How to Decide on a Homestead Location and Get There, by Orange Jeep Dad

The intention of this article is to share with you how we decided on a homestead location and how we intend to get there. There are many ways to skin a cat. Whether it’s a hidey-hole in Id-e-ho or a farm in Oklahoma, the choice you pick for a homestead is as uniquely independent as the DNA in your body. Take the time to think it through and you won’t be disappointed. We said several prayers and asked for guidance. Contact Todd Savage of Survival Retreat Consulting if you still need additional help after reading this submission. I’m sure he can give you several solid pointers.

Our America is changing and it isn’t looking pretty. Constitutional rights are disappearing, school education is lagging, and the Almighty dollar is all but a joke. Illegal immigration, lawsuit-happy money grabbers, GMO mega corporations, half the country on some form of welfare…where does it end? 
For our family, it ends now. Thanks to Obama care, one of the two hospitals in my company’s organization closed their doors permanently last month (May, 2013). Now, our smaller rural hospital has been gobbled up in a corporate buyout. I was informed that I no longer had a job…over the phone on a Friday afternoon…while visiting Oklahoma for my Grandmother’s funeral.

Thus begins our journey to relocate to the country and take care of our family ourselves. No more traffic, smog, insane crime rates, grocery store dependency, bottom of the barrel public schools…and the list goes on and on. As the Robertsons (from Duck Dynasty)would say: “WE GONE!”

As we debated how we could attain our ultimate goal of becoming self-sufficient on our own homestead, there appeared to be four clearly distinct barriers we had to overcome.

  • First, what would be our final homestead location?
  • Second, how would we sustain ourselves when we arrived at our new home?
  • Third, how would we physically get our family and our assets to the homestead location?
  • Fourth, what type of home would be the best homestead building?

These were the four major decisions that were crucial to our plan but each had several smaller factors that had to be sifted out. Once we determined the major obstacles, we sat down and went through each obstacle and picked it apart. Each major hurdle became its own independent topic of discussion. By making a step by step plan to overcome each major hurdle, we were able to break down what seemed to be a huge difficult task into many small manageable tasks. Being an Indiana Jones fan and sharing the same last name, I declared each of the four major issues my own quest for the Holy Grail or “Chalice.”

The First Chalice
The first Chalice is choosing a homestead location. If you have a place already in mind then congratulations! This is one of the toughest decisions to settle on.  For Wifey and me, deciding where we wanted to raise our six daughters and spend the rest of our lives was not so clear cut. I had read James Rawles thoughts on the American Redoubt and also purchased Joel Skousen’s Strategic Relocation–North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd Edition.  Both of these highly recommended resources will arm you with the information necessary to intelligently decide on a homestead location based on crucial data such as population density, potential disaster fallout, military targets, maps of private and public land use, satellite  terrain (including highways, surface streets and trails for bugout purposes), and why you should vote with your feet. Remember, if you can’t afford Skousen’s book, check it out from your local library.

While we desired a homestead in the American Redoubt, we have no family or close friends there.  Arguable by some folks I’m sure, we feel community is crucial to survival.  Can we go it alone…sure. Should we? It wouldn’t be smart. So we chose an uninhabited old family farm in Oklahoma where we had a large number of family members and a few (but very solid) friends. With a storm shelter in place, we will be safe from tornadoes with our only major concern being possible long term drought.  A few well-placed deep wells and massive water storage is in our future plans. With permission to live on the family farm complete, the first Chalice had been secured.

The Second Chalice
The second Chalice in obtaining our homesteading Holy Grail was to secure income producing employment near our homestead location. We have every intention of becoming 100% self-sufficient in time but in the beginning of our journey we agreed that we should have a means by which to pay our monthly bills without fear of failure. There would be no moving to our homestead until this income was established.  With this in mind, I laid out a plan to find a job within thirty minutes of our location in an attempt to minimize gasoline expenses and travel time. Obviously, the closer the job is to the homestead, the higher the savings in time and money. Your results will depend on your comfort zone. If I owned a moped or motorcycle, perhaps I would be willing to drive a little further for employment.

There are several ways to search for employment and in today’s digital age, I think it is somewhat easier to find potential employers. I started with the usual job search engines: Monster, Jobing, CareerBuilders, and Indeed.  Knowing your desired field is not necessary but very helpful.  I am trained in healthcare and pursued that avenue but you could just as easily search “all jobs” in your desired location. Make sure your resume is up-to-date because applying for jobs in another state means your resume may be the first thing a potential employer sees of you.  Get a friend to help you or research the topic on the internet if necessary. The resume is there to sell your skills. Don’t slack on this step.

Another method of finding jobs in your chosen homestead location is to use Google Maps (or similar mapping system) to pinpoint business in your designated area. If you are a diesel mechanic who has chosen Nampa, Idaho for your homestead location, for example, you can go to Google Maps and search for “diesel mechanic  Nampa, Id” and see the results.  This gives you a handful of diesel mechanic shops in your desired area complete with address and contact information.  Google the names of their companies and search out a little individually specific information on each one before you call. A quick search tells me that Tim’s Auto Repair and Service in Nampa employs “ASE certified techs” and is” B+ rated with the Better Business Bureau”.” Family owned and operated” while being closed on weekends gives you four arrows in your quiver when aiming for a job with them. They should be impressed that you took the time to research the company.

The approach I took to land my job was a little different. Since my job would be in a hospital, I search for the local hospitals near my homestead location. I chose one particular hospital and went to LinkedIn.  I won’t go into the details of LinkedIn here but suffice it to say it is similar to an online resume forum. People sign up and post their resumes on their profile page and make connections to other people in hopes of building a strong job “network”.  The more people you are connected to, the easier it is to find help when you need it (much like the community concept of homesteading.)

Since I knew the name of the hospital I was seeking employment from, I did a search on LinkedIn using that exact hospital’s name. This search gave me a list of all the members of LinkedIn whom had listed my specific hospital as their employer on their public resume.  A quick scroll through the list and I was able to find a nurse who worked at this hospital. LinkedIn gives you the ability, with a general (free) membership, to send “invites” to folks and ask them if they would like to connect with you. I invited this nurse to connect and she accepted. I now had a connection to an employee inside the hospital where I wanted to work.

As we previously talked about searching the Internet for information on a potential job, you can also do the same thing regarding a person. It helps to have topics of common interest to discuss when establishing a new relationship. On a previous interview, I researched my interviewers name and found out he was Native American, a member of a particular tribal organization and enjoyed running. Again, this information puts arrows in your quiver when shooting to make a good impression on your potential employer. I mentioned to my new nurse connection that I had recently been in her small town for a family funeral. Turns out she grew up in that town and knew my extended family. This was the arrow that ultimately helped me land a job at my desired location. Having a well-made resume also helped.

Using both a telephone interview (initially) and a Skype interview, my interviewer was able to visualize me and ask me questions without me ever leaving Arizona. Phone interviews are common but some employers, like mine, was not comfortable hiring a new employee “sight unseen”.  I recommended Skype and his I.T. department set it up. It wasn’t flawless but it kept me from having to fly 1,000 miles for an interview…and it worked.

Wifey and I decided it was best for me to go ahead for one month and check out the new job and location. Once I am able to determine the job is stable, I begin to research local churches, Mason lodges (my daughters are active in Job’s Daughters), potential schools (if we don’t homeschool immediately), and other factors which will affect us directly. I am now the family pointman.

The Third Chalice
The third Chalice involves how to move an entire family 1,000 miles to our new homestead. We are in this phase of the challenge right now. We have begun by having garage sales to eliminate unnecessary items. Items we are unable to sell but are worthy of donation will go to Goodwill thrift store. The rest goes to the local landfill.  The remaining items to be kept will be boxed up and labeled for transport via U-Haul truck.

