# OPSEC on your property



## Elvis (Jun 22, 2018)

I have a lot of storage space here on the property, several outbuildings and a wall of cabinets in a garage that was half way converted into a large room but the interior work was never finished by the former owner. A little stashed here, a little stashed there, so inside the house there is nothing that screams "prepper". When work needs to be done I usually do it myself rather than bring someone in both for financial and OPSEC reasons. 

But I suck at some jobs so I brought in a guy to do some work in the old "garage" I had to sanitize a few things but left everything in the cabinets (basically a long wall of doors I build years ago) that that can't be locked and are full of preps that are also hobbies. The guy asked about the wall of cabinets. I explained to him that I had many hobbies that required stuff. I could tell by the doors that he'd looked in one of them. From wine making to cheese making; reloading and canning, salt curing meat and making vinegar; all stored in those cabinets and all used because I really believe in practicing my preps.

Staying quiet about your preps can be quite a challenge. 

I have a farmer neighbor who occasionally uses my shop if he needs a tool, welder, or air compressor to fix something, A few neighbors who also have permission to go in the shop to use the saws if needed. I believe its a prep to keep good relations with your neighbors and I like my neighbors. The doors to areas that hold things like economy bottles of Dawn soap and buckets full of salt and sugar are locked but the locks may raise questions in their minds.

Tell us about your OPSEC challenges and how you deal with them.


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## Lunatic Wrench (May 13, 2018)

I'm in an apartment, I keep my preps down in our storage locker which can't been seen into. I also store a lot of my construction tools down there so I'm in and out a lot so no one really pays attention to what I'm doing.


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## Illini Warrior (Jan 24, 2015)

a real telltale of prepping more than anything else is the food and water - pantries of shelves with months worth of can goods and DIY canning have to be room contained and locked from casual observation .... 

in regard to 5 gallon bucket long term food storage - having stacks of buckets all nicely labeled is just asking for a OPSEC break - code label the buckets with a separate content index roster - fake label the buckets as something explainable or perhaps disguised as paint - I use colored PVC electrical tape to divide buckets into different content categories ....


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## Elvis (Jun 22, 2018)

Illini Warrior said:


> a real teltale of prepping more than anything else is the food and water - pantries of shelves with months worth of can goods and DIY canning have to be room contained and locked from casual observation ....
> 
> in regard to 5 gallon bucket long term food storage - having stacks of buckets all nicely labeled is just asking for a OPSEC break - code label the buckets with a separate content index roster - fake label the buckets as something explainable or perhaps disguised as paint - I use colored PVC electrical tape to divide buckets into different content categories ....


I need to relabel the buckets. Currently the lids of my buckets say things like "45 lbs corn, 450 calories per cup, 45,000 calories total.


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## Elvis (Jun 22, 2018)

While I've got my challenges for OPSEC I'd imagine that people in the cities have even more storage OPSEC challenges. Tell us your real life worries.


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## StratMaster (Dec 26, 2017)

Elvis said:


> I need to relabel the buckets. Currently the lids of my buckets say things like "45 lbs corn, 450 calories per cup, 45,000 calories total.


The labels on my buckets say "rigged with high explosives... dig in!"


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## Mad Trapper (Feb 12, 2014)

All outside doors have one of these.


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## Chipper (Dec 22, 2012)

My property is off limits to everyone and the neighbors know it. I will gladly come over and help bringing my tools and expertise when asked. If I don't know how to do something I figure it out, learn or ask but will not allow strangers in, period.


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## Yavanna (Aug 27, 2018)

I live in the city, so it is really more difficult, since neighbours tend to be snoopy. The whole area is fenced off ( 6 feet tall fence), but still people can see inside the garden, and I plant a lot of things. 
When visitors get inside the house, they only get to the sitting room. If works needs to be done in some part of the house, we move itens the itens to another room beforehand.


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## AquaHull (Jun 10, 2012)

In the 2 1/2 years Mom had caregivers, I've had over 40 different girls from very different backgrounds. The Black Motorcycle chick seemed to have her head on straight and became a student of God.

All of them had their ears glued to the phone, supplies always came up missing. They didn't even see a 1/4 of it though, but they knew.

I've changed out all the locks again, moved everything around


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## The Tourist (Jun 9, 2016)

We live just far enough away from "the new ghetto" to be reasonably safe from most of the criminality.

