Why cache? -You can’t carry the world with you.
-You could be robbed on route.
-Caching food will buy you time to learn the skills needed for long term living.
How long will a cache last?
-Even a half-way reasonable cache will last for several lifetimes. It is more likely to be lost than compromised.
-Don’t worry about someone else finding your cache. Bury it if you are concerned. I’ve never had one stolen/discovered. You ever try to find a geocache?
-All suggestions in this article (suggestions below) I have personally tested to have lasted more than a decade in the Canadian wilderness. I’ve even tested spraying tuna cans with shellac and tossing them on the ground in the wilderness to see what happens in ten years of freeze/thaw. Shockingly nothing happened. Nine out of ten cans had no rust or distortion. One can had a failure of the coating and rusted to the point where I wouldn’t trust it. I opened every can and they all smelled and looked good to eat. If you didn’t know the can’s history you would have had no idea. From the other lab testing I’d heard of they should be fine to eat so I consumed two cans. I can confirm that not only did they taste perfectly normal, but I didn’t have the least symptom of eating ‘off’ food. I don’t recommend it, but you could store canned tuna by tossing it on the ground. You might think the freezing and thawing would rupture the can but it didn’t. Crazy.
What to cache?
That would be a list a mile long if funds allowed. I’d concentrate on food and food procurement devices as harvesting food in the wild (while the lowest short term priority) is the hardest long term skill to learn.
-Tools for getting food (traps, gill nets, hooks, line, snare wire, aircraft cable, etc)
-High quality survival book and edible plant book of your region.
-Food. -Chocolate (I’m not joking. Have you tried the stuff? Seriously tasty. And point of note: it can help bring people out of depression/shock. It also stores for decades. After ten years I ate some cached chocolate and other than wiping off the white bloom (I was afraid of it) the interior chocolate was devastatingly good. I only test solid bars of chocolate like the ones that go on sale after Easter has passed. *hint* *hint*)
-Salt (not technically food, but a small amount can make even bark chips delicious)
-Sugar (While not the ‘best’ calorie it is cheap, tasty and will never go bad.)
-Honey (Never goes bad.)
-Lard (I’ve tried 10 year old lard and it wasn’t bad. I couldn’t tell anyway)
-Pemmican (People say it goes bad in months, but they are dirty liars. I still have a batch I’m eating from that I made four years ago. Stored in name brand Zip lock freezer bags)
-Beans & Lintels
-Popcorn (That’s right. After the apocalypse you can site around watching shadow puppet theater eating popcorn that you popped in a pot in a thin layer of lard).
-Hard candies. Now I’ve been caching for decades and some candies cache better than others. Some (like Bulk store Christmas candies and Jolly Ranchers) melt into one big blob…which isn’t the end of the world, but Gobstoppers and certain British hard candies that are coated in powder don’t change state. Seriously though, just buy a bunch of Candy canes when they go on sale after Christmas. Almost all of them survive well through time. Worst case scenario is a blob of deliciousness with perhaps a candy wrapper or twelve melted in. Your descendants won’t curse you.
-White Rice (no other kinds. After ten years it yellows a tiny bit, but is perfectly edible and it doesn’t change in flavor. Combine with beans to make a complete protein that has raised literally giggatonnes of humans) An 8kg bag of rice is $10 and is about 14 man days of food.
-Dry flavor packets (spices, drink flavor crystals, mixes, dressing mixes, etc) Not once has one of them gone bad.
-Stevia (Not because you’re going to be worried about the calories, but because it is 1000 times sweeter than sugar for the same space.)
-Molasses. I wouldn’t cache it, but you could. Still good after ten years. Bag the carton in a ziplock just to be safe.
-Freeze dried foods. I’ve eaten everything from Vietnam era meals to ten year old camping food. Only the whitefish and crab meat salad had any impact, and that wasn’t illness but gas issues that would have made God weep
Do not cache: -Any oils besides lard and perhaps (shorter term) coconut oil. They DO go bad.
-Peanut butter
-Nutella. Not only does it good bad, but you’ll seriously disappoint whomever opens your cache.
-Canned goods. Why risk it? I tried it out of curiosity, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Costly too.
-Batteries. Notable and only exception is Lithium Ion batteries. Not only are they lighter, pack more energy, work well even in Canadian winters, have 80% of their charge after 25 years, but they also don’t explode for no reason at all and corrode other items (like alkaline batteries have done for me). Costly, but less so then discovering it dissolved your other batteries. Again, contain the destruction in a name brand ziplock bag.
-Rechargeable batteries. Most won’t last 4 years. Nickle Iron batteries are an exception and should last hundreds of years. Low Discharge NiMH batteries have also faired well in my testing, approaching 4 years with no serious performance issues due to storage.
-*smelly foods* If you are caching anything that is smelly it must be in sealed metal containers. I would also recommend caching your tasty/spicy cache in it’s own cache separate from your food supply and tools. Bears are fiends, why risk your other goods?