Somebody Wants Your Stuff

Keep your preps quite. Do not talk about it your inventory to people you cannot trust.

Bruss, I read that thread @ AR15.com, really interesting. I am also a team member there. Lot of good info in the Survival forum also.

just a suggestion:

i have a surveilance system on my property that cost us $500.00 a couple of years ago and it works incredibly well.  it is an infra-red system - remote access..  there are 3 laser beam electronic eyes pointed at different locations on our property and when the beam is broken - day or night, an alarm goes off in the house.  each eye has a different tone for the alarm so you know exactly where the person was on your property when they set off the alarm.

i am sure it would be cheaper to purchase the system through the company that manufactures it.  we purchased it from someone who installed alarms. 

if any of you are interested in more information please either post on this board or feel free to e-mail me privately.  i had also purchased "driveway alerts", but in my opinion, the other system i have is almost flawless.

cisco

duh??????????  yes, you're right - sorry.  the driveway alerts, however, run on batteries and could be the back up.

cisco

Meewee -

Well, closing the barn door after the horse is loose can be tough.  At least your hubby had a "cover story", believable or not.  Odds are, the UPS guy won't really remember that much unless you live in a small town or deliveries are rare.  Maybe get some of your mail order stuff thru other channels occasionally, Fed Ex or USPS just to cut down on the volume thru a single channel.  Maybe have some of it delivered where you work, or where hubby works, or to a friend or neighbor, saying it's a surprise for your boss's birthday party, you won't be home when it's delivered, don't want it stolen, etc.  Mail Boxes ETC is a possibility, or a Post Office Box (very economical).

On the subject, here are some preparedness minded people who have explored the topic of cover stories in some detail.  Some of these sound pretty convincing.  My wife and I have used some of them when making unusual purchases.

Wow! I am beyond stunned. Not to mention crazed and furious. It has taken so much effort, energy and sacrifice to get to the point where I finally feel like I have a fighting chance to help my friends and family against this enormous impending black cloud coming our way and then pow, even before the sh*t hits the fan I have to fear the mailman, the UPS guy, and the local law banging down my front door.  Not to mention they will be armed to the teeth with my name on a list, big guns and eminent domain on their side.  My head is spinning. Up until a few months ago I was trying to be a good citizen and convince people to get prepared and be empowered and now I feel my efforts have put me and mine at serious risk of being a target to the very ones who are supposed to protect me. I am very grateful for this information so I can work on plan B, not to mention C and D! I have defiinitely been too naive and not paranoid enough. Thank you for the reality check!

Keep lots of plastic trash bags around so you can stockpile your garbage at home, if needed.  If we are lucky enough to have trash service working, putting your trash out on the curb is an invitation for folks to find out exactly what you have been eating. Some of it can be burned for fuel, but the rest will persist.

My food stockpile is M.R.E's, and since these tend to be in high demand during emergencies, I have learned to be careful about conspicuous consumption, storage, moving them about, etc.

I know this sounds a bit silly...but I have ziplocked all of my preps and stored in plastic totes..I have been doing this for awhile so mine was done step by step..like for example I bought 20 boxs candy canes today(at 5 cents a box) and have ziplocked 18 in each bag..all of the plastic and cardboard will go out with this weeks trash...

Now once TSHTF..I have couple of alternatives,but think about this one..I have a half finished basement and the panel would come down in a mega second..I have thought ahead a purchased wire..and would store as much as i can on the 2x4 studding and replace the panneling...

If it is summer or spring i have purchashed spades to dig holes in the ground..I have sealable buckets for this..and I have a canoe and could even go far into the woods to do this..

There alot of places to hide that what which we have worked so hard to get...look around your place and see where you could hide stuff...

HOW about under the couch and living room chair the space above underneath...don,t put squishy stuff in there...in the box spring of your,s and kids beds...buy some little plywood and you nail to the frame..it sounds like alot of work,but would be well worth it to keep some of those precious stocks...