As one commenter mentioned on my blog, you can reserve a U-Haul truck for a future date and this will lock in the price you pay. The price increases the closer you get to your scheduled date so lock in your price as soon as you find out that you need a truck. U-Haul allows you to reschedule your dates an unlimited amount of times with no fees. You can also negotiate a free month of storage at your destination location if you reserve your truck on the phone with a customer service representative. My cost to move 1,000 miles was roughly $1,100 for their largest truck. Their web site says it will hold belongings for a four bedroom house which is what we have. So, I have set my goal for moving expenses to be $2,000 and hope that will cover gasoline and some miscellaneous expenses.

I began visiting our local Wal-Mart for boxes and found they had a large supply every morning. It became a part of my morning routine to stop by and pick up as many as possible before I left for Oklahoma. Wifey continues that tradition now and is easily obtaining enough sturdy boxes (with handles!) to pack up the house. Each teenager is in charge of packing their own belongings and helping mom pack up the toddlers. Our goal is to be ready to move in roughly one month from the time I left for Oklahoma. With the help of my new coworkers, I will trade some shifts around and arrange for one week off to return to Arizona and begin the arduous chore of packing it all up in the truck and driving it to Oklahoma.

Again, how you move your family is unique to you. I am simply sharing how we are doing it as an example. Some folks suggested using coupons to get the best rental truck deal. I have an enclosed 6×12’ trailer and hauled a good chunk of my stuff and some bulky items out to Oklahoma during my initial visit to save some of the precious (read: more expensive) cargo space on our future U-Haul truck. Bulky items that take up space like our bicycles, table saw, chicken coop, etc. I rationalized that I was already making the trip, why not bring as much with me as possible to lighten the final load.  Don’t forget the power of friends when it comes time to pack it all up. We’ll be requesting the help of our church members when the time comes to leave our old house. It will be a sad but joyous occasion.

The Fourth Chalice
The fourth Chalice encompasses the task of figuring out what type of structure you want to homestead. If your location already has a structure large enough for your family, congratulations! You’re done. Our farm does not have such a building and I suspect some folks undergoing this relocation will be purchasing raw land or land with no structures.  In this case you have several options.

You can live with family or friends while you establish a structure or rent a nearby home. One commenter on my blog wrote that he and his family actually camped at their homestead for a year. He said the kids loved it. That allowed them to save up the money they needed to build their homestead. You can use a travel trailer or place a mobile home on the property while you build. Take your time and research your options.  If you can build something yourself while you stay in a travel trailer, more power to you!  

One of my mentors has been the videoblogger Wranglerstar and you can see how he began his homestead here.  If it is truly your dream, you can make it happen. Feel free to stop by my blog to share your homestead story or ask questions. I’ll have more to share on this last Chalice as our time to choose a building gets closer. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the blog comments and a big thank you to Captain Rawles and Wranglerstar for leading the way for the rest of us. – Orange Jeep Dad

Letter Re: The Mass Casualty Incident: Triage

JWR:|
That was an excellent article on triage of patients in a mass casualty incident (MCI), which is also known as a multiple casualty incident. I was taught in EMT school that an MCI is any event that my truck can’t handle by itself, or an incident that overwhelms currently available resources because of the number of patients involved.

Slightly tangentially, in class one day we were talking about organ donors and I volunteered the information that I haven’t signed up as a donor. There’s no donor info on my driver’s license. However, my wife and family members have been notified and understand that I do, in fact, wish to donate my organs when the time comes, and they are to notify medical staff of that fact AFTER I expire. My classmates scoffed when I explained that emergency room staff statistically don’t try as hard to save someone who is a known organ donor as they would for someone who isn’t an organ donor. No one wants to admit this, but it’s true. I used to work in an ER X-ray department and occasionally saw similar decisions being made.

Then I got verification. On my test for the NREMT (National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians), there was a question that I also encountered on practice tests. It’s disturbing and we didn’t cover it in class, except for my little speech. I don’t have the incorrect answers on this multiple-choice question (since I got it right) but here’s the question and the correct answer:

At the scene of a mass-casualty incident, you identify a patient as an organ donor. When triaging the other patients, you: May have to assign the donor patient a lower triage priority.

In other words, people who have made it clear on their ID or otherwise that they intend to donate their organs when they die have set themselves up potentially to receive delayed medical attention in an MCI. I assume most of my classmates missed this question if it appeared on their test, since they doubted me in class. – J.D.C. in Mississippi

Odds ‘n Sods:

The Sacramento Democrat majority steamroller rolls on: California Senate approves 8 gun control bills, including ammo registry. JWR’s Comments: Less well-publicized is SB 108, which will require all gun owners to keep their firearms locked up whenever they leave their property. This raises several issues, not the least of which is that is that it effectively bans gun ownership for anyone who is poor and cannot afford to buy a gun vault. California’s high-minded statist leftists are now enforcers of class distinctions–removing rights from po folks. Shame on them. This same mentality was behind attempts to ban “cheap handguns.” They infer that “only trashy low class people” would buy them. We have a Constitution that presumes everyone being equal before the law. The “little people” shouldn’t be denied a Constitutiomnal right, just because they make less money. The statists have already enacted laws that ban the right to bear arms on public transportation. So the unspoken implication is that if you are rich enought to afford your own car then you have a greater right to be armed. Again, shame on those who employ double standards.

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When checking our site’s statistics, I was not surprised to see that our “unique visits per week” count is plateauing. Considering the fact that there are now more than 300 survival and preparedness-themed blogs and a new one popping up almost every day, that is understandable. The good news is that SurvivalBlog’s share of the readership is by far the strongest. I attribute the blog’s success to: A.) Being the first widely-read blog on the subject, and B.) Our longevity and consistent publication of new material has built some incredibly deep archives that are fully searchable. If printed in hard copy, the SurvivalBlog archives would now be nearly 10,000 pages long! Although we produce a versatile archive DVD, we are standing firm on our promise to keep the SurvivalBlog archives fully accessible on line, free of charge.

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Supreme Court Decision Shreds 5th Amendment Protection; Your Silence Can Now Be Used As Evidence of Guilt. Now, more than ever before, it is essential that you immediately invoke your 5th Amendment rights upon first contact with police or sheriff’s deputies. Under all circumstances, simply state: “On the advice of my attorney I am exercising my 5th Amendment right to remain silent. Am I free to go now?” (Keep repeating this verbatim, as needed.) If they ask for identification, then politely hand them your driver’s license, proof of insurance, and (if applicable) your CCW permit. If they ask any other questions, just keep repeating the aforementioned phrase. Saying anything more can only hurt you.

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U.S. Attorney’s Office says that Kwame Kilpatrick likely to spend ‘couple of decades’ in prison. Perhaps Mayors Against Illegal Guns should open local chapters in state and federal prisons. Oh, speaking of Bloomberg’s Cabal: Is Mayors Against Illegal Guns using NYC resources for its website?

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No, You Can’t Outrun a Tsunami

Notes from JWR:

I was saddend to hear of the death of writer Richard Matheson. Requiescat in pace.

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June 27th is the 70th birthday of economist Dr. Ravi Batra. (Born 1943.) His predictions on the American economy weren’t wrong. They were just earl.. I thank him for giving us plenty of warning and hence the time needed to prepare.

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Today we present another guest article by Amy Alton (of Doom & Bloom fame)

The Mass Casualty Incident: Triage, by Amy Alton, A.R.N.P., and Joe Alton, M.D.

