

Gear Without Training Or Experience is just "stuff".

If you're likely to do any or all of the things I mentioned, or need to, it would be a good idea to try out your plan now, while you can, in the exact places you may someday pass through, to see what works, and learn how to do it, which can only be done by actually getting out and doing it.

If you've never trapped, skinned, cooked, and eaten something, you aren't going to get the ability to do any of that by osmosis, or magic beans, on the day.

Obey all applicable fish and game regs, but get out there and learn this while your pantry and freezer is full, and you haven't notched your belt any tighter. Don't wait until it's a success-or-death game of You Bet Your Life.

Rifle Of Color Coffee Company UPDATED

 

Get woke, go broke, assholes.

And go fuck yourselves. Sideways. With a dull rusty chainsaw.

BFYTW

And hey, Red Forman left you a message.

An old Marine Corps buddy stopped by too.

UPDATE:

CEO Hafer claims he was "misquoted".

Bullshit. He got caught stupidly telling the truth, not stupidly being misquoted.

He's at least stupid, or evil. But neither option rules out both being true.

And when you get raped, you cry "Rape!" And you go all-out for blood.

You don't content yourself by claiming they got the color of your underpants wrong.

That doesn't mean no conservatives work for Coffee Of Color.

Harvard and Princeton, not to mention WaPo, ABCNNBCBS, and the NYSlimes used to employ actual conservative heterosexual Christians in leadership positions, too. Even Hollywood still keeps a few of them around, for window dressing.

The name for those people, in the trade, is "suckers".

Word to your mothers, guys: Get off the USS Zumbo while you have a chance.

Happy Peak of Western Civilization Day

{Note: This essay is a re-post from 2018. While we look with favor on billionaires pioneering private space adventure, they haven't yet achieved what the US space program had done, with slide rules and vacuum tubes, by 1962. And until they get to Mars, nothing I wrote here originally is any less true today. - A.}

Fifty-two years ago today, and just a few hours from now, is the exact anniversary of when 50,000 steely-eyed missile men, crew-cutted geeks with pocket protectors, test pilots, fighter pilots, and hundreds of metric tons of raw testosterone kicked the rest of the world's ass right to the bottom of the heap, going back to the dawn of time, from the moment that Eagle landed, to when this guy's foot stepped off the LEM ladder.

Neil Armstrong, ace X-15 test pilot, and mission commander of Apollo XI, became the first man from earth to ever set foot on the Moon, and if and until we ever get people to Mars, he put every explorer in history, and even every guy to follow, below him on what Tom Wolfe correctly called "the top of the pyramid."

He was there because he and his sidekick, lunar module pilot, and outside-the-box revolutionary thinker Buzz Aldrin

had managed to land the lunar module manually, off course, and with mere seconds remaining for landing before a crash-tastrophe, because you don't fly 250,000 miles to puss out at the last 12 seconds, just for such piddling concerns as running out of fuel.

Meanwhile, as command module pilot Michael Collins

was searching the Moon's surface from lunar orbit to spot whereinhell (or rather, where in the Sea Of Tranquility) Eagle had actually landed, Armstrong and Aldrin were running through checklists and getting ready for the culmination of the combined effort of tens of thousands of people at NASA (back when they had a purpose, and a clue) and hundreds of thousands of contractors and subcontractors, all accomplished to make the trip possible, less than a decade from Kennedy's speech promising we'd do it.

Because that's what Americans do.

There are countries that use the metric system, and those that have landed on the Moon.

It wasn't until 8 years later, with the lackluster premiere of uber-mediocre science fiction government conspiracy trope film Capricorn One in 1977 (James Brolin and O.J. Simpson as heroes in that movie should have been the tip-off there), after the moon landings had all concluded, that any one of countless hordes of fruitcakes started seriously espousing the idea that we'd somehow magically faked the landings, necessarily including hundreds of thousands of people, from NASA, to the Russians, to every country with a radar, as being somehow "in" on the hokey asstardian imaginary conspiracy suggested, and all agreeing to STFU about it. Until it was cleverly revealed by people showing how they did it, using special effects and video technology completely unavailable anywhere in 1969. Well played, lunatards.
Occam's Razor alone slashes the throat of that nonsense, but some of these former alien seekers, bigfoot hunters, and Loch Ness monster fisherman still cling to their flat-earth retarded psychosis, despite the fact that people were regularly bouncing laser beams off the reflectors placed there in during the Apollo missions to prove the lie of such nonsense,

and the mental illness persists today despite even recent high-res fly-by photography of the lunar surface that has photographed the sites of all the lunar missions, including spotting the astronauts' footprint tracks and the tire ruts from the buggy explorations of later flights, and spotting the pieces of our space leftovers from altitude, right where they're supposed to be.
Because, as news to a previous America-hating president, we built that.

