Are you truly prepared?

I believe this is the statement that offended.... sometimes generalizations to make a point, are better than pointed remarks about ones intention, ability or work ethic.
YMMV

 

I live in a close-nit area with people I grew up with and the redundancy of people watching out for you is many fold here. my stuff would be safe, but i also have more than one location cached. for the incase of..

 

Yep for sure if you went east out of the gorge and continued on to Cabbage hill you were real close to me. top of cabbage look left at the next mountain i'm there.

 

Interesting topic. Where do you hide your cache at? I have known guys who lost a lot of valuable gear to water leakage in "watertight" containers that they buried around their area. And anything stored in your house, even in a cellar., basement, or crawl space is vulnerable if the house burns down, or how about blown down by a tornado. Digging up your cache from under thousands of pounds of rubble is not an enviable task.
I used to have a book that I think I bought from Loompanics that was about stashing things in plain sight. I like that principal for many items. Some examples that I remember was taking the cap off of chain link fence posts. You have a 4 or 6 foot metal tube that you can stash a lot of things in. Also the junk pile in the back (common in rural areas) where there is an old refrigerator or an old rusty car. Very unlikely places for people to look and away from your main domicile in case it is abandoned for whatever reason.
And even if the wife and kids are trained and capable of defending the homefront, there are going to be times when no one is home. The best everyday defense I would recommend is a big dog or two. I have always had Dobermans and have had many people, including LEO's that would call me from the gate to come and talk to them because they were afraid to come inside.
I am also a fan I guess you would say, or an adherent to, the motto that "Power perceived, is power achieved". When I was going through a nasty divorce and lots of people knew my house was empty while I was at work I devised a few ways to ward off would be looters, mainly my ex and her white trash friends.
I bought a few of those demilled hand grenades at a gun show. I nailed a tin can to the trees near both gates put the grenades inside pulled the pins. Then I ran a very visible wire from the gates to the grenades. I put up a sign that said this property is booby trapped, entering here may result in serious bodily injury or death. I screwed the front door closed with long wood screws secured into the frame. Then on the backdoor I left the curtain slightly opened and had a very visible, very big, barrel pointing at the door with wires running from the back of it to the door. It looked very intimidating to say the least. Especially to anyone who knew me or of me, they knew my penchant for improvised weaponry. In fact it was only a cardboard wrapping paper tube painted black with some speaker wires ran out the back. "Power perceived". It worked, I found out later that she had come to the house with some friends to loot it and when they saw my "defenses" they said "oh. hell no. I aint going in there!". Power perceived.