The funniest one (you'll remember that our bangers are the second rate guys that got tossed out of Chicago by the tough ones), was two rival gangs pulled into a large empty parking lot after hours. They both raced their cars at each other, spun sideways, and shotguns came out of every window. They were very close, perhaps ten feet apart.

I talked to a cop at our emergency center, and he was on night duty when the cars pulled in. Blood everywhere. He called for back-up and the doctors began their work.

Here's the weird part. The doctor came out of the emergency area laughing and the cop is still in his working mode. He asks the doctor what's so funny. The doctor reports that _*none of the wounds came from firearms.*_ The blood came from cuts of glass flying through the cars.

You get a dozen or more Madison gang-bangers ten feet apart and everyone with a shotgun, and they are so incompetent they all miss.

I'll pulling the .45 ACP slide off my Kimber and replacing it with the .22LR conversion kit. Heck, Hornady Critical Defense rounds are 1.35 per each. If I'm the only one who'll be hitting anything, I want to make it as cheap as possible. Besides, an HV hollow point into the femoral artery might be slow, but it took SWAT ten minutes to get to the mall during our Christmas shooting.

And here's the bizarre thing, the bangers will finally feel what it's like to be shot by a real bullet.


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## RJAMES (Dec 23, 2016)

Close neighbors are going to know you have some items- they see you using trucks, trailers, tractors, chain saws , perhaps even some of your hand tools on projects. I think it is a good idea to share tools back and forth . I know others think that is crazy but I do it all the time. I got several hundred dollars of welding done last year the neighbor figured he owed me that for using all of my tools over the last 15 years. 


I have gotten and given a lot of good help from neighbors. Blizzard when the wind pushed me sideways into a ditch and my truck rolled on its side I could have walked 4 miles to my place then drove back with tractor got my 2500 HD 4x4 back on its wheels driven home, walked back to get the tractor - in a blizzard so strong it pushed my truck sideways off the road. But I called my neighbor who lived only about a 1/4 mile from where I was took him some time to get dressed , get it started and down the road but once there less than 2 minutes. Good tug and I was back on my wheels and drove the rest of the way home . Got off that ice covered road and out into the fields. 

I helped a neighbor build a house after he lost his to a fire. Used just about all my tools doing that job. Took awhile to get some ladders back and when I did they were good ladders just not mine. Working on a local school building a couple years later I was able to switch around and got mine back. 

Long term preps - food storage might be something to try and hide but my neighbors with tens of thousand bushels of corn or wheat in a great big silo is pretty hard to hide as is a couple hundred head of cattle or hogs . Green houses, bee hives, smoke houses, chicken house can usually be seen form a road even on a 1000 acre farm. Every farm has some fuel storage and again a thousand gallon tank is pretty easy to see even my small 250 gallon tanks are pretty easy to see as are the 1000 propane tanks. Guns you know everyone has - they have at least deer rifles and shot guns . Maybe you don't know that someone has thousands of rounds but you assume a couple hundred and at least one rifle and one shot gun. 

Short of heavy weapons, radiation detection gear or NBC gear I would not be surprised by much. 

Most of the homes have at least a tornado shelter - many are outside of a trailer or older home and easy to see. And every home has some backup way to heat or is on wood heat, many have solar, lots of wells and ponds. 

Many of my neighbors use horses to farm with and travel by buggy, horseback or bike. Again pretty hard to hide. 

I would assume every remote cabin in a wooded rural area would be set up with solar, some type of water supply , wood heat , have some food supplies and if people are there have weapons. 

Only in the suburbs do people not have this type of stuff and that would be the area to try and hide some of what you got.


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## Illini Warrior (Jan 24, 2015)

Chipper said:


> My property is off limits to everyone and the neighbors know it. I will gladly come over and help bringing my tools and expertise when asked. If I don't know how to do something I figure it out, learn or ask but will not allow strangers in, period.


it might be 2-3 years down the road before you gt robbed one nite - because that kid that lived in the neighborhood and you befriended suddenly needed drug $$$$ - he remembered his old neighborhood as a plum target and not good memories of childhood ...


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## The Tourist (Jun 9, 2016)

Oh, but there always are good memories! If the drug addict/thief is black, 16 or 17 years old and carrying a weapon--and you kill him--his mother will cry all over CNN all the way to Moscow (sorry for the duplication) about how he was a good kid, always brought his cut of the profits to her, stole her a winter jacket from The Boston Store, never talked back to his probation officer, and smacked a white kid who just a little too white.