But you can't argue mentally defective lunatics out of a position with reason and logic when they didn't use that to get there in the first place.

The inescapable truth, for those sane enough not to fart simply to smell their own tailwinds, is that we went there, as the only nation that could, and the one that did, and the glory of that belongs to those who did it, for all time.



America haters at home and abroad: This is what it looks like when patriotic geeks
 cut loose and freak out. So you losers can suck it.

But on the day, that summer Sunday afternoon in 1969, when Armstrong stepped out the door to rendezvous with destiny, there wasn't one single car on the streets, anywhere. I was there, and I went outside, and I saw it with my own eyes, kids, from a house just up the street from where Rocketdyne made the Saturn V engines that took us there, again and again. 
Nothing outside moving, anywhere. Not. One. Single. Person.

Every single human on the planet with access to one was huddled in front of black-and-white or color TVs, back when TV had those choices, and each holding their breath waiting for the moment that the cream of 1969 video technology broadcast the shadowy moment to the waiting world.

Not Adidas. Or Nike. But totally made in America, baby.

Of the only twelve men who've ever walked on the Moon, only four remain alive today, including Buzz Aldrin. Neil Armstrong passed away at age 82, nearly nine years ago. The four survivors were all born in the 1930s. The baby of the group is 85. Aldrin is the old man, at 91.

But they, the other astronauts (and even cosmonauts) who made it possible, and the other men and women who built the machines and the systems that allowed us to conquer space and take our first steps on another spinning orb, deserve the eternal glory and thanks of the entire world, both that was and that is, for fulfilling such a primal urge, and manifesting the best and brightest of human destiny.

We need to go to Mars, and beyond that, because that's what we were made to do.
We plan, we measure, and we accomplish, because we have minds to think, imaginations to soar, and dreams to fulfill, always beyond that next horizon.
And we're only at our best when we're doing just exactly that.

We came in peace for all mankind.

Remember their efforts, and their greatness, if the pants-piddling diaper-soiling incompetence of the current crop of government jackholes starts to get you down.

We can do better than them. We can even do better than Apollo.

And. We. Shall.  

For A Rainy Day

 

In a couple of thread discussions over at Commander Zero's blog (which should be a regular 'net stop for anyone), the recourse to a cache has come up.

First of all, the obligatory caveat:

Caveat:

It's pronounced CASH. Not cashay. 

Cash is what you carry in your wallet.

A cache is where you hide things to recover later.

Cachet is a perfume. We are not talking about burying perfume.

When you pronounce it wrong, you sound every bit as retarded as did Prez Dubbya every time he said "nukular weapons". Don't be a retard.

There are many ways to go about hiding things, but the universally applicable one is ground burial. (Watching some jackass Dumbass Doomsday Prepper burying steel pipes in saltwater in Alaska was so full of retarded moron double-facepalm I can't even.)

In the ground means rust, via water, is your biggest enemy. That means metal, any metal, is right out. "Stainless" is relative. Bury a "stainless" piece of dinnerware in the yard for a couple of years, and get back to us. File under "Doh!"

So that means all those ammo cans with pot metal hinge pins? Total POS garbage for any use that's not above ground, and bone-dry. (MTM, I'm looking at you.)

Anything with a "stainless" wing nut? More boob bait for the bubbas.

As the header pic illustrates, you want nothing but pure, non-bio-degradable PVC for small things.*

3" holds small items, or long skinny ones. 4" will accommodate many pistols. 6" would hold ammo cans, battle rifles, and anything smaller, depending on length.

(I'm not going to describe how to make one. There are only about a gajillion YouTube videos laying it out, down to the 4th grade level. If you could work with PlayDoh in kindergarten, you can make a waterproof PVC tube. 'nuff said.)

Before we get to "What?", let's talk about "Why?"

Why?

1) Because you don't want all your eggs in one basket, and you've got enough to scatter a bit around, just in case.

Duh.

2) Because bad people in ski masks (with or without badges) may want to take your stuff from you.

If you ain't got it, they can't get it. Period.

3) Because you don't trust it to leaving it in the bank.

One of the discussions at Zero's was a guy talking about "trying to see how much he could sock away in the bank" before financially tough times.

WTAF, over?

Even in normal times, the last place I want a pile of money is in the bank.

You should have a bank account, sure, to deposit and cash checks.

And you should probably take your cash out the same day it hits the accounts, except to cover checks and debit card usage.

In the Depression, banks simply closed. No money for you. That, alone, should have wised the whole world up. They also gleefully let the .GOV riffle through "safe deposit boxes" (two lies for one) and take contraband gold specie at the government-set price. How white of them. If your grandfather had buried an ounce of gold in 1932, it'd be worth upwards of $1700 now. The government paid $20 and change per ounce then. $20 then went farther, but even invested, it wouldn't be likely worth $1700 now. Get a clue. 

