Note from JWR:

SurvivalBlog was prominently mentioned in a front page piece on MSNBC yesterday and the resulting hits nearly crashed our server. (We got almost 90,000 unique visits in one day! That’s nearly as many as we usually get in a week.) Here is the article: Hard times have some flirting with survivalism–Economic angst has Americans stockpiling ‘beans, bullets and Band-Aids’. The story itself was well-written, but the headline was a bit much. Flirting? Flirting? I’d say that it is more like America has run off and eloped in Las Vegas with Survivalism.

The high bid in the current SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction is now at $460. This auction is for a mixed lot that includes:

1.) A huge lot of DVDs, CD-ROMs and hard copy nuclear survival/self-sufficiency references (a $300+ value) donated by Richard Fleetwood of www.SurvivalCD.com

2.) A custom-made, fully-stocked EMS Medic Bag from Cajun Safety and Survival (a $212 retail value)

3.) A NukAlert radiation detector donated by at KI4U.com (a $160 retail value)

4.) A case (6 cans) of Mountain House freeze dried foods in #10 (96 ounce) cans donated by Ready Made Resources (a $160 value)

5.) An autographed copy of “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse” ($24, retail)

See the SurvivalBlog Benefit Auction page for complete details on these items. This auction ends on November 15th. Please e-mail us your bid.

Three Letters Re: Advice on Driveway Alarms for Retreat Security

Mr. Rawles,
We’ve been using the Dakota Alert driveway alarm for years. We use the model with the underground sensor that will only go off when a metal object comes near it such as a large (or even small) vehicle. The advantage of this is it has absolutely no false alarms. When the receiver says a car is coming down our (long) driveway, then a car is coming. There is nothing worse than an alarm that gives false alarm all the time and you no longer can trust it. The infrared driveway alarms that I’ve tried do this especially if you live in an area with lots of game running around such as deer, etc. Because of the absence of false alarms, I know when my driveway alarm goes off at 3 a.m.that someone is coming and I can be sure to have the appropriate welcome ready for them.

The other advantage is the unit is very discreet. With almost 50 feet of underground rated cable, I can bury the sensor next to the driveway and put the transmitter away from the road in an elevated position (such as a tree) and it is almost impossible to see. The 9 volt DC battery it uses lasts us about 8-12 months easily. I highly recommend the Dakota Alert. It’s a great product and well worth the money. – Craig

 

Jim:
I can vouch for the Reporter brand driveway alarm system. It’s American-made and is fairly reliable. I had two different chinese-made systems which used magnetic sensors before I found out about this one. The [mainland] Chinese-made ones would become very prone to false alerts before they both eventually broke down. One lasted a year and the other lasted two years. One of them ended up ringing the base unit non-stop.

I’ve used the older Reporter [design] for nearly three years and it has held up to midwestern temperatures and weather extremes. It’s range will drop to 100 yds if you use the supplied antennas with the receiver kept indoors. The sensor is very constrained in how it must be aimed in order to detect vehicles. Contrast in temperature in important. A cold vehicle that leaves your property will probably not always set it off. On the flip side, I’ve never had a false alarm with it. It will pick up small animals that get exactly within its sensor path –including rabbits and occasionally a bird. Likewise, I had a spider crawl onto the sensor which set it off and made for an amusing mystery until I looked at the sensor itself. It will sometimes miss vehicles coming in due to types of tires, position of muffler
which could escape a single sensor. This takes some experimentation and an understanding that it isn’t always going to be 100% perfect. It’s like any other piece of gear that can fail. Later, – Chris

 

Dear JWR:
I replaced my wired driveway alert with a wireless Dakota Alert unit several years ago. I have been pleased with the performance and customer support. I use a magnetic sensor to minimize false alerts, although my neighbor’s cow and large deer can somehow trigger it from tromping down my driveway. The 9 volt alkaline battery has been unreliable in cold weather and I have purchased lithium batteries to test this winter.
Also, the sensor and cable are enclosed in plastic conduit to keep the critters with sharp teeth from giving me another repair project I purchased and returned the Dakota Alert portable receiver as it was very disappointing. Thanks to all for the tip on using the alert with a MURS [handheld] radio. BTW, I’ve made my 10 Cent Challenge. Thanks, – Jon