I have considered my attic,but the heat up there in the summer would just destroy everything...

how about under your shed outside,if you have space underneath it...you can even open the plate of your computer tower and fit a bit in there...behind your stove,in your dryer(lol) don,t turn it on..

some of these are only if they are coming to your door..silly places they would think not to look..even against looters...

look for all the hollow hidden places you can find..

When things get bad the country will go to marshal law.  The military will take over it is a given .  I do resent that I grew up in never taking charity and earning your own way in the world and the work ethic was the only thing  worth beleiving in (and GOD) So it  bugs me to have people stealing my stuff  and beleiving that I owe them.  

In the end I will take care to preserve my right to protect my family I will hide my food and and med  I tell no one about my food stash,Someone described it like what happened in the second war and hidding people hidding provisions, hidding ourselves.     We need to share ways to hide food,

When Garbage will be a issue I will burn paper wrappers flatten  clean rinsed tin cans and hide them in the walls  plastic wrap will be hidden .  I will give off the appearance of someone living off the land garbAGE will be

leftover pine needles rose hips and  and well place pamplets on living off the land in other words the appearance of nothing to steal and owning nothing you cant get for free anywhere.  

Hmmm...

I'm not worried about protecting long term provisions, or someone taking a family member at gun point. I'm just worried about a goverment official casually marching in and taking what is fairly obvious. Or people I know only fairly casually, PLANNING on using what I've left out in plain site, thinking they don't need to worry because they think I will take care of them.

If things get REAL bad,I'm not prepared for that :-0 I'm just trying in GENERAL to be able to be more self sufficient in the type of minor to moderate emergencies that are LIKELY to happen. Katrina wasn't REALLY bad!! THe problem was that people were not prepared for ANY type of emergency whatsoever and had NOTHING to fall back on :-(

And in Katrina, goverment officials were not holding family members hostage :-) If we get to that stage...well...I'm not so sure I want to stick around :-0 I'm just not preparing for those type of scenarios!

I CERTAINLY don't have enough stockpiled that it would be worth it to take a family member hostage :-0 In a few months I will have enough though, that if I leave it ALL out in plain sight, it will lead to people forming ideas that I'd rather they didn't :-0

Yeah, Kat will have enough food to feed the entire neighborhood for a week. Maybe Kat will even do that. It needs to be MY choice though, and storing at least 1/2 of it in a hidden pantry will just...be a better idea.

I think we might be overestimating our country's ability to impose martial law and actually enforce it somehow.

Think about the case of police officers in New Orleans. They just didn't show up for work. They were busy protecting themselves and their families.

In a severe pandemic, I don't think hospital workers will show up for work, nor police officers, and I'm not picturing troops out patrolling on my street. If I do see one, I will surely invite him in for lunch, or some hot coffee perhaps.

I will probably be the LACK of martial law that poses the greates threat. Providing for one's own security could be a full-time hobby, and I'm hoping to do some coordinating with some of my close neighbors. Perhaps I will be able to get some sleep at night, or during the day for that matter.

At any rate, I am siding with KOMET163 on home security. It proabably isn't going to be a problem that my neighbors know I have food, since they know what else I have, too.

I read alot of WWII history as well.  I also liked W.E.B. Griffin's book, the Army series, but liked the Marine CORPS series better - about the war in the Pacific (fiction and fact mixed) good books. 

First of all, to those concerned, I don't think people reading these boards know exactly where you live. Secondly, people on these boards live all over the world! That's alot of traveling to do if you're going on foot carrying shotguns! And come to think of it, if the U.S. gov. is in need of supplies I think they would just take over a Costco, Walmart or any supermarket supply warehouse instead of hunting me down to get what's left from my basement supply of spaghettios and poptarts.

I have shown my small "general store" of supplies to a select few to try and encourage them to practice preparedness ( to no avail of course) and when they say "not interested, I'll just come to your house" I say "Be my guest, I'll be long gone before you even get into your car."

Prepare Relentlessly :>}