Keep a cash float on hand, sure, because ATMs don't work in a power outage, computer glitch, or natural disaster. I'd suggest aiming for 3 months' expenses, minimum. Anything lasting longer than that is a bit bigger than a small crisis, whether general, or personal. The rest should be in more tangible things: gold, silver, weapons, ammo, tools, or non-perishable trading commodities Let alone land. If your 401K or mutual fund is what it is, I get it. But in a crunch, like the hiccup of 1929, it's gone in a flash. Digital assets even quicker than paper ones, btw. So you need a place to keep things that isn't a bank, nor under the mattress.

And that's what a cache is for.

*(Got a decent sized back yard, let alone the back forty? Precast reinforced concrete pieces are the ticket. You can buy square bathroom-sized cable vault, cistern, etc. pieces, including a manhole access top, for what you could rent a medium safe deposit box for over a few years. Buried, with a fiberglass manhole cover, and a piece of pond liner, and you have a storage vault more secure than most banks, that you can access when you want, or keep hidden indefinitely, and put in one helluva lot more than what you can fit in a handy government-accessible "safe deposit box". Look into it, if you have the space. Why wouldn't you? BTW, don't put it anywhere near any plumbing/sewer/septic system, for obvious reasons. Unless you have gills, and want your cache to smell like sewage. You could even only half-bury it, mound over the rest above ground, and make it a backyard waterfall and garden feature. Only you know what's under the lump. ;) )

Ideally, your cache should be located on land you control.

At a minimum, on land you have access to, undisturbed. Not on government land, for instance.

Location, Location, Location

Land you don't control is subject to closure. At the bottom of a flood plain is a bad idea, always. Someplace that's going to slide away, and/or get a landslide or mudslide on is similarly poor forethought. In a heavily populated area brings yet another complication.

You want somewhere you can get to, and dig it in, or out, unbothered and unnoticed.

GPS co-ordinates should be recorded. Also Map references, with triangulated points noted. (Make a further note of magnetic declination, which changes annually, so you can find it in 3, 5, or 20 years, cold approach, first try, at night.)

If you can't find it next time, you don't have it. Period.

You're also going to want up-close marking. If, for example you put down four stone cairns (piles), say 10 feet apart per pair, any which way, and had a tent stake spike, and a length of paracord, the following is true:

Whether you put your rocks or stone piles at cardinal points (NESW i.e 12/3/6/9 o'clock), or randomly around a circle (say, at 12,1, 5, and 8 o'clock positions) if you stretch your paracord between given pairs, the line will make an "X" over the same spot every time. Which piles in which pairs is your decision. If you make the rock or rock piles look random, so much the better. Just remember how you did it, so you have a point you can locate again.

Looks random. Center is off-center.
Only provides a starting point, and only you know to where.

For ease, let's say you went for cardinal points at 12,3,6, and 9 o'clock.

Put your tent spike in the intersection.

"X" marks the spot, right?

Natzsofast

Too easy. Even pirates could figure that out, and they were mostly illiterate boobs. But we'll get back to that in a minute.

Take a measured length of that paracord. Suppose you picked 37'. Shoot an azimuth with your compass (you brought one, right?) and lay out your paracord to that spot. That is where you're going to put your cache. You have 360°, or 6400 mills, depending on your compass, and the distance can be anything you choose. Unless they're watching you dig, no one will ever know the spot you picked.

Depending on your level of OPSEC and/or paranoia, put a tent up on the spot. One with no floor. Or just a low tarp. Dig your hole, and put your cache tube in. Vertical is simplest, except for the digging the hole part, for longer tubes. I'd go for at least a foot below grade, to the top, when sealed. 

Load the cache

Operable weapons, knives, tools, fishing reels, etc., should all be generously lubed with Break Free CLP or Collector, unless you want to dick around with cosmoline or equivalent, then sealed in multiple layers of air- and water-tight wrapping, including dessicant packs. Your toys, your choice. Ammunition I'd put in mil-spec ammo cans, in a PVC tube big enough to accommodate them. 50/50 I'd coat the sealed cans in roofing tar or bed liner over a plastic wrapping layer too.

Anything you can reach lying on the ground, and touch the bottom of the tub, is fine, as is.

Anything longer than your arm is deep, should have a piece of PVC plastic, with a paracorded pull handle, so you can grab a loop at the open upper end, and pull the entire contents up to you. Put that in the tube first of all.

Anything else should be sealed and protected as you see fit, but err on the side of caution. I would not, for example, put an acidic can of tomato paste above a pistol, and hope the can never rotted through over time. Dry items, OTOH, are much easier.