Letter Re: Advice on Silver Coins for Barter

Mr. Rawles,
I have only a small amount of silver American coins but I constantly look for more. I find your advice to buy pre-1964 dimes, quarters and half-dollars difficult to realize as coin collectors are not selling junk silver in my area (Dallas/Fort Worth). To be frank the silver coins that are available are being sold at crazy prices (two or more times spot) over priced right now as everyone is freaking out about the economy. Reasonably priced coins, though significantly delayed, are available online and my collection has mainly been purchased this way.

On the other hand, silver dollars are frequently for sale at local coin stores. I purchase these when the market is favorable. They are especially easy to store in rolls. You never mention these coins though so I have some trepidation about making this the foundation of my bullion stash. Could you comment on this as well as 99% silver American Eagles as a survival monetary reserve? Thanks, – Neal

JWR: Replies: The premium is generally much higher for silver dollars (than dimes, quarters and halves), because even noticeably-worn dollars are in constant demand for the jewelry trade. (Belt buckles, etc.) A dollar coin also has a hair more silver content, than four quarters, but that is only significant for large quantities. (765 ounces versus 715 ounces, per $1,000 face value, if I recall correctly. That info is in my FAQ.)

Therefore, if your goal is accumulating a stock of coins for barter, then unless you can get silver dollars at nearly the same price as smaller silver, then buy only the smaller denomination silver coins.
One ounce silver American Eagles also command a higher premium than generic trade dollars. Although they are vaguely more recognizable than generics for barter purposes, I don’t think that they are worth paying the premium. The type of trade “dollars” that I look for are the commercially made (not from a the U.S. Mint) “US Assay Silver — .999 Fine — Trade Unit” one-ounce rounds. (To see an example, here is one that recently sold on eBay.) These are quite recognizable and hence will be trusted for barter–perhaps even more so than even American Eagles from the US Mint. Sadly, the average man on the street is ignorant about precious metals has probably never held an American Eagle coin in his hand. If you can find some these rounds (with the current scarcity), they sell for about 20% less that American Eagles or Canadian Maple Leafs. But of course in today’s incredibly scant market, beggars can’t be choosers.

Letter Re: Recreational Vehicles and Investing in Tangibles

Jim,
Thank you for the blog and all the great info you put out. I have a couple of questions that I would like to ask you, but first a little info about myself. I am a 40 year old male with a wife and two kids. I live in Kansas, I work at a large manufacturing plant and my wife works for a insurance company. We have a mortgage and other dept. I would like to buy some land out of town and build a retreat for my family and myself for when TSHTF but can not afford it right now. My grandfather though does own land about a hour north of here. I was wondering what you thought about buying a RV, stocking it with supplies and when the time comes bugging out in that. Also you are always saying to invest in tangibles, What do you recommend ? Thirty round magazines? Ammunition? Barter items? Right now I have about $1,000 to invest but I am lost as to what to buy. I already have my protection squared away so that is not an issue. Once again thank you for all you do and I wish your wife a full and speedy recovery. – Mike in the Great Plains

JWR Replies: I’m fairly certain that you are suggesting an RV strictly as a one-way “Get Out of Dodge” (G.O.O.D.) vehicle to get to your grandfather’s farm, rather than as a vague concept for retreating. For any readers that might consider wandering aimlessly in an RV, see this narrative that I wrote in the early days of SurvivalBlog:

“Land mobile” retreating in a recreational vehicle (RV) is another invitation to disaster. In a TEOTWAWKI situation, a fixed location retreat is vastly superior to going mobile. In my opinion the myth of ”Road Warrior” mobility and firepower is in actuality just an expanded opportunity to wander into ambush after ambush. No vehicle short of a $70,000+ Cadillac Gage V100 wheeled armored personnel carrier (APC) would have both the cargo capacity and the ballistic protection required. (A little Ferret scout car just doesn’t have the capacity. I speak from personal experience on that!) Also, consider that you would need a pair of APCs to provide mutually supporting defensive fire. And then of course you will probably want a belt-fed for each. With spares, ammo, and accessories that is an additional $3,000 per vehicle.