The responsibilities of a medic in times of trouble will usually be one-to-one; that is, the healthcare provider will be dealing with one ill or injured individual at a time.  If you have dedicated yourself to medical preparedness, you will have accumulated significant stores of supplies and some knowledge. Therefore, your encounter with any one person should be, with any luck, within your expertise and resources.  There may be a day, however, when you find yourself confronted with a scenario in which multiple people are injured.  This is referred to as a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI).

A mass casualty incident is any event in which your medical resources are inadequate for the number and severity of injuries incurred.  Mass Casualty Incidents can be quite variable in their presentation.  They might be:

• ·         Doomsday scenario events, such as nuclear weapon detonations
• ·         Terrorist acts, such as occurred on 9/11 or in Oklahoma City
• ·         Consequences of a storm, such as a tornado or hurricane
• ·         Consequences of civil unrest
• ·         Mass transit mishap (train derailment, plane crash, etc.)
• ·         A car accident with, say, three people significantly injured (and only one ambulance)
• ·         Many others

The effective medical management of any of the above events required rapid and accurate triage.  Triage comes from the French word “to sort” (“Trier”) and is the process by which medical personnel (like you, survival medic!) can rapidly assess and prioritize a number of injured individuals and do the most good for the most people. Note that I didn’t say: “Do the best possible care for each individual victim”.

Let’s assume that you are in a marketplace in the Middle East somewhere, or perhaps in your survival village near the border with another (hostile) group.  You hear an explosion.  You are the first one to arrive at the scene, and you are alone.  There are twenty people on the ground, some moaning in pain.  There were probably more, but only twenty are, for the most part, in one piece.  The scene is horrific.  As the first to respond to the scene, medic, you are Incident Commander until someone with more medical expertise arrives on the scene.  What do you do?

Your initial actions may determine the outcome of the emergency response in this situation.  This will involve what we refer to as the 5 S’s of evaluating a MCI scene:

·         Safety
·         Sizing up
·         Sending for help
·         Set-up of areas
·         START – Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment

1.  Safety Assessment:  Our friend Joshua Wander (thejewishprepper.com) relates to us an insidious strategy on the part of terrorists in Israel:  primary and secondary bombs.  The main bomb causes the most casualties, and the second bomb is timed to go off or is triggered just as the medical/security personnel arrive.  This may not sound right to you, but your primary goal as medic is your own self-preservation, because keeping the medical personnel alive is likely to save more lives down the road.  Therefore, you do your family and community a disservice by becoming the next casualty.

As you arrive, be as certain as you can that there is no ongoing threat.  Do not rush in there until you’re sure that the damage has been done and you and your helpers are safe entering the area.  In the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, various medical personnel rushed in to aid the many victims.  One of them was a heroic 37 year old Licensed Practical Nurse who, as she entered the area, was struck by a falling piece of concrete.  She sustained a head injury and died five 5 days later.

2. Sizing up the Scene:  Ask yourself the following questions:

• ·         What’s the situation?   Is this a mass transit crash?  Did a building on fire collapse?  Was there a car bomb?  
• ·         How many injuries and how severe?  Are there a few victims or dozens? Are most victims dead or are there any uninjured that could assist you?
• ·         Are they all together or spread out over a wide area? 
• ·        What are possible nearby areas for treatment/transport purposes? 
• ·         Are there areas open enough for vehicles to come through to help transport victims?
3.  Sending for Help:  If modern medical care is available, call 911 and say (for example):  “I am calling to report a mass casualty incident involving a multi-vehicle auto accident at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine (location).  At least 7 people are injured and will require medical attention.  There may be people trapped in their cars and one vehicle is on fire.”

In three sentences, you have informed the authorities that a mass casualty event has occurred, what type of event it was, where it occurred, an approximate numbers of patients that may need care, and the types of care (burns) or equipment (jaws of life) that may be needed.  I’m sure you could do even better than I did above, but you want to inform the emergency medical services without much delay.

If the you-know-what has hit the fan and you are the medical resource, get your walkie-talkie or handie-talkie and notify base camp of whatever the situation is and what you’ll need in terms of personnel and supplies.  If you are not the medical resource, contact the person who is; the most experienced medical person who arrives then becomes Incident Commander.

4.  Set-Up:  Determine likely areas for various triage levels (see below) to be further evaluated and treated.  Also, determine the appropriate entry and exit points for victims that need immediate transport to medical facilities, if they exist.  If you are blessed with lots of help at the scene, determine triage, treatment, and transport team leaders.

5. S.T.A.R.T.:  Triage uses the acronym S.T.A.R.T., which stands for Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment.   The first round of triage, known as “primary triage”, should be fast (30 seconds per patient if possible) and does not involve extensive treatment of injuries.  It should be focused on identifying the triage level of each patient.  Evaluation in primary triage consists mostly of quick evaluation of respirations (or the lack thereof), perfusion (adequacy of circulation), and mental status.  Other than controlling massive bleeding and clearing airways, very little treatment is performed in  primary triage. 

Although there is no international standard for this, triage levels are usually determined by color:

Immediate (Red tag): The victim needs immediate medical care and will not survive if not treated quickly.  (for example, a major hemorrhagic wound/internal bleeding) Top priority for treatment.
 
Delayed (Yellow tag): The victim needs medical care within 2-4 hours. Injuries may become life-threatening if ignored, but can wait until Red tags are treated. (for example, open fracture of femur without major hemorrhage)
 
Minimal (Green tag): Generally stable and ambulatory (“walking wounded”) but may need some medical care. (for  example, 2 broken fingers, sprained wrist)
 
Expectant (Black tag): The victim is either deceased or is expected to die.  (for example, open fracture of cranium with brain damage, multiple penetrating chest wounds)

Knowledge of this system allows a patient marking system that easily allows a caregiver to understand the urgency of a patient’s situation.  It should go without saying that, in a power-down situation without modern medical care, a lot of red tags and even some yellow tags will become black tags.  It will be difficult to save someone with a major internal bleeding episode without surgical intervention.

In the next part of this series, we will go through a typical mass casualty incident with 20 victims, and show how to proceed so as to provide the most benefit for the most people.
 
 
Part 2

A mass casualty incident is any event in which your medical resources are inadequate for the number and severity of injuries incurred.  Mass Casualty Incidents (MCIs) can be quite variable in their presentation.  They might be:

• ·         Doomsday scenario events, such as nuclear weapon detonations
• ·         Terrorist acts, such as occurred on 9/11 or in Oklahoma City
• ·         Consequences of a storm, such as a tornado or hurricane
• ·         Consequences of civil unrest
• ·         Mass transit mishap (train derailment, plane crash, etc.)
• ·         A car accident with, say, three people significantly injured (and only one ambulance)
• ·         Many others
 
The effective medical management of any of the above events requires rapid and accurate triage.  Triage is the process of rapidly evaluating and sorting casualties by the severity of injury and the level of urgency for treatment. We will use the following categories:

Immediate (Red tag): The victim needs immediate medical care and will not survive if not treated quickly.  (for example, a major hemorrhagic wound/internal bleeding) Top priority for treatment.
 
Delayed (Yellow tag): The victim needs medical care within 2-4 hours. Injuries may become life-threatening if ignored, but can wait until Red tags are treated. (for example, open fracture of femur without major hemorrhage)
 
Minimal (Green tag): Generally stable and ambulatory (“walking wounded”) but may need some medical care. (for  example, 2 broken fingers, sprained wrist)
 
Expectant (Black tag): The victim is either deceased or is not expected to live.  (for example, open fracture of cranium with brain damage, multiple penetrating chest wounds)
 
If you don’t have triage tags, you can simply use a pen to mark the victim’s forehead with a 1 (Red), 2(Yellow), 3(Green), and 4(Black) to indicate the level of priority.
 
