What’s Missing From Your Survival Cache Could Be Your Greatest Mistake

By Tess Pennington

Each of us has every intention of ensuring our family has what it needs to survive and thrive. Part of your disaster mitigation plan should be planning for the possibility of having to evacuate from your bug-out location and living off of stored rations from survival caches. Let’s be very real here and consider events that could cause a total destabilization of our way of life thus forcing us to migrate elsewhere.

• Nuclear fallout
• Pandemics
• Chemical spills
• Nuclear fallout
• Terrorist attack
• Natural disasters
• Martial law
• Crime waves 
• Wars
• Economic collapse
• Bug out location no longer safe or you have run out of supplies

Survival caches can help you stay alive while on the road to a safer destination. One of my worst-feared scenarios, is having to evacuate from my bug-out location and living exposed in the woods. Doing so could lead to certain death if you are not properly prepared. This is a very real possibility and why it is so important to have necessary contingency plans. One of those being, having necessary survival items buried in a cache on the evacuation path.

Items such as:

• Lightweight survival kit
• MRE’s
• Small fire starting kit (matches/lighters)
• Knife or Multitool
• Portable water filter
• Duct tape
• Paracord
• Folding shovel
• First aid kit
• Spare clothes, jacket, rain gear, wool socks and hiking boots
• Topographic map of the surrounding area
• Emergency shelter – tent or tarp

Multiple buried stockpiles should be set up along your bug-out route in order to replenish your basic needs. In each cache, add 3-5 days of supplies in order to reduce the weight of your bug-out bag. Setting these caches up in intervals along the route will also keep morale up.

For strategies on how to hide and recover your survival cache, click here.

As you venture closer to your destination point, consider adding a few more caches with items that will help you rebuild your life. Items such as: seeds, building tools, farming tools, long-term food sources (MREs, these foods can last a lifetime, canned foods and freeze dried food). As well, add some of the top 100 items that will disappear first to your cache. Although some of these may not be conducive for burying, there are some great items to consider. Further, consider more weapons and ammunition, binoculars, and even sanitation items.

In the following video, prepper veterans MainePrepper and Patriot Nurse discuss a few fundamental items that are often forgotten items in survival caches and may make your life a little easier during bugging out. This video specifically focuses on the significance of off-grid capable tools in a bug-out scenario.

Check out Patriot Nurse’s YouTube Channel and website. There’s some great information there, folks.

Tess Pennington is the author of The Prepper’s Blueprint, a comprehensive guide that uses real-life scenarios to help you prepare for any disaster. Because a crisis rarely stops with a triggering event the aftermath can spiral, having the capacity to cripple our normal ways of life. The well-rounded, multi-layered approach outlined in the Blueprint helps you make sense of a wide array of preparedness concepts through easily digestible action items and supply lists.

Visit her web site at ReadyNutrition.com, where this article first appeared for an extensive compilation of free information on preparedness, homesteading, and healthy living.