Why we prep
Here's another reason why you – and your friends and family – should prep:
- Here's where the next bank deposit "bail-in" will strike ...
- A lesson from the Greek crisis: Safe deposit boxes are not safe
- Deutsche Bank – Get ready for a bail-in
So I know most of you aren't going to read the articles linked above because they're articles about the failing economics of governments in other countries. And reading an economic article is about as exciting as waiting for the U.S. Justice Department to go after government officials who have admitted committing voter fraud.
So I'll do the heavy lifting for you. Each of those articles is about a government/financial complex stealing from the citizens they are supposed to be protecting, so as to cover their own misdeeds.
Now you can get into financial trouble and it's crickets from your government. But when the oligarchs spend like drunken bureaucrats … well, it's "we're all in this together," by which they mean, you're going to pay so that "we" can keep playing.
Keeping your wealth in a bank is rapidly becoming a fool's game. Keeping it in a safe deposit box is insane. It's time to get a head start on the "run" at the banks. But remember one thing: long-term storage of cash is like long-term storage of lettuce. It starts to go bad the moment you put it on the shelf. Inflation will turn paper dollars into compost as sure as microbes will for arugula.
Beans, bullets, and bullion beats banks, bureaucrats, and bail-ins every time.
And that's one of the reasons we prep.
Last week I started telling you where not to hide your precious metals, and I promised to give you the skinny on how best to preserve and protect not just gold and silver, but guns, ammo, electronic equipment ... in short, all those valuables you want to keep from losing without your voluntary permission.
By my way of thinking, there are three levels of property concealment. First, of course, is sticking your new AR behind a closed door so your neighbor won't see it and then want to try it out. We'll skip going into depth on that one.
The second level of concealment is designed to thwart the independent contractor-entrepreneur who intends to enter your home, preferably while you're not there to demonstrate that AR, and leave with as much of your stuff as he can carry. So how can you hide things in such a way that they can't be found?
Well the answer is: you can't. Sorry, but for any given volume of space, if someone wants to find something hidden and they have the motivation, equipment and time, they will find it. Notice the italics. According to national crime statistics, the average time a burglar remains in a home is around 10 minutes.
Burglars by nature are very nervous people. They're always wondering: Did someone see them walking up your drive? Did opening or breaking that window alert the old lady next door? Is a UPS driver coming up the walk?
Motivation to a burglar is the inverse of time multiplied by money, with the money (or loot) being an unknown variable. Time, on the other hand, is all too real; and as time in your home increases without an increase in loot, the burglar's motivation to remain tumbles like the stock market on lower oil prices.
An experienced burglar is also a creature of habit; he's looking for things that are easy to carry and easy to dispose of like money, jewelry, drugs, guns and expensive electronics. And he has a complete list in his head of likely locations for those items. If he runs through that list and can't find what he's looking for, one of two things will occur: A pro will cut his losses and git. A burglar animated by needs other than just income (like money for drugs) will probably risk a bit more time and trash the place until he finds something he can steal – anything – even if it's low value or even difficult to move.
So how do you hang on to the things that are really important to you? You either make it hard for the burglar to find them, or make it difficult for the thief to get at them within his limited comfort time.
The best home security is a good well-secured safe. If he can't get into it and can't take it with him, he'll leave without it. (Mostly.)
So what if you don't own a safe, or if you have more stuff that needs protection than you have space for in your safe? You hide those things, of course; and you do it in such a way that discovery of your caches will eat up a lot of time.
Here are a few examples:
Guns or ammunition? Place those you can't get into the safe into that unfinished attic under the insulation and make sure that there's no ladder in the house.
If you have the skills, create storage spaces in the interior walls of your home. In my last house, I once built a gun storage cabinet in an interior wall of my bedroom. It wasn't too stealthy. The door was flush to the wall and I'd painted it with the same paint as the rest of the walls and put in hinges that couldn't be seen when then the cabinet was closed. I also added a small barrel lock. But the most important protective feature about it was that it was behind the always-open bedroom door. One day, we got hit. And while they trashed the house and took a few things, they didn't get those guns because they never bothered to close the open bedroom door.
Speaking of doors, one guy I know dug out some pretty impressive cavities in the top edges of his interior solid-core doors. They were absolutely invisible; and unless the burglar was seven feet tall, he'd never see them. And who looks at the top edge of doors?
Another great hiding place goes under the category of counter-intuitive caches. Install a weather-proof box under your exterior deck. Paint it the same color as the decking material and tuck it up behind one of the joists. Few burglars will spend time looking around outside when everyone knows all the goodies are inside.
You can find a whole lot of other ways to hide your stuff in-house over at SurvivalBlog. For example:
Finally there's the third level of concealment. This is the level that becomes necessary if you feel that those who are after your stuff have lots of motivation, plenty of cool equipment, and all the time in the world. Plus, they often come with authority; and justified or not, they can tear your home and property down to the molecular level looking for things they think you shouldn't have.
We'll get to that threat level next week because it deserves an entire column.
So in the meantime, think creatively, remember that nothing can actually be hidden in your home that can't be found (eventually) and get prepared.
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