Here’s our hypothetical scenario:  you are in your village near the border with another (hostile) group.  You hear an explosion.  You are the first one to arrive at the scene, and you are alone.  There are about twenty people down, and there is blood everywhere.  What do you do?

In our last article, we discussed the 5 “S’s” of initial MCI scene evaluation.  From that, let’s say that you have already determined the SAFETY of the current situation and SIZED UP the scene.  There appears to have been a bomb that exploded.  There are no hostiles nearby, as far as you can tell, and there is no evidence of incoming ordinance.  Therefore, you believe that you and other responders are not in danger.  The injuries are significant (there are body parts) and the victims are all in an area no more than, say, 30 yards.  The incident occurred on a main thoroughfare in the village, so there are ways in and ways out. You have SENT a call for help on your handie-talkie and described the scene, and have received replies from several group members, including a former ICU nurse who is contacting everyone else with medical experience.  The area is relatively open, so you can SET UP different areas for different triage categories.  Now you can START (Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment).

You will call out as loudly as possible:  “I’m here to help, everyone who can get up and walk and needs medical attention, get up and move to ______ (pick an area). If you are uninjured and can help, follow me.”

You’re lucky, 13 of the 20, mostly from the periphery of the blast, sit up, or at least try to.  10 can stand, and 8 go to the area you designated.  These people have cuts and scrapes, and a couple are limping; one has obviously broken an arm. 2 beaten-up but sturdy individuals join you.  By communicating, you have made your job as temporary Incident Commander easier by identifying the walking wounded (Green) and getting some immediate help.  You still have 10 victims down.

You then go to the closest victim on the ground.  Start right where you are and go to the next nearest victim in turn.  In this way, you will triage faster and more effectively than trying to figure out who needs help the most from a distance or going in a haphazard pattern.

Let’s cheat just a little and say that you happen to have SMART tags in your pack.  SMART tags are handy tickets which allow you to make a particular triage level on a patient.  Once you identify a victim’s triage level, you remove a portion of the end of the tag until you reach the appropriate color and place it around the patient’s wrist.  You could, instead, use colored adhesive tape, colored markers, or numbers

(Priority 1 is immediate/red, 2 is delayed/yellow, 3 is minimal/green, 4 is dead/expectant/black; this is used in some other countries and is useful if you’re color blind).

It is important to remember that you are triaging, not treating.  The only treatments in START will be stopping massive bleeding, opening airways, and elevating the legs in case of shock. As you go from patient to patient, stay calm, identify who you are and that you’re here to help. Your goal is to identify who will need help most urgently (red tags).  You will be assessing RPMs  (Respirations, Perfusion, and Mental Status):

Respirations:  Is your patient breathing? If not, tilt the head back or, if you have them, insert an oral airway (Note: in a MCI triage situation, the rule against moving the neck of an injured person before ruling out cervical spine injury is, for the time being, suspended) If you have an open airway and no breathing, that victim is tagged black. If the victim breathes once an airway is restored or is breathing more than 30 times a minute, tag red.  If the victim is breathing normally, move to perfusion.

Perfusion:   Perfusion is an evaluation of how normal the blood flow or circulation is.  Check for a radial pulse and/or press on the nail bed (I sometimes use the pad of a finger) firmly and quickly remove.  It will go from white to pink in less than 2 seconds in a normal individual.  This is referred to as the Capillary Refill Time (CRT).  If no radial pulse or it takes longer than 2 seconds for nail bed color to return to pink, tag red.  If a pulse is present and CRT is normal, move to mental status.

Mental Status:  Can the victim follow simple commands (“open your eyes”, “what’s your name”)? If the patient is breathing and has normal perfusion but is unconscious or can’t follow your commands, tag red.  If they can follow commands, tag yellow if they can’t get up or green if they can.  Remember that, as a consequence of the explosion, some victims may not be able to hear you well. 

It might be easier to remember all this by just thinking:  30 (respirations) – 2 (CRT) – Can Do (Commands)

If there is any doubt as to the category, always tag the highest priority triage level.  Not sure between yellow and red?  Tag red.  Once you have identified someone as triage level red, tag them and move immediately to the next patient unless you have major bleeding to stop.  Any one RPM check that results in a red result tags the victim as red.  For example, if someone wasn’t breathing but began breathing once you repositioned the airway, tag red, stop further evaluation if not hemorrhaging and move to the next patient.  Elevate the legs if you suspect shock.

Finally, these are your 10 patients on the ground, in order.  Read the descriptions and decide the primary triage level; remember you have two unskilled helpers following you.  We’ll discuss how we triaged them in detail next article:

1.  Male in his 30s, complains of pain in his left leg (obviously fractured), Respirations 24, pulse strong, CRT 1 second, no excessive bleeding.
2.  Female in her 50s, bleeding from nose, ears, and mouth.  Trying to sit up but can’t, respirations 20, pulse present, CRT 1 second, not responding to your commands.
3.  Teenage girl bleeding heavily from her right thigh, respirations 32, pulse thready, CRT 2.5 seconds, follows commands
4.  Another teenage girl, small laceration on forehead, says she can’t move her legs.  Respirations 20, pulse strong, CRT 1 second.
5.  Male in his 20s, head wound, respirations absent.  Airway repositioned, still no breathing. 
6.  Male in his 40s, burns on face, chest, and arms.  Respirations 22, pulse 100, CRT 1.5 seconds, follows commands.
7.  Teenage boy, multiple cuts and abrasions but not hemorrhaging, says he can’t breathe, respirations 34, radial pulse present, CRT 2.5 seconds.
8.  Female in her 20s, burns on neck and face, respirations 22, pulse present, CRT 1 second, asks to get up and can walk, although with a limp.
9.  Elderly woman, bleeding profusely from an amputated right arm (level of forearm), respirations 36, pulse on other wrist absent, CRT 3 seconds, unresponsive.
10.  male child, multiple penetrating injuries, respirations absent.  Airway repositioned, starts breathing.  Radial pulse absent, CRT 2 seconds, unresponsive.
Next article, we’ll see how we used START to sort our victims, utilized our unskilled help, and proceeded once we completed primary triage.  We’ll also discuss how our evaluations would stand up in a SHTF scenario.
 
Part 3

In Part 2 we described a mass casualty incident scene with 20 victims and told you about initial considerations before beginning START (Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment).  You ended up with 10 victims on the ground, 8 walking wounded, and 2 uninjured but unskilled helpers.  You moved the walking wounded to a separate area and are now ready to quickly triage the remaining 10 victims.

To review the primary triage categories:

Immediate (Red tag): The victim needs immediate medical care and will not survive if not treated quickly.  (for example, a major hemorrhagic wound/internal bleeding) Top priority for treatment.

Delayed (Yellow tag): The victim needs medical care within 2-4 hours. Injuries may become life-threatening if ignored, but can wait until Red tags are treated. (for example, open fracture of femur without major hemorrhage)

Minimal (Green tag): Generally stable and ambulatory (“walking wounded”) but may need some medical care. (for  example, 2 broken fingers, sprained wrist)

Expectant (Black tag): The victim is either deceased or is not expected to live.  (for example, open fracture of cranium with brain damage, multiple penetrating chest wounds)

And here are your triage evaluation parameters (RPMs):

Respirations:  Is your patient breathing? If not, tilt the head back or, if you have them, insert an oral airway (Note: in a MCI triage situation, the rule against moving the neck of an injured person before ruling out cervical spine injury is, for the time being, suspended) If you have an open airway and no breathing, that victim is tagged black. If the victim breathes once an airway is restored or is breathing more than 30 times a minute, tag red.  If the victim is breathing normally, move to perfusion.