If by chance you already have a fully stocked retreat established and have $150,000 in cash laying around for a couple of ultimate G.O.O.D. vehicles, see: Dave Uhrig’s web site and then click on “Armor”. (I should mention that I have done business with Dave Uhrig on two occasions. He is quite reputable.)

Here is a dose of reality for you: If you choose to go entirely vehicle mobile then you will eventually lose a battle–most likely in a roadblock ambush–or your RV will break down. Or it will run out of fuel–with some likelihood that it will be on exposed terrain in an untenable situation. Also, since the logistics that you could carry would be limited, you will start out with an inherent disadvantage to fixed location retreats. This also creates the prospect that once your food supplies are depleted you will be tempted to take what you need from others. To paraphrase John Dibari (my high school chemistry instructor) when he described troublemakers: “If you aren’t part of the solution–you’re the precipitate.” (That is, someone who precipitates trouble–part of the problem, not the solution.) Scratch that idea!

Since you have a definite destination (your grandfather’s house), then you are better off just storing (“pre-positioning”) what you will need there, rather than trying cram what you will need into an RV for an 11th Hour trip outta Dodge. Odds are that those items will be more secure there, than if they were stored at your house in the Big City, anyway. If his house lacks the requisite storage space perhaps he would be agreeable to you buying a 20 foot CONEX for your gear, and storing it there

In answer to your other question: See this SurvivalBlog post from 2007 for my recommendations on buying full capacity firearms magazines, for barter.

Odds ‘n Sods:

More news and commentary, courtesy of our Economic Editor: Layoffs Spreading Across Corporate America — Fed Pushes Purchase of Assets To Bust Credit Logjam —AmEx Profits Fall, Cardholders Struggle — No Chinese Bailout for Pakistan, Next Stop: IMF — Kerkorian Dumps 2/3 of Ford Stock — Bush Says Economic Panic Is Easing — Markets Soar As LIBOR Starts To Fall — Bernanke Wants Second Stimulus Package — Iceland Agrees To $6 Billion Deal With IMF — France To Inject $6.5 Billion Into Top Six Banks — The view from a French think tank: Summer 2009: The US Gov’t Defaults On Its Debts — Pay-up Time For Lehman Swaps — Financial Crisis Is Shifting Power To Asia — Regional Banks Post Worse-Than-Expected Results; Dow Skids — Ron Paul: Gov’t Bailouts Herald A New Era Of Taxpayer Slavery — Central Banks Scramble To Buy Dollars

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Raymond recommend this piece over at the The Market Oracle: Understanding Derivatives

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Terje in Sweden sent us this: Sweden Launches Financial Rescue Package

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“Liberty tells you that you are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to whatever you earn, and nothing that you don’t.” – Ron Paul

Letter Re: Learning a Second Language as a Survival Skill

Jim,
I’m curious about your thoughts regarding a person learning a second language. In America I guess the language of choice would be Spanish simply due to the incredible influx of Hispanics to our shores thanks to our open border policy.

Personally, I feel it would be a sound investment to one’s array of survival skills to provide them with the ability to negotiate and communicate with a large segment of the population. Also, if one has to flee south of the border for whatever reason having Spanish under their belt along with a few gold pesos [minted as “Onza de Oro“coins in the modern era] could be very helpful.

But, it is a trade-off as leaning a language does not come easy and requires a substantial time investment both in study and practice. Hence, I’m seeking some sage advice. Kind regards, – Michael

JWR Replies: Knowing a second language is indeed valuable, and well worth pursuing. Here in North America, learning to speak Spanish is definitely advisable. Even just a rudimentary vocabulary might prove invaluable. In the context of preparedness, I can think of at least two situations where this knowledge would be important

1.) Barter situations. People feel more comfortable dickering in the their native language. In many agricultural regions in the western US there are sizable immigrant populations.

2.) Offshore relocation. Most of Central and South America is Spanish-speaking, of course with the notable exception of Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. Language skills are crucial in “coming up to speed” when relocating.

