Plan a cache network as at least three separate caches, a backup within walking distance of the home holding about 2 weeks of food, a route cache at a rest stop on the evacuation route holding 3-5 days, and a distant cache at the rally point holding another 2 weeks, and size each from the household’s daily ration. Keep the caches far enough apart and in different flood and fire zones that one disaster cannot take two of them.
Part of Hidden Food Caches
Cache network planning is the choice of how many caches to keep, where, how far apart and how much each should hold, so that no single loss leaves the household without food.
Spread The Risk, Size It From The Ration
The parent article sets a minimum of three caches for a solo individual or a family:
- A primary backup cache within 500 m of the main location, holding 2 weeks of food and essential supplies, the “house burned down” cache.
- A route cache on the primary evacuation route, ideally at its halfway point or a natural rest stop, holding 3-5 days of food, water and travel supplies.
- A distant cache at or near the secondary location or rally point, holding enough to restart: 2 weeks of food, tools, seeds and medical supplies.
Emergency Caches frames the same idea for a community: one primary store holding 50-60% of reserves and four to eight secondary caches splitting the rest, with no two caches within 500 m of each other or within the same flood or fire zone. These do not conflict, but they pull different ways. A cache 500 m from your house is close enough to walk to in the dark; it may also lie in the same fire or flood zone as the house, which is the failure the second article warns about. Check the zone before you accept the distance.
What You Need
- A map of the site with flood, fire and slope zones; see Local Terrain Analysis
- The evacuation route and rally points — Escape Route Planning and Evacuation Procedures
- The daily ration for each person — Inventory Management
- A way to carry what you will need to retrieve; see Go-Bag Contents
Method: Ration, Distance, Zone, Carry
Step 1: Fix the daily ration. Use the household’s actual number and the figure from the inventory article for the staple you will cache.
Step 2: Multiply by the days each cache must cover. See the worked example.
Step 3: Place the caches on the plan. One near home but not beside it, one on the route, one at the destination. Check that no two share a flood path, a slope likely to slide or a wildfire corridor.
Step 4: Check that you can carry what you plan to take from each. If the route cache holds more than you can carry along with the rest, you will leave some of it behind.
Step 5: Plan access. Each cache has a way in at night, in snow or mud, and after the route has changed. See Retrieval Under Pressure.
Step 6: Decide who knows each. The fewer who know, the harder it is to leak; the more who know, the more chance one survives to retrieve it. See Location Selection.
Worked Example: Sizing For A Household Of Four
Use rice at 0.55 kg per person per day (from the inventory article) and four people, giving 4 × 0.55 = 2.2 kg a day.
- Primary backup, 14 days: 2.2 × 14 = 30.8 kg.
- Route cache, 3 days: 2.2 × 3 = 6.6 kg; at 5 days, 2.2 × 5 = 11.0 kg.
- Distant cache, 14 days: 2.2 × 14 = 30.8 kg.
- All three together: 30.8 + 6.6 + 30.8 = 68.2 kg at the low route figure, or 30.8 + 11.0 + 30.8 = 72.6 kg at the high one.
Rice alone is not a complete diet, so this is the mass of the staple, not of a full ration. A 5-gallon bucket holds about 15 kg of rice at an assumed 0.8 kg per litre (recalled; weigh your own), so the primary and distant caches each need about 30.8 ÷ 15 = 2.1 buckets, in practice two or three, and the route cache one.
Common Mistakes
- Three caches in one valley. One flood or fire takes them all.
- A route cache nobody can reach. It must be on the path you will really take.
- Sizing from guesswork. Use the ration.
- Putting everything in one cache because it is easier to manage. That is the single point of failure the parent article warns against.
- A cache network you never check. See Inventory and Rotation.
Safety
Don't travel to a cache in conditions you cannot survive
A route cache is only useful if you can reach it; planning around a cache that requires crossing flooded ground, thin ice, steep slopes or unsafe country puts people in the way of drowning or exposure. Choose caches by safe access in the worst weather, not by hiding quality alone. Food in sealed buried containers follows the botulism rule in Waterproofing and Preservation.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Location Selection — choosing each site
- Combine with: Bug-Out Preparedness — the plan the route cache serves