Perfusion:   Perfusion is an evaluation of how normal the blood flow or circulation is.  Check for a radial pulse and/or press on the nail bed (I sometimes use the pad of a finger) firmly and quickly remove.  It will go from white to pink in less than 2 seconds in a normal individual.  This is referred to as the Capillary Refill Time (CRT).  If no radial pulse or it takes longer than 2 seconds for nail bed color to return to pink, tag red.  If a pulse is present and CRT is normal, move to mental status.

Mental Status:  Can the victim follow simple commands (“open your eyes”, “what’s your name”)? If the patient is breathing and has normal perfusion but is unconscious or can’t follow your commands, tag red.  If they can follow commands, tag yellow if they can’t get up or green if they can.  Remember that, as a consequence of the explosion, some victims may not be able to hear you well.

Remember this:  30 (respirations) – 2 (CRT) – Can Do (follows commands)

Your 2 uninjured helpers are an able-bodied man and woman.  The woman knows how to take a pulse.  You have no medical equipment with you other than some oral airways and triage tags to work with.

Begin with the nearest victim (from our list in the last article):

1.  Male in his 30s, complains of pain in his left leg (obviously fractured), Respirations 24, pulse strong, CRT 1 second, no excessive bleeding.

Respirations are within acceptable range (less than 30), pulse and CRT normal.  Complains of pain, and is communicating where it hurts, so mental status probably normal.  This patient is tagged YELLOW: needs care but will not die if there is a reasonable (2-4 hour) delay.  Move on.

2.  Female in her 50s, bleeding from nose, ears, and mouth.  Trying to sit up but can’t, respirations 20, pulse present, CRT 1 second, not responding to your commands.

This victim has a significant head injury, but is stable from the standpoint of respirations and perfusion.  As her mental status is impaired, tag RED (immediate).  Move on.

3.  Teenage girl bleeding heavily from her right thigh, respirations 32, pulse thready, CRT 2.5 seconds, follows commands.

This victim is seriously hemorrhaging, one of the reasons to treat during triage.  Respirations elevated and perfusion impaired. You use your unskilled male helper to apply pressure by placing his hands on the bleeding and applying pressure, preferably using his shirt or bandanna as a “dressing”. Tag RED.  As the patient is already RED, you don’t really have to assess mental status. You and your female helper move on.

4.  Another teenage girl, small laceration on forehead, says she can’t move her legs.  Respirations 20, pulse strong, CRT 1 second.

Probable spinal injury but otherwise stable and can communicate.  Tag YELLOW.  Move on.

5.  Male in his 20s, head wound, respirations absent.  Airway repositioned, still no breathing. 

If not breathing, you will reposition his head and place an airway.  This fails to restart breathing.  This patient is deceased for all intents and purposes.  Tag BLACK, move on.

6.  Male in his 40s, burns on face, chest, and arms.  Respirations 22, pulse 100, CRT 1.5 seconds, follows commands.

This victim has significant burns on large areas, but is breathing well and has normal perfusion.  Mental status is unimpaired, so you tag YELLOW and move on.

7.  Teenage boy, multiple cuts and abrasions but not hemorrhaging, says he can’t breathe, respirations 34, radial pulse present, CRT 2.5 seconds.

This victim doesn’t look so bad but is having trouble breathing and has questionable perfusion.  Mental status is unimpaired, but he likely has other issues, perhaps internal bleeding.  You tag RED (respirations over 30, impaired perfusion) and move on.

8.  Female in her 20s, burns on neck and face, respirations 22, pulse present, CRT 1 second, asks to get up and can walk, although with a limp.

Obviously injured, this young woman is otherwise stable and communicating.  With assistance, she is able to stand up, and can walk by herself.  She becomes another of the walking wounded, tag GREEN.   Point her to the other GREEN victims and move on.

9.  Elderly woman, bleeding profusely from an amputated right arm (level of forearm), respirations 36, pulse on other wrist absent, CRT 3 seconds, unresponsive.

Obviously in dire straits, you use your shirt as a tourniquet and sacrifice your remaining helper to apply pressure on the bleeding area.  Tag Red, move on.

10.  Male child, multiple penetrating injuries, respirations absent.  Airway repositioned, starts breathing.  Radial pulse absent, CRT 2 seconds, unresponsive.
You initially think this child is deceased, but you follow protocol and reposition his airway by tilting his head back and lifting his jaw .  A Mass Casualty Incident is one of the few circumstances where you don’t worry as much about cervical spine injuries in making your assessment. He starts breathing even without an oral airway, to your surprise, so you tag him RED.  If he is bleeding heavily from his injuries, you apply pressure and wait for the additional help you requested on initial survey of the MCI to arrive.

You have just performed triage on 20 victims, including the walking wounded, in 10 minutes or less.  Help begins to arrive, including the ICU nurse that you contacted initially.  You are no longer the most experienced medical resource at the scene, and you are relieved of Incident Command.  The nurse begins the process of assigning areas for yellow, red and black areas where secondary triage and treatment can occur.

There is still much to do, but you have performed your duty to identify those victims who need the most urgent care.  In a normal situation, your modern medical facilities will already have ambulances and trained personnel with lots of equipment on the scene.  In a collapse situation, however, the prognosis for many of your victims is grave.  Go back ` over our list of victims and see who you think would survive if modern medical care was not available.  Many of the RED tags and even some of the YELLOW tags would be in serious danger of dying from their wounds.

In times of trouble, it is wise to carry some form of individual kit to deal with medical issues you may be confronted with. Nurse Amy and I constantly research, develop and tweak medical supplies to tailor them to collapse scenarios.  We are always learning and improvising, and it would serve you well to do the same.

Letter Re: What is Behind the Dip in Precious Metals Prices?

James,
Could you or someone you trust please explain why spot silver has dipped below $20 per Troy ounce? Those of us who don’t have the experience or ability to ferret this knowledge out for ourselves would be grateful. In addition, a forecast for how long this dip might last, would be greatly appreciated. – D.W.N.

JWR Replies: The short answer to your question is that Ben Bernanke spoke and the markets panicked. All that it took to spook the markets was an indication that Quantitative Easing monetization might end in the next year, and suddenly everyone realized that the FREE MONEY game might be coming to an end. The absurdly low interest rates (a product of the ZIRP since 2008) no longer looked like a sure thing. To explain: When interest rates rise, the ability of speculators to carry on with highly-leveraged investments is threatened. There was just a faint chill of a potential credit crunch (a la 2008) and it induced and involuntary shiver throughout the markets. Suddenly there was a rush toward liquidity. There was widespread selling of just about everything, to generate cash. Consequently the market price of nearly all investment vehicles took a hit. Across the board, stocks, some bonds, precious metals, and nearly all agricultural commodities dropped between 3% and 20%, overnight. Within 48 hours the 10-year Treasury Note yield rate jumped 40 basis points. And mind you, this was not a full-blown market crisis–just the foreshadowing of the real credit crisis, to come.

When the credit bubble eventually does burst, we will see a huge jump in interest rates–perhaps as much as 8 percent increase in just a few days. The derivatives casino that has built up in the past five years that has been playing off miniscule moves of a few basis points are going to be wiped out by any such large swing in rates. And when rates jump we can kiss the artificial “recovery” goodbye. The easy money speculative markets will implode. It will suddenly become nearly impossible for the Federal government to service its massive debt. This will force one of two escape strategies by the Fed and the Treasury Department. They will either choose: Option A,) Go Cold Turkey and institute Greek Tragedy-style austerity measures. They will see no choice but to radically raise taxes, slash government spending, and loot the bank accounts and pension funds of the citizenry. The economy will crash and there will be huge layoffs.

or…

Option B.) They will attempt to re-inflate the Big Dang Bubble once again, with massive monetization. If they choose this route they will destroy the value of the Dollar through mass inflation. And the economy will crash and there will be huge layoffs. (Note the common outcomes of both Options.)