OBTW, one subtlety that many Norte Americanos are not aware of is that the accent in which you speak Spanish is important. It changes in the way that people perceive you and place you socially–at least subconsciously. Hence, you do not want to learn to speak gutter Spanish. If you are tutored, then hire a tutor with a refined Castilian accent. The nature of human mimicry dictates that you will pick up part of your tutor’s accent. Having a refined accent will give you a subtle edge in dickering or when in conversation with customs or other law enforcement officers when you travel abroad.

Two Letters Re: Preparing for Survival Retreat Perimeter Defense

Sir;
I noticed the comments about using 1960s vintage flash bulbs as tripwire warning devices for a perimeter. Something that I improvised and used successfully on active duty in the Army in the 70s was also based on flash bulbs. Remember the flash cubes from the 1970s? The four-sided flash bulbs that rotated and flashed on the mass market cameras of the era can be turned into effective and non-lethal warning devices. If they are still available, get a flash cube and look at the underside of it. You will notice a tiny ‘hammer’ that when released strikes a [“primer”-like]device which causes the bulb to flash. Place an opened paperclip between the hammer and “primer” to block the full travel of the hammer and then trip the hammer. The paperclip will stop it from going the full distance. Do this for at least one more of the flash ‘stations’ on the flash cube. Use clear mailing tape to bind the armed flash cube to a handy tree trunk, sturdy shrub, poll, or what have you. Run monofilament fishing line from the paper clips across the area that you wish to guard and anchor the far end. When intruders walk through the area at night and snag the line, the paperclip is pulled from the flash cube, it fires and simultaneously signals that an intruder is in the area and temporarily dazzles him! We used these during field exercises against the ‘enemy’ and the devices were highly successful. I imagine the flash cubes can still be purchased. Give it a try and see if it works! Best Regards, – Karl V., USA (ret.)

James,
I wanted to clarify that you can just tape cannon fuse to a flashbulb – there is no need to drill a hole. If your particular bulbs have difficulty with lighting the fuse, then you can shave a little of the jacket from the fuse to expose the gunpowder core – then tape the fuse on, with the core contacting the bulb. This works great. – Matt

Letter Re: Currency Inflation Expectations for the US

Jim,
You recently wrote: “The Treasury will undoubtedly be forced to monetize a good portion of the National Debt. This is effectively creating money out of thin air. Each new dollar so created will dilute the purchasing power of the dollars that are already in circulation (Both paper and electronic “dollars”.) This wholesale dollar fabrication will be outrageously inflationary. Be prepared for double digit and then triple digit inflation in the next few years.”

Let’s say the Treasury just invents another two trillion dollars by printing currency and forgiving loans. Let’s say they do that every year for the next five years. How much inflation would that create?
The absolute maximum inflation rate from this example is about 20%, because there’s ten trillion dollars in circulation already. But in practice, the additional money dilutes the much larger pool of value represented by goods and services. This must be true because the entire money supply isn’t enough to buy everything that is for sale.
So the two trillion would get divided into that pool, which is several times larger than the money supply (I can’t find a reliable figure), and therefore the potential for inflation here is actually several times smaller than 20%.

Your prediction of triple-digit inflation is simply impossible unless the government starts printing tens of trillions of dollars worth of currency, every year.
You’ve led yourself astray here for (at least) two reasons:
You think that what’s happening in Zimbabwe can happen here. It can’t. Almost all of Zimbabwe’s economy is channeled through its government. The vast majority of the population is unemployed. The value of goods and real property in the Zimbabwean economy is small, and much of that value isn’t even really participating in the local economy. So the government’s injection of money into the economy is very large with respect to the total value of the economy, and high inflation results. None of these conditions exists in the US, and none is even remotely possible in the next several years. The worst case here is that US per-capita productivity and property values decline by, say, 50% over several years– roughly what happened in the Great Depression– which could potentially result in several years of 10%-to-20% inflation.

But that worst case doesn’t have much to do with the government expanding the money supply. That influence, as I described earlier, can be only in the range of 4% to 5%. The larger numbers are only possible in a Great Depression-type event if the underlying value of property declines dramatically.

