So it’s a pretty good chance that you’re buying what you want…but it might also be what someone else wants. As I noted in my previous post, not buying food, precious metals, firearms/personal protection or other important things because someone might (or might not) steal them just doesn’t make sense, because if you’re expecting the government to take care of you after everything hits the fan, I have a four-letter F-word for you:

FEMA.

If the FEMA debacle after Hurricane Katrina doesn’t haunt you to this day, it should. Because it perfectly illustrates the mess that can occur when people can’t — or won’t — prepare for their own safety, sustenance and survival WTSHTF and instead wait for the government to take care of them after the fact. (For you neophytes, “WTSHTF” stands for “when the fecal matter hits the oscillating rotary blade.”)

So if you’re not content with waiting for the government to “help” you after TSHTF…well, if you ARE waiting for the government, you might as well stop reading this now…but if you’re intent on becoming self-sufficient and stocking up on the things that can get you through whatever economic, natural or social disasters you’re most likely to encounter, here are some thoughts on how you can keep your proverbial “beans, bullets and Band-Aids” from being discovered by thieves.

What got me started thinking about how to hide food and other personal preps was a conversation I had with someone who was aghast at the thought of buying gold because they didn’t think they’d be able to put it in a safe enough place. After all, if you have an ounce of gold, which at the moment has a spot price of just over $1,100, WHAT IF SOMEONE STEALS IT???

Rest your brain for a moment.

There are two issues to consider: What you can do to hide what you have, and whether what you have is worth extensive efforts to hide it. But if something isn’t worth hiding, why do you have it in the first place? And if it’s worth hiding, why not go all-out to protect it?

A troy ounce of gold weighs 31.1 grams. If that amount of gold were put into a cube, it would measure less than half an inch on each side.

And if you can’t figure out a safe place to hide something that’s less than half an inch on each side, you really, really aren’t trying hard enough.

But if it’s as valuable as gold, isn’t it worth doing whatever you can to make sure it’s well-hidden?

So let’s talk about something that’s even more important than gold.

Food.

I don’t know many people who enjoy being hungry. And it’s well-documented that when people get really, really hungry, they will do stupid, destructive things to get what they want. So if you want to become as self-sufficient as possible right now so that you won’t be hungry soon, after several years of trillion-dollar U.S. budget deficits and the resulting hyperinflation leaves store shelves empty as desperate shoppers try to get whatever they can find while they can still afford it — look at what’s happening right now in Zimbabwe — here are a few simple things you can do to hide your family’s sustenance from would-be thieves.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional security consultant. I take no responsibility for any losses anyone incurs if they follow my advice. I’m just offering general suggestions based on the well-documented fact that most thieves want to get into a building, grab stuff quickly and then get out before they’re discovered. Putting a few food items or $20 bills or a few silver coins in plain sight might be incentive for the perp to grab what’s right in front of them and “get out of Dodge” now that they’ve gotten something they deem desirable and before the owner of the house gets home.

Buy it. Hide it. Protect it.

As I noted in this post, you probably have a lot more space than you think when it comes to storing food and other very important items. The issue isn’t really what space you have, but how well you use the space you have available and how well you can hide stuff where you’ve stored it. And what’s most important is not the hiding place itself, but how inaccessible or well-concealed the hiding place is so that people who shouldn’t find stuff won’t find it.

Think of the boxes of Christmas ornaments and other miscellaneous items that probably most of us have piled up in our garage or attic but that we rarely access. What thief in his right mind is going to go through boxes of Christmas ornaments or piles of junk to find valuables that may or may not be there anyway? Now take this idea one step further: If you have a safe installed in the far back corner of your house, or in the back corner of the basement if you have one, who’s going to go digging through boxes and boxes of Christmas ornaments to see if they contain valuables, or move those boxes of Christmas ornaments to see if you’ve installed a bolted-down safe in the concrete floor under all the boxes of your Christmas ornaments or other stuff you never use? Thieves aren’t going to waste their time picking through every last box in the house unless they have all the time in the world. All the more reason to make it as hard as possible for them to find in case they do have a lot of time.

So picture the far back corner of your basement or other spot in your house that is rather inaccessible and made even more inaccessible when boxes of all kinds are piled up on top of and in front of that space. (Hint: This might be a good place to install a bolted-down safe in the concrete floor. Just make sure your basement is dry.) Pile up furniture, boxes of Christmas ornaments and all the other rarely-used junk in your basement in front of the area you’re wanting to keep safe. Chances are good that most burglars won’t bother moving all of that junk because, well, it’s junk.

Now let’s get back to food (because you can’t eat gold). As I noted at the link above, you probably have a lot more space than you think to be able to store food. And since you need food, and since large amounts of food can be stored in a relatively small area — 27 5-gallon buckets — 3 rows of 3 buckets stacked 3 high — can hold approximately 675 lbs. of beans and rice (about 25 lbs. per 5-gallon bucket) and take up an area less than 5 feet wide, 5 feet deep and 5 feet high. Or you could store a few buckets in your kitchen closet, a few buckets in your bedroom closet, even a few under your workbench in the garage. It might sound odd storing buckets of food in places like the bedroom closet or your work area in the garage, but that doesn’t matter!! What matters is that you utilize all the space you have and store things where nobody will bother them. If I’m looking for valuables inside a stranger’s house, the last place I’m going to look is in a 5-gallon bucket in the garage unless I’m really hungry. But if I’m really hungry, I’m also probably not going to dig through piles of Christmas ornaments in the basement to see if buckets of food might be behind all of those boxes.

I had one person point out that it would be a pain to try to get to the food or other items they wanted if they first had to dig through dozens of boxes to reach it in the back corner of the basement or other such places. Well, would you rather put all of your stuff where you can reach it easily, but where thieves can reach it just as easily? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to do all I can to protect my food and other supplies, especially as the economy gets worse and people do more and more desperate things to try to get what they want. I don’t care if I have to work a little to be able to reach my food. I just don’t want thieves to NOT have to work to get it because I left stuff where anyone else could get it as well. How badly do you want to be self-sufficient and protect those supplies and tools that will help you maintain that self-sufficiency? Your answer to that question will determine whether you’re willing to put very valuable things — food, ammo, precious metals and many other items are valuable things — in places that are as safe as possible because they’re a pain for thieves to get to.