Buckle up folks. Diversify into barterable tangibles, I’m betting that the spineless worm bureaucrats will go Full Mugabe and choose Option B, because it is more politically expedient. But regardless, in the long run the U.S. Dollar is doomed.

In answer to your second question: The dip in precious metals may continue for several months. But I anticipate that in October or November of 2013, the prices of gold and silver will recover, and the bull market will resume.

Don’t let the current dip in the metals spook you. Rather, look at this as a buying opportunity. When the inevitable crisis arrives, regardless of which escape strategy is attempted, precious metals should recovery nicely. And if Bernanke and Company selects Option B, then the upside potential for the metals is tremendous.

Economics and Investing:

History Shows Gold May Drop to as Low as $900 An Oz.—And Still Remain in a Bull Market

The new “modest budget” indie movie Alongside Night is now in early release. The film is based on Agorist-Libertarian activist J. Neil Schulman’s novel of the same name. It seems that some gold and silver coins deserve “best supporting” awards.

Jim W. sent this: Fed Faces ‘Treacherous’ Path in Exiting its QE. Here is a quote: “Exiting too fast will crash the real economy, while exiting too slowly will create a huge bubble and then crash the financial system.”

Get Ready for Stupid Cheap Silver Prices: David H. Smith

Items from The Economatrix:

Do Markets Fear Central Banks’ Grip Is Slipping?

Did Bernanke Just Kill The Housing Recovery?

Everything Is Being Sold–Market Crash Warning

Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader Mendy P. sent: Study: 70 Percent of Americans on Prescription Drugs. JWR’s Comment: If one considers a pharmaceutical supply chain failure in the event of a power grid collapse, then the implications of this study are staggering. What will life in American be like when 27 million Americans are forced to suddenly come down off of antidepressants? There will be no “gradual tapering”–just “cold turkey” withdrawal. My advice: If the grids go down then be prepared to stay off the streets for a few months. There will be a lot of crazy behavior manifested.

   o o

File Under “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”: Homeowners Digging Fence Make Startling Discovery and Get Stuck with $5,000 Bill

   o o o

NASA Announces Asteroid Grand Challenge

   o o o

PBS continues to aim low, now embracing Hoodie Culture: Sesame Street introduces first Muppet to have a parent in jail

   o o o

Feds: Men made X-ray weapon to sicken enemies. OBTW, this news reminds me of something that I recently wrote.

Notes from JWR:

Today is the birthday of Marine Corps Lt. General Chesty Puller. (Born, 1898, died October 11, 1971.) Perhaps America’s finest-ever maverick officer, Puller was part of what I call the Even Greater Generation.

This is also the birthday of my uncle, Joseph Brower. Often in the shadow of his elder brother (the famous environmentalist David Brower), Joe Brower has had an amazing life of his own. He was a navigator on board flying boats during, and after World War II. After the war, as communist troops advanced though China, Joe was a navigator for China National (CNAC.) Then he worked as a navigator for several civilian airlines including The Flying Tigers, Swiss Air, and Lufthansa before he was finally forced into ground duty by the advent of automated navigation systems. Now in retirement and struggling with failing eyesight, my Uncle Joe’s mind is still sharp. Like many other men of his generation, some of the stories he tells are amazing.

—

Today we present another entry for Round 47 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize: A.) Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate, good for any one, two, or three course. (A $1,195 value.) B.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795, and C.) Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources. (A $350 value.) D.) a $300 gift certificate from CJL Enterprize, for any of their military surplus gear, E.) A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $300 value), F.) Two BirkSun.com photovoltaic backpacks (one Level, and one Atlas, both black), with a combined value of $275, G.) A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo. and H.) A roll of $10 face value in pre-1965 U.S. 90% silver quarters, courtesy of GoldAndSilverOnline.com. The current value of this roll is at least $225.

Second Prize: A.) A gift certificate worth $1,000, courtesy of Spec Ops Brand, B.) A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training. Together, these have a retail value of $589. C.) A FloJak FP-50 stainless steel hand well pump (a $600 value), courtesy of FloJak.com. D.) $300 worth of ammo from Patriot Firearms and Munitions. (They also offer a 10% discount for all SurvivalBlog readers with coupon code SVB10P.), E.) A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials and F.) Two cases of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Third Prize: A.) A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21. (This filter system is a $275 value.), B.) A large handmade clothes drying rack, a washboard and a Homesteading for Beginners DVD, all courtesy of The Homestead Store, with a combined value of $206, C.) Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy. This is a $185 retail value, D.) A Commence Fire! emergency stove with three tinder refill kits. (A $160 value. E.) A Tactical Trauma Bag #3 from JRH Enterprises (a $200 value), and F.) Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security.

Round 47 ends on July 31st so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Ammunition Caching: A 20 Year Real-World Experiment, by Cache and Carry

          
Introduction:
Twenty years ago in 1993, I had already been collecting paramilitary style firearms for over 15 years. I remember purchasing my first HK91 rifle in the late 1970s and being so excited about the Galils, Uzis, Valmets, FN/FALs and the other varieties of collectable rifles that were available to a firearms enthusiast in that period of recent American history.

Being a collector of arms also made me interested in collecting the ammunition that was abundant in that era. Shortly after getting married in the 1980s, my lovely wife asked, “Why do you need to keep all this ammunition?” I responded that it was like a savings account and that I was gathering it because it was, “still cheap.” I guess I had a premonition of what might someday happen to ammunition availability. I remember buying .223 ammunition to fuel my AR-15 rifle, and paying around $110 per thousand for the stuff.

Like minds seek each other out and it was at a gun show that I met and became acquainted with an older and financially successful firearms collector. This man owned more than a few Class 3 registered firearms. He had the things that I had only dreamed of and I respected his wisdom in collecting and preparing.  After our friendship grew, he introduced me to the concept of ammunition caching.
This man had already placed multiple ammunition caches, when he allowed me to know that he was doing this. I was intrigued and asked him about his methods.

He was making each of his caches about the same. His caches consisted of 10 Krugerrand one-ounce gold coins (at this time gold was about $375 per ounce), a Ruger factory folding stainless Mini-14 rifle with five magazines and 1.000 rounds of ammunition. He also placed a cheap nylon backpack in the cache to aid in transporting the contents from the site. This gentleman claimed he preferred the stainless Mini 14 side folder, because with the pistol grip removed, he could make his cache to fit inside a 3 inch piece of PVC pipe. He then capped both ends and voila, you have a pretty handy cache for the future. I asked him how he remembered where these caches were located, and without going into too much detail, he told me he had a pattern, based on section lines. He stated that any friend of his only knew where two or less of the caches were. He buried his caches near steel cattle guards, culverts, or other large metal objects to discourage the use of metal detectors in compromising the cache locations. He explained to me how he preferred fresh plowed fields (not his own) and that he used a sheet of plywood with a hole in the middle, along with an auger to make the placements. He would search for location matching his “pattern” and the aforementioned criteria. He would place the plywood in the field and auger cache burial hole through the hole in the plywood. The plywood allowed him to control how the site looked after he finished, by containing the excess dirt, with the excess being distributed away from the site. When the cache was in place, he would remove the plywood and make the plowed field look as if he had never been there.

