How To Keep Your Emergency Stockpile Discreet?

I love to talk. Some would argue that I overshare but I would never share information on my stockpile or what I'm doing to prepare my family for an emergency. Is that wrong? I feel like if I start talking others will talk and pretty soon I'll be the neighborhood go to house for any and all emergency situations. We have emergency food bags that are supposed to last over 25 years, water, canned items, MRE's, protein bars... you name it! We are armed and prepared to protect our pile. My mom lives in another state but I'm curious as to where or not I should let anyone outside of my household know about the thing we've been saving. It's a tough decision because my mother talks a lot as well. She means well but the word can get around fairly quickly about the goods. Thoughts?

 

As I had been posting in other threads, we have a food cabinet that contains food stock that can sustain my family for maybe a month or 2. We actually use the stock so it will not reach the expiration date. For example, we have 6 cans of corned beef. When we use one can, we would replenish it when we go to the supermarket. Our food cabinet is our stockpile to speak of. It gives us peace of mind somehow when thinking of a great disaster that can occur without warning. But our food cabinet is like a secret that we do not talk about it. All we casually say is just that - a food cabinet like a cupboard. We don't let other people know that we have plenty of stocks. That's not good because when something happens and there is a food shortage, we might be a target of looters.

 

I don't talk about what I have with those outside of my circle. I do have an emergency plan with my sister and a select few friends. Trust is really important though and all people have to be capable of pulling their own weight and keeping their mouths shut.

For example, in some what-if scenarios, if they made their way to our semi-rural home it's a little farther from the craziness of the city and I have the chickens and gardens. In a situation where bugging way out into the wilderness was desirable, one of those friends has a hunting cabin and land in the middle of nowhere that would be an okay meeting place. I'd hate to have to walk that distance but it's theoretically possible if I had enough time. I think 'tribe' is important. One or two adults with kids are vulnerable in a way that 6-8 adults aren't. More adults means more defense capability.

Plus, more adults means more skills are available. For instance, I can kill and clean a farm animal but I can't hunt to save my life. I have practiced but my aim sucks. My partner can hunt but if he died or was killed, that potential food avenue would be closed to me. If my sister's family makes it to us or a friend, more potential hunters is a good thing. One of the friends is a nurse-practitioner. That's a lot of useful medical knowledge in an emergency plus she gives access to things that would be difficult to buy otherwise. In planning to bug-in, it's possible to choose high-yield plants to increase the chance that what we grow will feed us. If at the cabin without access to my garden and chickens, leaving all of the children with one or two people then leaves more people who can be ranging to gather food or working to plant it or hunting or whatever.

 

Outside of a few family members I tell no one anything about these kinds
of plans.
I can't feed, defend, teach, everyone I know.
If I take more into the fold I have no control over who they will tell.

Please take that into consideration.
The few that might know a bit about what I do won't tell anyone.
Even they don't know everything.
No need to advertise anything.
If a shtf people might become desperate enough to become a bit ................
ah..............................rude.
If people know your stash and plans and go hungry a few days...............................
Well, figure it out.
The difference between your most trusted buddy and a savage is about 3 days without food.
A person who hasn't eaten in a week or had water for days might get real
nasty real quick.
I don't have a Mother Teresa attitude.
Just sayin'.

 

I've tried. I can hit the bullseye of a stationary target with a bow but I can't draw a bow heavy enough to kill any significant game and I can't hit a moving target. And for some reason, even that just doesn't translate to shooting with a gun. I know the basics to keep from accidentally shooting myself or someone else but I wouldn't depend on me to be able to hit anything. The funny thing is that my teenage daughter can target shoot with a gun pretty well. She can even tag a thrown can, which makes me hopeful about birds. She won't hunt yet but I figure if she's hungry enough her opinion of killing things will change. Luckily, I can trap fish and small mammals and gather edible plants so I probably won't starve. I'm pretty far south in the us so there are growing plants year round.

The cabin has a stash of heirloom seeds in the root cellar that we rotate out yearly. It doesn't have crops in the ground though and they can take time. Plus the ground isn't prepped because that would be too obvious. It can be done...but it will take a lot of work. I haven't figured out how to hike that far with chickens but if the roads are usable, I will definitely tuck the chickens into a dog crate and put them in the back of the truck- at the very least, the hen that is most prone to going broody, one of two of the youngest hens, and the rooster. I prefer a hen volunteering to be a mother over hand-raising chicks. I have no idea how to hand raise without an incubator.

That's true about the potential downsides of more people. We weighed the options and for us, we decided the downsides of more people was worth the additional skills and options. I think if it were just my partner and I without kids, we may have decided to be just us but I have nightmares of something happening to both of us and leaving the kids to fend for themselves.