How To Hide Your Stockpile

Hiding your stuff in a societal collapse scenario is a basic rule for survival. Animals hide and hoard their food as a matter of course. Even your dog hides his extra food sometimes, by digging holes and burying it in the ground. Squirrels do the same; they stockpile and hide their stuff.

Hiding your survival supplies from looters is a basic principle in nature, and one of the most important things to learn if you are a survivalist and you’re stockpiling like there’s no tomorrow.

Hard fact : if you’re the only prepper in the neighborhood, when disaster strikes you may actually become a piggy bank for the opportunists and a target for the other 90+% that call you a conspiracy theorist now.

Don’t fool yourself, you might have guns and ammo, but, especially in rural areas, almost everybody has guns and ammo. Don’t think that you can resist for long when faced with a horde of hungry and desperate (and armed) people.

So, let’s assume that you have stockpiles of food, ammo and other stuff – enough for 90 days or for six months or whatever. Now, think about the unprepared sheeple in the neighborhood. What do they have? Maybe enough cheerios to last them for a day or two. And then what?

When they’ll get hungry and there’s nothing else available to buy/steal from the stores, they’ll pay you a visit in no time if they know that you have a stash.

What do you do then? Will share your supplies with those people who failed to prepare, or will you tell them to take a hike? This varies from person to person; there are no definitive answers, you know? Some will do what they can to share, while others won’t do so unless forced to.

Silence Is Golden

How you react is up to you. We’re all different, and you’ll never know what you’ll do unless you’re in that situation. In this case, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Ideally, you must avoid these unpleasant situations to begin with. In order to do that, you must take a crash course in OPSEC, aka operations security.

 The first rule of the Fight Club is that you DO NOT TALK about Fight Club.

 The second rule of the Fight Club is that you DO NOT TALK about Fight Club.

Well, the same “silence is golden” principle applies to stockpiling.  You don’t talk to your neighbors about what you do and what you’re prepping for. All you have to do is to stockpile and shut up. Don’t brag. Just stay quiet and do your thing. If nobody knows that you’re stockpiling,  you can always use plausible denial.

Camouflage Your Stockpile

floorNow, you must hide at least some part of your stockpile, so it’s not too obvious. You can fill up your kitchen pantry with non-perishable foods, like a responsible adult, and the rest should be well hidden from the prying eyes of neighbors and visitors.

The hallway closet won’t cut it. That’s too obvious.

You can use your basement for that, but better use the laundry room or a secret compartment/room inside the house, masked by a false wall. Camouflage is the name of the game.

Another more appealing option is to grow large bushes and put up fencing that keeps people out.

When you’re buying something obvious, like a .50 Barrett or a kerosene heater, don’t bring them home on Sunday morning, when all your neighbors are outside washing and polishing their cars. When stockpiling, do it inconspicuously.

These are the basic rules when it comes to stockpiling so that your neighbors remain clueless.

The next best thing to do (or maybe even the BEST thing) would be to teach your close neighbors about prepping and surviving because united we stand, divided we fall. It would be ideal to live in a prepped up community, where everyone’s packed up and ready to go.

If that’s not possible, then being quiet is, unfortunately, the way to go.

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And feel free to share your own experience in preparing for survival using the comment form below!

This article has been written by Chris Black for Survivopedia.

Written by

Chris Black is a born and bred survivalist. He used to work as a contractor for an intelligence service but now he is retired and living off the grid, as humanly possible. An internet addict and a gun enthusiast, a libertarian with a soft spot for the bill of rights and the Constitution, a free market idealist, he doesn't seem very well adjusted for the modern world. You can send Chris a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com.

Latest comments
  • OK, you may hide you stuff until the SHTF, but after that, when you start having lights from you lamp, when someone smells your cooking, or you pull the trigger on your .50, everybody in the area will know that you were prepared.

    • There are inconspicuous ways of doing everything. Not all food has to be cooked, for example. Many foods can be eaten raw. Many others can be eaten straight from the can/jar/box/bag cold. They may not taste as good that way, but there will be no telltale cooking smells coming from your home to alert the neighbors that you have food.

      Light from lamps can be suppressed under shades so they only shine within a few inches of the lamp or you can cover your windows so no light escapes to the outside.