Needless to say, I was envious of his provisions, but sadly I was nowhere near as financially capable as this man, to make caches containing gold and rifles. What did happen; however, was that the seed was planted and I began thinking in earnest about the concept of caching.

The 1990s were an eye-opening time for me. I remember how horrified I was at the news of the federal siege at Ruby Ridge. The shooting of Randy Weaver’s son and wife caused me to wonder just how far the “powers that be” in this country could act against citizens and also to wonder what might be ahead as far as an out of control federal effort that seemed squarely against something as basic as the Second Amendment. Then in 1993 came the Waco siege. I remember watching on television as military tanks were used to smash holes in the church compound. This is the first time in my memory, on U.S. soil that I had seen military tanks used in an operation against U.S. citizens!  When the whole church compound went up in flames, the tanks and dozers kept pushing the rubble together to burn everything rather than extinguishing the flames to preserve evidence. I began in earnest to think how it could be that we had come to this in America and what the future of freedom would look like in the coming years.
By this time I had piled up a fair amount of ammunition.  As I hefted one of the wooden cases I struggled with the logistics of having to move ammunition in time of emergency. I remember thinking, if I had to leave my home under an emergency (I had not yet heard of the term “bugging out”) it would be next to impossible to include very much ammunition in my vehicle’s payload…  I made up my mind that I would locate at least some of my ammunition offsite to a remote location.

Method:
The following is what I did and how it turned out after I returned to open the cache this year, some 20 years later.
Once I decided that caching ammunition was a goal, I began keeping a lookout for various types of materials to construct containers to use for my caches. I did not have the extra money to make the acquisitions all at once, so I kept looking over different materials and possibilities.

I was also trying to think how a cache might be designed to allow retrieval quickly and without a large amount of effort as far as digging. The idea of a container that would hold another, removable container began to form as my design. This has been the pattern for the development of my caching system. I do not believe that I read about or heard others describe this type of cache. It is a design that was born of my desire to be able to quickly retrieve cached items. By its very design, the cached items have a double wall layer of protection from the elements. Time has proven that this is a viable method of creating a cache.

To get my project started, I discovered some heavy duty green sewer pipe at a second hand store. There were two pieces; one of eight inch inside diameter and one ten inch inside diameter. Each had some damage to the ends and so they were fairly inexpensive. I made an offer on the pipe and returned home to hack saw the cracked portions off of the pipes. Next I purchased caps to seal the ends. I did not find threaded caps, but only simple slip on caps. On one end of the pipe, I fiberglassed the cap in place to make a permanent seal to the pipe.  The other cap was left to simply slide onto the pipe to make the seal. The removable slip on cap fit so tight that it took more than a minute to remove the cap due to suction.  The next component came about because I often visit “Army Surplus” type stores. I remembered seeing plastic tubes that were U.S. Navy surplus sonobuoy shipping containers. A quick search of the Internet will show you what a gray plastic hexagonal sonobuoy shipping tube looks like.  As luck would have it, one of these sonobuoy tubes fits exactly inside an eight inch inside diameter pipe. The sonobuoy containers were selling for less than ten bucks apiece, so I could not pass up adding these to my project. The ten inch inside diameter pipe turned out to be the perfect size to hold the remainder of the eight inch pipe perfectly.

So, picture the design as being a permanently placed outer container (in this case pipe) as a “shell” to contain the smaller removable container, which I refer to as the “pod”. The outer shell will remain embedded in the ground (or concrete, or whatever you can imagine) and be placed so that the pod could be relatively easily removed.  One design possible with the materials I had gathered used the smaller sonobuoy as the pod inside the eight inch pipe (as the shell) to complete one cache.  The other used the larger ten inch pipe as a shell and an eight inch capped pipe inside as the pod. In either case the design uses a tube inside a tube. I termed this design an “encapsulated cache” which should allow the relative rapid withdrawal of the cached material. The encapsulated cache, uses the internal removable pod container, surrounded by the fixed protective walls of the outer shell container. The outer shell container in this concept is not excavated (other than to expose the cap) in the retrieval of the removable cached pod with its valuables.

The materials I had collected, had come together to give me what was needed to complete my idea for a cache concept that had formed in my mind. My plan was for a vertical cache, with the end (of the shell) that could be opened, hidden just under the surface for a quick retrieval of the contents. The cache would have to be located in such a way that I could quickly uncover it, remove the cap on the shell container and retrieve the inner pod containing the ammunition. The more likely the chance of people being in the area, the deeper or more creative you would have to be in the placement to conceal the removable outer cap of the shell. If need be the whole cache could be buried deep, but that begins to defeat the need for the “encapsulated cache” as time and effort to remove the pod would negate the “quick extraction” feature of this method. A variation in the encapsulated cache placement could involve the shell being placed horizontally. A horizontal placement of the shell could be included in the construction of a concrete basement wall for example and sheet rocked over. The retrieval would only require the breaking of the sheet rock veneer to expose the “shell” cap underneath. Rebar in the concrete might thwart the use of metal detectors to locate the cache set in such a wall.

Most of the remainder of this description will focus on my actual experience in placing and using the cache made from the eight inch outer pipe (for the shell) with the sonobuoy inner container (for the pod), but the concept would work the same whether you could obtain sonobuoy tubes, or made your inside pod tube from other material such as a smaller diameter pipe. I envisioned the cache design that I was going to place to be oriented vertically, and with the removable cap for the outside shell container only slightly underground or under a random large, discrete object.

As a side note, I have also made this type of cache by using a five gallon bucket as the permanent shell container with an ammo can as the interior pod container. I have had one such “bucket encapsulated cache” in place for over two decades. It is buried about six inches underground. I have returned to the bucket cache many times over the years to retrieve and add items from/to the “pod” (ammo can). At times I have found a very small amount of condensation in the “shell” (outer bucket), but never any inside the removable “pod” (Always protect the “pod” with desiccant where possible). This bucket encapsulated cache survived a logging operation that skidded trees directly over the placement. It survived one hundred percent undetected and unscathed.

In the placement of the encapsulated cache that I made with the sonobuoy pod, I used Mylar (metalized) bags to hold the various calibers of ammunition for the cache. I had one of the old “seal-a-meal” bag sealers and I began to collect the small bags of desiccant that came with various items I had had purchased. When the day came to load the interior container, I heated the many desiccant bags to recharge them, just prior to sealing the Mylar bags with varying calibers and quantities of ammunition.  I took a marker and labeled each bag to identify what it contained.

I found that my sonobuoy tube could hold all of the following:
Four bags containing 250 rounds each of 223 ammunition for a total of 1,000 rounds.
One bag containing 500 rounds of 9mm ammunition.
Six bags containing 100 rounds each of 308 ammunition for a total of 600 rounds.
One bag containing 120 rounds of 45 auto ammunition.

With the bags sealed, I arranged them in the sonobuoy tube, placing a large commercial bag of desiccant that I had scrounged from a snowmobile shipping crate and recharged in the oven, on the top of the pile of individually sealed bags. I screwed on the plastic cap of the sonobuoy pod and applied a silicone sealant gasket to provide an additional barrier against moisture.

When you put something like this together, you will notice is that the cache tube is very heavy.  To assist in the removal of the pod from the shell, I decided to construct a harness out of ¼ inch nylon rope for the pod, so that once uncovered, I could grab the rope harness and remove the inner cache from the vertical burial tube with more ease than if I had to try to pull the inner tube out by the cap alone.