Your other mistake is that you [over-estimate] the true magnitude of the current economic problems. Only two parts of the national economy is in trouble– banking and home construction. Between them, they don’t account for a large part of the total economy. They aren’t destroyed, either, merely depressed by some significant fraction. People still need banks and houses. So, bottom line, we’re looking at nothing more than a several-percent decline in the true value of the economy.

Stop [over-stating the inflation risk]. Tell people how to prepare for 10% to 15% inflation if you must. But stop these outrageous predictions of 100%+ inflation. That kind of inflation is literally unprecedented in otherwise functional economies, and there is no reason to suppose the United States economy will become dysfunctional to that level. Thanks, – PNG

JWR Replies: I really do wish that today’s economic problems were restricted just to financial institutions and home construction. But the great unraveling that I’m talking about involves so much more. It involves the derivatives casino that now exists in every major industry and service field. Most of this has built up in just the last 10 years.

Look back at what I wrote about “disappearing counterparties” in the derivatives articles that I’ve been posting for the past two years. This seems to be starting to happen, here and now, right before our eyes. Our friend Tom over at The Contrary Investor’s Cafe alerted me to this brief news item from England, which I will take the liberty of quoting in full:

D-Day Looms for Lehman Contracts
A fresh shockwave from the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers could hit home on Tuesday when complex insurance contracts worth hundreds of billions are settled, it was reported.
Around 360 billion US dollars (£208bn) in so-called credit default swap (CDS) contracts are due to be paid off following the company’s failure.
A CDS essentially acts like an insurance policy against defaults on corporate bonds or loans.
It is a form of derivative contract, gaining a “derived” value from the performance of the bond it is based on.
But because Lehman went bust, those selling CDSs to insure against default on its corporate bonds will be forced to stump up the cash to buyers.
Tuesday is the D-Day for the complex web of transactions. A City source told the Sunday Telegraph: “Everyone will be watching the situation and wondering what’s going to happen.”
AIG, the insurance giant which was one of the biggest sellers of CDS products, is thought to have large exposure to Lehman Brothers and was bailed out by the US Government last month.
The Treasury has pumped in more than 120 billion US dollars (£70bn) into the stricken firm so far.
Other insurers of Lehman’s debt are thought to be hedge funds, who created and sold CDSs as a lucrative revenue-raising exercise in better times.
Although CDSs were originally designed as insurance products to allow investors to hedge against the risk of default, traders have also used them as speculative tools.

Thankfully, the derivatives market is very orderly and every risk has a very tidy counterbalance. So when all is said and done those really big notional numbers don’t mean a lot in the real world. They are just bookkeepers digits tallied at the end of a derivative play. And unless a counterparty does something very odd or downright stupid (a la LTCM), or vanishes, via bankruptcy (a la Bear Stearns) then all of those contracts end up with a very tidy zero sum gain at the conclusion. But the $64 Trillion question is this: What if a lot of major corporations holding derivatives contracts start to go under? Like GM, Monsanto, BP, or United Airlines. How many derivatives contracts are currently in play? Hundreds of trillions of dollars. One estimate was $190,000 USD for every person on the planet. (“The value of the derivatives market is 22 times the GDP of the entire world.”) What happens if and when big corporations go under, leaving their counterparties twisting in the breeze? Nobody knows. This is an imponderable because the derivatives universe was just a fly speck by comparison the last time there was a major recession, and hedging on this scale didn’t even exist the last time there was a global depression.

I’m talking about widespread corporate and municipal bankruptcies causing an avalanche of derivatives contract defaults and subsequent ripples through all the world stock, bond, commodity, real property, lending, currency, and insurance markets.Some might call this inconceivable, but I don’t.

All that I can say is that if things do start to unravel on a more grandiose scale, then I hope that someone is going to have the supreme courage to declare “Jubilee“, and start the entire financial system over from scratch. (“Every seventh year you shall grant a remission of debts” – Deuteronomy 15: 1). Because without a Jubilee, even Gideon Gono couldn’t come up with the cash needed to settle the mountain of debts and derivatives.