      As for the sound of gunfire, there are places in this country where the sound of gunfire is so commonplace that people don’t even notice it anymore. In pretty much any major city with a high crime rate, the sound of gunfire goes completely unnoticed because people are desensitized to it from hearing it every day. In those places the neighbors will probably just think it’s another drug deal gone bad. Ho Hum, another boring day in Detroit/Chicago/Philadelphia/Atlanta or wherever.

    • Well if your smart, you don’t use your .50 Barrett. you use the semiauto.22LR with a blanket rolled up and duct taped over the end of the barrel.. then drag their ass to the Fire pit and toss their no good ass in the fire. cover them with Acetone. Take what’s left when the fire goes down and put it in a hole and cover it with Garden Lime and a little water. then cover the hell out of it. In 10 days it’s nothing but a blob of Goo…….Problem solved…….Ask some of the Good ole boys down in Alabama…..

      • Wont that smell like BBQ?

      • I believe he was talking about shooting game not neighbors

  • Have you ever had or experienced someone having a bbq in the backyard? Those smells carry. They carry further and strong when one is hungry and even further when someone is starving. This is why having precooked proteins (whether meat or otherwise) is a good thing for the short term.
    Camouflaging your stores isn’t for just a collapse. Those days are here and now. They have been for many years now. Twenty years ago, my home was robbed. This was when I foolishly had my stores on a ‘pantry’. All the thief(s) had to do was grab some pillowcases, boxes etc and clear the shelves. The same thing was done for my larger freezer. Now? You’d have a difficult time knowing where my ‘extra’ stores are. I rotate but never go to the same cache but once a month.
    As to the windows in a collapse. Anyone ever heard of blackout curtains? They were used in the US, UK and many other countries during wartime. They keep the light in and no one knows whether you are in or out. I do this on a regular basis so if someone were watching, they wouldn’t know either. Nor do I have a fence around my place. That’s just message that I have something which someone else may want/need. My protections are camouflaged in plain site.

  • After a few days when people start foraging for food with weapons try this. You’ll need to find a ripe dead animal or animals and place them strategically around your house. Most people are not used to these foul smells and will try to avoid them. You may need to get yourself some equipment to breath through when doing this.

  • Cheer up! In a genuine SHTF situation, in a rural or semi-rural area, the truly unprepared will not be around for more than a week or to; they will either (1.) starve to death; or (2.) depart the area looking for food. If SHTF occurs in the Winter, it will be only days before you are left alone.
    (A.) Don’t cook during this time. (B.) Cover the windows with garbage bags. Allow absolutely no light to show. For heat, use small propane heaters working on 16 oz. propane bottles. Do NOT use the fireplace; Do NOT use your chimney. Do NOT answer the door; especially NEVER open the door! If someone detects you in your house and continues to hammer on the door, talk to him/her through the door. NEVER MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THE STARVING PERSON OUTSIDE!
    If he/she can convince you to open the door, they will either overpower you, or talk their way inside. Then – sure as you are reading this – when you finally sleep, they will kill you and take over your wife, your daughter and your food. DON’T EVER ANSWER THE DOOR!

  • I want to know how to hide my supplies from THE GOVT- that is going to be a lot harder. Ideas on that one?

  • I live in a small house in the south without a basement. I have food stored but would like to store more and store extra other necessary items (water, fuel, etc.). I have a detached garage but from what I am reading, this is not a good place because of temperature fluctuations. What can be stored under these conditions?

    • try a root cellar!

  • Bury your goodies under rows of plants, in sealed, weather-proof containers. You can plan months or years ahead, and appear to be doing ‘yard work’ to anyone who passes by. Do the digging in plain sight. Let the nosy ones see you mixing fertilizer and all that good stuff. They won’t give it a second thought. Plant cheap, decorative shrubs, flowers, whatever you like. Work on it a long time.

    Carry the preps in fertilizer sacks, or something similar, at times when people are either by that point less nosy after seeing you fertilizing soil, or when they’re not around, or when lighting is not ideal.

    Then, you’ve got a nice, festive bunch of plants, and nobody knows what else you’ve got around and under them. Optionally, you could build raised planting boxes for these plants, and hide lots of tools, gear, or food, without having to dig to get to it.

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