With all this constructed, I now had to decide where I would place my cache. My concept was that this might have to be accessed by me in the event that I had to leave my home…what has become known today as bugging out. The different scenarios I envisioned all centered on the possibility of having to leave home and venture to a remote location. This is the most important consideration that anyone making this sort of preparation has to consider. You do not want to return to your cache after an extended absence and find that a new highway had compromised your efforts. How about a new housing development, and then there are logging operations and so on. In the end, I chose a remote location that I had spent some amount of time in my younger days camping and exploring. I choose public land far from civilization. I went camping and looked for “my spot”. The location I chose was in the high plains, above 6,000 feet elevation. I choose a location that gets about 20 inches of moisture a year; much of it in the form of snow.

Since I planned on leaving the upper cap on the vertical shell where I could access it quickly, I had decided that I would find a location with abundant rocks in the hope of locating the cache under a large boulder. My idea was that this would help water proof the cache, hide the cache and make the cache quickly accessible by simply moving the large rock “cap stone”.

After much searching, I found my location. I moved my materials along with two 4 foot by 4 foot pieces of plywood (to keep the surface of the ground pristine) to the location. With a digging bar, and a shovel it took most of the afternoon to place the vertical shell tube in position. It should also be noted that I picked a location that was well hidden from curious eyes by vegetation. With the shell tube in place I removed the dirt that had been dislocated in the process of digging the hole, away from the site to keep the site looking natural. I took the larger rocks that had been unearthed and used them to line the area directly around the removable shell cap. I did this so that upon retrieval of the ammunition, I would not have to dig, but could just pull these loose rocks from the area immediately surrounding the shell cap. With a great deal of effort I rolled the cover rock, which was a large mostly flat rock, into place over the cap of the cache shell.

One thing that I worried about when I initially placed the cache was the possibility of disturbance by bears, as bears often move rocks in search of moths, grubs, and ants to feed on. In this case I chose a cap rock that was very large. I also was careful not to use any container or material that had been used to hold food that might attract a curious scavenger.

Over the next twenty years, I made many efforts to revisit the area. I often went with friends, never mentioning the location of the cache, but lingering in the area to see if anyone might notice anything out of the ordinary. No one ever did. As time went on, a tree grew a branch directly over the cap stone adding to the security of the location. Sometimes I would leave a branch or twig lying on the cap stone to alert me if the stone had been tampered with. Over time, pine needles, leaves and debris continued to build up over the area and I became certain that the cache was safe for the foreseeable future. On some visits I observed four feet of snow covering the cache site. Other times the air temperature was nearly 100 degrees.

Results:
This year, being the twenty year anniversary of the placement of the cache, I decided I would test my design and see how the cache has fared. I approached the cache and observed that everything was as I had last left it.

I was careful not to break the tree branches that have grown over the stone as they add a level of natural camouflage to the shell cap stone that I cannot reproduce artificially. I slid the cap stone off of the cache cover (the stone weighs about fifty pounds). There, just as I had left it, was the plastic cap of the shell. I carefully, but easily removed the larger rocks around the perimeter of the plastic cap. I held my breath and began to work the cap up and off of the shell. When it came off, I was greeted with the view of the sonobuoy tube and its rope harness. Within three minutes of approaching the site and without any tools, I had extricated the pod containing the ammunition from the larger shell. I peered into the bottom of the larger, now empty shell and saw that the larger tube was indeed as “dry as a bone”. I was overjoyed as I often wondered if moisture had been seeping into the cache. In retrospect, I might have opened the cache a couple of years after the initial placement to assure that everything was staying dry, but in this case it all worked out just fine.

I put the plastic cap back on the now empty vertical shell and returned the cap stone to its place. Next, I anxiously opened the cap of the sonobuoy tube to reveal the contents after twenty years. I sampled the bags and found the ammunition dry and shinny. I took a 10 percent sample and test fired the ammunition. I had 100% reliability in firing the test ammunition. It should be noted that much of this ammo was surplus ammunition to start with and some is now more than forty years old.  I replaced the quantity of ammunition that I used in testing, recharged the desiccant by heating it and again sealed the bags and the sonobuoy tube. I did take advantage of a small unused space inside the tube to add an additional 750 rounds of .22 long rifle ammunition, to top off the space in the sonobuoy tube. I returned to the cache site and replaced everything as it was before the cache was opened.  The replacement of the cache took only minutes and no special tools.

Conclusion:
I can’t tell you how much peace of mind I have knowing that this cache is in place and functioning as I had hoped for two decades. I do not see any reason that it might not survive many more decades into the future.  When the time is right I hope I can show my children the cache and pass it on to them.
At the time I buried the cache, I would have been somewhat embarrassed to tell anyone that I would make such preparation. Now, twenty years later I believe there are many more people who would not think the placement of such provisions is at all eccentric.
I have written this description to encourage other kindred spirits to pay attention to the materials that you may come in contact with that could be used to construct a similar cache and to motivate you to make such a preparation for you and your associates for the day when such provisions may be needed.

My guess is that some will scoff at the idea of the cache being only slightly underground, or being covered by a removable rock. The weakness is that the cache may be found; however, the location that I placed this cache in is so remote that humans seldom even walk near the location. Also, large boulders are common in the location, giving the “cap stone” a very inconspicuous look (I would NOT recommend placing the cache under the only prominent rock in an area). These factors give this type of cache the security that has allowed it to be successfully placed these twenty years.
I know of another individual who has placed a cache of ammunition in a totally different way. His cache is buried more than ten feet underground! It certainly is secure, but how long would he have to work to remove the contents?  

In the end, your choice of materials and designs are endless. My “encapsulated cache” is really one that came together by imagination and luck in finding the materials I used to construct it. The secret is being ready and available to make use of what is around you and then being motivated to do something, rather than spending your precious time “getting ready to get ready” and in fact doing nothing.
Lastly, I want to state that I consider myself a patriotically motivated individual. My cache is in place as a last resort to preserve the ideals of the Constitution of the United States, and especially our God given rights. I consider it my responsibility to be prepared to personally keep the Minuteman mentality that I came to admire as I learned our nations history.  I pray that it does not come to the point where freedom is so curtailed that patriots are again force to fight tyranny on this North American continent  in order to preserve the concepts that made this country great, but the fact is, that it is looking more and more like that is our situation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” – United States Declaration of Independence

Letter Re: Circumventing Canada’s Onerous Magazine Ban

Hello Mr. Rawles,
This information may be useful for Americans living in states with strict magazine capacities.

A loophole exists under Canadian laws that allows shooters the ability to legally bypass magazine capacity restrictions.  

Under Canadian law, a magazine DESIGNED for a rifle may only hold five rounds of the caliber it is designed for.  A magazine designed for a pistol may only hold 10 rounds of the caliber for the pistol it is designed for.  But there is no law prohibiting the use of a pistol magazine in a rifle, a magazine designed for a different caliber than the caliber of gun it is being used in, or loading different caliber ammunition in a magazine than what it was designed for.

This loophole has been exploited in the past as follows:
– Using .40 caliber pistol magazines to hold 13 founds of 9mm
– Using 10 round .223 AR-15 pistol magazines in an AR-15 rifle
– Using 10 round 7.62×39 AR-15 pistol magazines in an AR-15 rifle, holding 12 rounds of .223

A new development is unfolding now, where 5 round .50 caliber AR-15 rifle magazines, capable of holding 15 rounds of .223 are hitting the market.  

It is not inconceivable that in the near future, 10 round, .50 caliber AR-15 pistol magazines will be available which under Canadian law will be legal and will be capable of holding 30 rounds of .223 – completely bypassing the the rifle magazine capacity restrictions.

Here is an article on the subject.

And here is a Canadian business that is 5 round .50 caliber magazines.

Regards, – Mr. X.