Hiding things

J.C. Denton · 2019-10-05 21:11

Recently I have been thinking about hiding various items, even though I have no specific reason to look for hiding anything from anyone. But the idea is attractive, you can encrypt digital information but not physical objects, which can only be locked up or hidden to prevent unwanted access. I'm looking for ideas for hiding appropriately sized physical objects. I realize it's a rather open question, hiding what, where and from who and so on, that's why I will specify and restrict the question further. I'm interested in hiding spaces that can be accessed relatively often, about once every week or month. This should be the only limiting factor as to where we are hiding things. It could be our own property, car, or some place we often visit. Hiding very small items is easy and it's often not very useful. And any object we are looking to hide should be transportable by a single person. So in terms of order of magnitude, I'm interested in hiding spaces ranging from 1 liter (33 oz) to 10 liters (2.6 gal). In terms of examples, we could be hiding a few bars of gold or a handgun. Too small: An SD card, a key. Too large: A fire axe, a car. Now, perhaps most importantly, who are we hiding things from? I believe there are a few levels of opposition we might be facing, and while I'm not trying to be comprehensive, I will roughly seperate them into four categories: 0. Not searching person - someone trivially stumbling into your hidden items. 1. Not experienced, not dedicated person searching (e.g.: family member looking for drugs). 2. Experienced, dedicated person, searching with limited time (e.g.: burglar looking for gold). 3. Experienced, dedicated person(s) with lots of resources, searching without any time limit. (e.g.: police looking for evidence). I think whatever the situation is if there is a good chance of failing against Case 0, it's a terrible hiding spot from the start. Many "hidden in plain sight" ideas kind of fall into this category. For all opposition except for Case 0, we assume the opposition knows what they are looking for. It's preferable if the hiding place can thwart tough opposition, Case 2 or 3. As you can see, it's an optimization problem with many variables and without any clear answers. Any discussion is welcome.

Vasya Pupkin · 2019-10-05 21:14

You may also enjoy geocaching. It's a little different, but in some cases it might be fun to know for sure that people are looking for the item.

The Fin · 2019-10-05 23:05

I'd say you need to approach things from the mind of the attacker (unless you can put up physical barriers you can get past and an attacker can't, but that's kind of cheating imo). Does the attacker know that I specifically have what they're after? If they don't I want to keep it close to me so I can reduce search time (Case 2 and below), and if I do I want to hide it away from me, since they're likely to look through my possessions thoroughly. Doesn't really matter if they're a looter with no specific goal though. I feel like hollowing out objects that are usually solid is pretty safe, because they can't really think to "check" them. Hiding things behind "Do not trespass" signs, inside of machines you're not supposed to disassemble, (long abandoned vending machines come to mind) and other places you're not supposed to go (as long as these places are easy enough to ACTUALLY access, ymmv) will deter most case 1 and below.

Undisclosed · 2019-10-06 08:41

>>13072 2 is easy enough to beat: Take a pickaxe to your cellar (ideally tiled), make a hole, then make a larger step just large enough to simulate a floor. Put the object you want to hide into a sturdy wooden/metal box, put box into hole, fill hole up with gravel, put a plate of concrete over the step, proceed to retile the plate so the seam becomes invisible. 3 is going to be harder, especially because the police has access to metal detectors and sensors that can detect holes, etc. You'd need something to block metal detectors at the very least.