Electronics and Digital Devices

How to Bury Your Stuff: The Ultimate Guide to Burying Your Electronics and Digital Devices

Because no one can take what they cannot find

If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend reading my General Tips page before burying electronics or digital devices.

Use caution when burying electronics, not because of the risk of damaging a device but because some digital devices that you may want to hide can be electronically tracked and located. It would be terrible to lose precious metals, firearms or important documents to theft because you agreed to hide someone else’s cell phone (for example) with your cache. Only hide your own electronics and digital devices, and ensure that they cannot be physically tracked.

The same rules that apply to properly burying firearms, ammunition or documents also apply to electronic and digital devices. External optical drives and any other electronic devices with moving parts, including something as primitive as a VCR, must be buried below the frostline. My own personal experiences include 2-way radios, cassette tapes, USB flashdrives, external hard drives and one of my laptops. I can tell you two things for certain when it comes to burying laptop computers. One, you want a Pelican model 1085 like the one listed below…

>> Click here to get current pricing and reviews from Amazon.com on Pelican Case Model 1085 <<

…and two, you MUST bury your laptop below the frost line. You should place it in the Pelican 1085 with as much desiccant as possible. Then I would recommend wrapping the case with a towel and using silicone to then seal it in a Tupperware container, eventually turning the Tupperware container into a Faraday Box and then using the Bell Method to protect the second container with a third. I do recommend using the Pelican 1085; however on this website I will be recovering my own HP 2000 series notebook which was buried last year without using a Pelican case or desiccant. I plan on leaving it underground for exactly one year and documenting the entire recovery project in order to demonstrate the protection that my Bell Method can provide.

The Bell Method is explained on my webpage entitled How to Bury, 5 Methods and a Faraday Box is basically the same as a Faraday Cage; except that when burying EMP shielded digital devices, one must remember that water and the ground will both conduct electricity. It may seem extreme to some individuals to shield electronics from electro-magnetive pulse but please keep in mind that NNEMP weapons are not the only things that can fry your circuit boards. I’m not an expert on the subject, but it’s my understanding that the Sun’s ever-increasing solar flares can just as easily destroy your buried electronics or digital devices.

If you are planning to bury an external hard drive, feel free to check out my webpage entitled My Personal Cache, a Step-by-Step.