I will admit that I polish tactical knives. I always wrap the handles in Saran Wrap until the client comes to pick it up. I've seen this "crying mother" fairytale once too many times to donate any fingerprints or DNA...


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## phrogman (Apr 17, 2014)

I live in the suburbs. Lots of people around here have cameras on their driveways or doorbells. My neighbors right across the street from me have their camera facing directly at my house and their neighbors have the Ring doorbell camera which has my driveway and garage in its view. It is difficult to do anything without someone watching. When I have to move stuff in and out of my home, I try to do at night. My house is not very big so it is hard to hide things inside. I keep my preps in the pantry, closets or garage, no room for secret storage areas. 

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk


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## Illini Warrior (Jan 24, 2015)

phrogman said:


> I live in the suburbs. Lots of people around here have cameras on their driveways or doorbells. My neighbors right across the street from me have their camera facing directly at my house and their neighbors have the Ring doorbell camera which has my driveway and garage in its view. It is difficult to do anything without someone watching. When I have to move stuff in and out of my home, I try to do at night. My house is not very big so it is hard to hide things inside. I keep my preps in the pantry, closets or garage, no room for secret storage areas.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk


even without a neighborhood camera club - a Nosey Nellie gossip - a "bitch at everything" neighborhood problem >>>> you should be doing your Cosco run unloading at nite and thru the home backyard as much as possible - you drop enough little tid bit clues and they can come back and bite you good ..... people discount things they see & hear - but it's not actually totally forgot - and those memory fragments come to the surface under duress >>>> never seen is always the best case around .....


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## Elvis (Jun 22, 2018)

phrogman said:


> I live in the suburbs. Lots of people around here have cameras on their driveways or doorbells. My neighbors right across the street from me have their camera facing directly at my house and their neighbors have the Ring doorbell camera which has my driveway and garage in its view. It is difficult to do anything without someone watching.
> Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk


Where I'm at while some neighbors have cameras all of the houses are to far back from the road for their cameras to see the road or my property. I do keep trail cameras that catch the driveway. Some pointed to catch the front of the vehicle and others to catch the tag.

But this thread is about challenges maintaining OPSEC, the ability to keep your preps unknown to other people in an effort to minimize the chance that they may talk about or come for your preps.

The other day a neighbor swung by while I was painting the room where many of my preps are kept in a newly built row of closets. The door to the outside was opened so he walked in while I was getting off the ladder. He asked about the long wall of recently installed closets. I reminded him that I'm recently married and that the closets were for some of my new wife's now adult (with their own homes) kids stuff, "I needed to store it somewhere and built the closets". By having a solid pre-planned answer I was able to give a non-interesting response.

I like and trust my neighbor but we don't discuss preps with neighbors.


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## phrogman (Apr 17, 2014)

@Illini Warrior

Couldn't agree with you more

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## phrogman (Apr 17, 2014)

I try an be as covert as possible. I park right next to my garage and load and unload my preps. I live in a gun friendly area with gun friendly neighbors but even though, I still try and keep it inconspicuous when going to and from the range.

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## The Tourist (Jun 9, 2016)

Illini Warrior said:


> even without a neighborhood camera club - a Nosey Nellie gossip


Oh, we have one! Nothing escapes her. I'm thinking about putting her on the payroll!


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## Prepared One (Nov 5, 2014)

Living where I do I am always conscious of what people can see. Most of my supplies are brought in through the garage and breezeway into the house from the back with high privacy fences all around so the neighbors are limited as to what they can see, despite some having camera's. My wife and I along with my Dad are the only one's that have access to the house. Most storage items are out of site in the spare rooms or closets. I am fortunate that I own a large home so hiding and storing ammo food and water is not a big issue. 

I am not a trusting man so I have limited contact with neighbors. Not one in 15 years has been inside my house. Some may notice rifles going in and out of the trucks and one or two may know I am licensed to carry but that's not unusual in Texas. When I am working in the garage there is one neighbor that can see partially in if she cares to. If I am doing something I don't want anyone to see I will close the garage door or go back to the tool room built on to the back of the garage.


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## Elvis (Jun 22, 2018)

After reading some of your posts on this thread I'm so happy to live where I can take a piss in the front yard and nobody can see.

I was a prepper when I lived in a suburban neighborhood but my neighbors really didn't pay much attention as long as I kept the lawn mowed and waved when they walked into their homes. Some of you guys have very noisy neighbors.


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