What is at the core of the current financial mess? The heart of man is desperately wicked. (See Jeremiah 17:9, and Mark 7:20-23.) In our generation, there are some people that have built a new Tower of Babel. It is a Tower of Debt. And being greedy, they didn’t limit themselves to tangibles. They heaped up impossibly large conceptuals on top of it all. But unfortunately the derivative contract conceptuals have a tangible bottom line.

On Tuesday October 21, 2008 (or soon after), we’ll get to see how much the value of the Lehmans contracts will get marked down, and whether Uncle Sugar will step in wit a fresh dump truck full of money to “calm the markets.” If the net settlement on those CDS contracts (backed by very dubious CDO “assets” of still declining value) exceeds $30 Billion USD, then every financial stock around the world might plummet. Ditto for every large insurance company involved in the CDS follies. It may be one of those “emperor sans cullottes” moments, or one of those Minsky moments. Helicopter Ben Bernanke will need a whole fleet of helicopters to tidy this up.

I really hope that I’m wrong in pronouncing this warning, because I really like sleeping soundly at night, and hot showers and lights that turn on with the flick of a switch.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Eric mentioned this article: Windowsill herb growing

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Susan Z. flagged this one: ECB council member foresees ‘tri-polar’ currency system

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From our Economic Editor: Dow Up 413 On Signs Of Recovering Credit Market — Momentum Builds For New Package To Boost The Economy — Merrill Lynch To Cut Thousands Of Jobs — Bush Advisor Says “Parts of U.S.” Are In Recession —Turmoil May Make Americans Savers, Worsening ‘Nasty’ Recession — Options Pointing To $50 Per Barrel Oil — Banks Braced For Lehman Bros. Insurer’s Deadline — US Highly Inflationary Monetary Growth Will Lead To Dollar Implosion — China’s Growth Rate Falls As Economic Gloom Spreads East — South Korea’s $130 Billion Guarantee May Not Be Enough — Do Our Rulers Know Enough To Avoid 1930s Replay? — Baby Boomers Go Bust As Retirement Savings Tank — Gobbled Up By The Derivatives Monster (The Mogambo Guru) — Is The Catharsis Yet To Come?

Note from JWR:

In today’s first article, I digress from the usual fare in SurvivalBlog to discuss American politics. You may have noticed that I generally refrain from politics in SurvivalBlog. I only make exceptions for political issues that have a direct bearing on the preparedness and/or liberty of a good portion of the SurvivalBlog readership. Our overseas readers might want to skip reading this article. But be forewarned that in the nascent Second Great Depression, you might be faced with similar situations in your own countries.

Letter Re: Advice on Concealing Storage Food

Hi Jim,
I’ve researched the net in vain trying to find a solution to this problem, which I suspect I share with a great many people now prepping. I’m hoping you can help. The challenge: Where to hide my food stores?

My situation: I live 10 miles from a city of 80,000 in a residential neighborhood. I live at the foot of a small mountain—the area behind my house is woods. I don’t own all of this wooded property, but I’ve never seen the owner. I have significant stores of canned goods, dried oats and beans, flour, sugar, etc.

I am not a craftsperson, so cannot build a false wall, and my husband, who already thinks I’m a loon, would not help me do so. So—where to hide these provisions? The solution needs to be simple enough for a non-carpenter to implement.

I’ve considered burying the food in the woods, and marking these spots (surreptitiously, of course). This is a time- and labor-intensive solution, but perhaps the best one available to me.

If you agree, how to prepare the food to be buried? Oats, flour, etc. in mylar bags, then put into plastic tubes, which are then placed into 2-3 contractor’s refuse bags? Would that be enough protection? Also, does it matter if canned goods freeze?

If you do not agree, do you have any suggestions as to where I might hide it in the house?
I’m hoping you will be kind enough to reply. Even a brief response would be most helpful, and perhaps not only to me. It’s fine to post this email on your blog—just don’t reveal my information. Thank you in advance, and God bless you and yours. – Julia

JWR Replies: I do not recommend burying your food on someone else’s property–at least not the majority of it. Unless you buy very heavy duty containers with watertight seals, there is too much risk of moisture intrusion, or destruction by vermin. There are also, of course, the moral and legal issues of using another’s property.