But even gold and silver coins will start to fuse, even if it's other materials around them, given enough time. Dry and separate solves a lot of problems down the road, and you want everything to come out virtually the same as the day you packed it.

Seal the cache

Screw in the threaded top. Some waterproof grease on the threads can't hurt.

Bury the cache

If you put pea gravel around the tube, water will travel to the bottom on the outside, and hopefully continue onwards. Some sand or fine dirt on top to level it.

Then, I'd get a square of pond liner (heavy duty vinyl/rubber) and cover the top of the tube as a rain deflector. Make it big enough to go well past the tube edges. That means the hole must do so, too. Don't get stupid. You don't want to put down a 3' x 3' cover, and have to dig up a square yard of soil just to open the thing. But a 12" round or square cover on a 6" pipe isn't bad. I'd put some more sand or dirt on that. Between that and the surface, some OC spray will deter predators from digging or sniffing around for some time. (Don't hit yourself with the backblast. But if you do gas yourself, send a link to the YouTube video of that.) Then a rock, mostly buried. Somewhere around head-sized. It will keep water pressure from popping your cache up, and also serve as a very unobtrusive marker when you check on it. And people generally don't futz around with rocks they don't have to.

About the original "X"

Put a current-issue quarter there, down about a foot. Or a handful of big nuts and bolts, to rust together. That's bait. If you check on your cache (and you should, from time to time), and that's been dug up, you'll know someone's been prospecting your turf. Or, if undisturbed, you'll know that no one has. Both pieces of information are good to have.

The actual cache being a randomly-determined distance and direction cuts the odds of it being found except by you, markedly.

No one's digging up an entire grid square to find...something.

Exit

Double- and triple-check your location info, cover all traces (if you know how to hook a sprinkler can shower head to a water bottle, you know how to make it rain anywhere, don't you?), and de-camp. Go on about your business. Maybe do a spiralling expanding sweep on departure, to check your area before you leave.

Multicache

You also have the option of making multiple caches. Maybe the 12 o'clock position is where you buried a small tube with a premium expedition-grade water filter, a few empty rolled up water bladders, a few bottles of water purification tablets, and a well-sealed plastic container of dry pool shock, to make bleach. That's your Water cache. 2 o'clock has snare wire, fishing line, a couple of reels, hooks, weights, lures, and a coupe of nets, plus a spare survival knife and a military survival book in a ziplok. That's your Trapping and Fishing cache. 3 o'clock has a solid-tone poncho, pair of spare boots, socks, underwear, and a wool sweater, shirt, pants, and cap, in drab colors. That's your Clothing cache. 4 o'clock has a brick of .22LR, a couple boxes of buck and birdshot, some slugs, and a basic load of pistol and rifle ammo. That's your Ammo cache. 5 o'clock has some actual cash, junk silver, and a few gold coins, along with maps, important papers, etc. Your Cash cache. And so on, around the circle.

You only need open the one or ones you need, and leave the rest for another day. Limited only by desire, supplies, and imagination. And someone might find one of them. But they aren't liable to unearth the whole collection.

Megacache

Got a small, relatively worthless, possibly land-locked parcel somewhere? 1/2 to 1 acre or so?

Take your time.

Pack in T-posts, chicken wire, landscaping cloth, etc. (Or, if you have vehicle access, have cinder block or pre-cast vault trucked in and dropped off). Dig in a hidey-hole. Underground. Big enough to sleep inside of. Provide a vent or three, to draw in fresh air and let body heat escape. Possibly a small fire for warmth, and water boiling and ration cooking. (Not while you're asleep. Beware of carbon monoxide poisoning.) Put the access hole in the center of a clump of brush. You find it, dig in, and disappear for a few days, literally underground. It's just a GI foxhole with overhead cover and a sleeping bunk, on steroids. Damned near invisible, and big enough to put in a month's food and other necessities.

When you move on, a few minutes' work with a GI e-tool, and it's gone again. Until the next time you need it.

OPSEC

Tell nobody nothing.

Encode your cache list and directions in a way only you can decode.

If you tell anybody, unless it's on your deathbed, or in a secret sealed codocil to your will, assume that cache is gone. Because it will be, when you need it.

If you scatter a few charity caches around, you can give those up, as necessary. Having one or two of those (some staple food items, a bargain multitool, and a couple of MREs, e.g.), even if only as decoys, is probably a good idea as well.

_____

Plan for rainy days.

If nothing happens, it's peace of mind. And good practice.

The way things look now, there's a storm coming.

And never bury all your guns.

If it's time to bury them, it's probably past time to dig them up and load them.

Sunday Music: When Smoky Sings

 

In the plethora of talent that was '80s music, it was hard to stand out, but some gems, like this one by ABC, are timeless. The sax riff homage to "Tears Of A Clown" is a great touch too.