Many canned foods do fairly well with freezing. The biggest risk comes from repeated freezing and thawing cycles.

If the bulk of your storage food is fairly small, here are a few alternative solutions that I can recommend, only one of which requires the assistance of an amateur carpenter:

Buy a used queen-size “hide-a-bed” couch. Remove and discard the entire bed frame internals and mattress. Build a framework of 2x2s and cut a piece of 3/4″ plywood to support the seat cushions.

You can hide a single row of canned foods (small cans, such as soup and tuna cans) behind books, on bookshelves.

Yet another solution is to buy a few used four-drawer vertical file cabinets. Burglars usually bypass these. Put innocuous-sounding labels in the label holders in bold printing, such as “2007 Tax records” and “2005 Invoices”. If you pack them efficiently, file cabinets can hold a remarkable quantity of canned goods and retort package “bricks”. They are also mouse proof if you place them on a smooth and level floor.

One outdoor solution is to find a used, “out-of-commission” chest freezer. (Usually available free for the asking.) Cut off the power cord. Cover any internal vents with sheet metal. Paint the exterior with flat brown enamel spray paint. Cut (or buy) a cord of firewood and stack it around and on top of the chest freezer. BTW, the same technique can be used if if you have a hay barn–with either hay or straw bales. Or you could buy few hundred used bricks, and make it look like just a pile of used bricks. (And you would of course paint the chest freezer, in flat green, flat tan, or flat brick red, respectively.)

Another outdoor solution is to buy an older, used “pop-up” camping trailer. For some reason, residential burglars ignore these, whereas they will often break in to traditional “hard wall” camping trailers. Pop-up trailers have a remarkable amount of room inside, especially if you remove the seat cushions and mattress pads.If you pay very little for the trailer, you can even go “whole hog” and rip out the interior cabinets, sink, et cetera.

If you have a basement or storage room, you can also use Hide in Plain Sight (HIPS) techniques. One of my favorites is to obtain a lot of used, sturdy cardboard boxes with slip-top lids–such as the type used to ship reams of copier paper. Label them with prominent magic marker labels with things like “Baby Clothes”, “Infant Toys”, “National Geographic Magazines”, “Romance Paperback Books”, “2006 Tax Records”, and so forth. Fill those boxes with your storage foods (in vermin-proof containers). Pile all of those boxes up against a wall. Then add a layer of “camouflage” boxes, containing actual worthless junk. If a burglar opens one of these, he will most likely not dig down to the successive layers of boxes.

Use your imagination. Craig’s List and Freecycle can probably provide you all the storage space and camouflaging that you need, for very little money. Many of the items that you’ll need can be found “free for the hauling.”

When planning you concealment strategies, keep in mind that a burglar is a man in a hurry. In most cases, he won’t take the time to go through everything.

Odds ‘n Sods:

Matt in Texas recommended a piece by Sam Mathid posted over at 321Gold.com as a “must read”: It is Time

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Writing in a recent issue of The Rude Awakening, economic commentator Joel Bowman notes: “From October 10 through October 17, the Dow [Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)] swung a total of 2,225 points at five separate closes. Put another way, that’s an average daily swing, at the close, of 455 points. This is territory of a tumult as yet not encountered in the history of the market. Measured by the volatility index [VIX], otherwise known as Wall Street’s “Fear Gauge,” we saw this week a reading of 81. The record previous to this monumental number, achieved during the year 1998, was a comparatively modest 47.”

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Ed suggested this commentary over at Gold-Eagle: 1927-1933 Chart of Pompous Prognosticators

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Cheryl sent us these economic tidbits: Dutch Gov’t Injects $13 Billion into ING Financial Group — Mortgage Firm Arranged Stealth Campaign — Wall Street Eyes Earnings, Looks For Bottom — Markets Hold Breath As $360 Billion Lehman [Derivative] Swaps Unwind — From Barron’s: It Isn’t Over