Survival Hides and Secret Entrances

Understanding that not everyone can afford bomb shelters or have access to caves, we will discuss various ways to conceal and protect ourselves for any emergency or situation that requires us to HIDE.

Over the years friends and myself have studied and implemented many various ways of developing fast and efficient survival hides/bomb shelters plus secret entrance designs. and i will share some of our novel proven ideas and techniques you can easily do and modify, and please feel free to share any of your thoughts or solutions as well, because you can never have too much good information

Disclaimer: Understand that friends and myself have acreage and all prototypes and concepts were worked out with these luxuries

#1.MiniVan Hide. you can use any year, make or model, running or disabled, the choice is yours. minivans are cheap throw away vehicles and you can get them for free or for a few hundred dollars if you know where?

drag or drive your minivan into a ravine or a landscape that lowers the minivans signature. if you have lots of time and some fancy equipment, like a backhoe? you can nicely dig a perfect grade for the van to rest. if not? you can either hand dig a level grade, or use dirt, rocks, brush, logs or any material that will level your minivan. for our purposes we used hydraulic bottle jacks and jack stands, which comes in real handy if you have them.

once you've got your van set level and as low to a horizontal signature as allowed. you want to completely cover the van to create the hide. first with heavy mil plastic, black preferably. to help seal out any unwanted moisture, because there is nothing worse than a wet survival hide...lol and again if you have better materials by all means use them if you have them.
for our purposes we used sandbags and filled them with dirt and rocks and pretty much anything we could fill them with as we stacked them around and up along side the van until we were at roof level. very time consuming but was very strong and bullet proof. remember to leave one of the doors accessible, doesn't matter which one as long as you have a way in. we actually cut a doorway in the roof and concealed the entire van, back filled the landscape so it blended in naturally. but you can use any material like trees, logs,boulders, trash dump which is the perfect cover if you have one

the reason for the minivan is. it has more room than a car but its not so big that it cant be easily covered.

another great one is a sleeper cab from a tractor trailer / semi. the old aluminum ones were fairly small and you had a nice side door you could easily hide and secure..same scenario but even smaller. if you want to go even smaller?, you can use a plastic highway culvert pipe and follow the same steps.

Secret Entrances.
there are many great ways to conceal doorways, but the best I've came up with were burnt warped rusted rotten barn sheet metal along with garbage and tree debris. you want to make your hide resemble a rotten old trash dump or bulldozer pile. if you have more time you can plant grasses and ivy's or anything that will blend it with nature , but for our purposes we buried the van on the back ravine of the dump then pushed the dump over it and covered the entrance with old barn tin and used metal screws to secure some of it to the roof entrance. its best to use old rusty screws to blend the materials. if you have a minivan with a sunroof you really have it made...lol

here is just a beginning of a few ideas, but please feel free to criticize or optimist my ideas, but share. cuz i don't know everything...lol

I am a little confused, what did you do about the windows of the van? Also, could you post some pictures (obviously not giving away the actual location) so that we could see the general idea?

I love the van idea though, you could keep the rear bench seat and actually have comfort!

reply to post by anumohi


Wow, I love this idea. My b/f had a similar idea using an old bus he had acquired.

I really have no ideas of this on my own, but I would love to hear other ways to build these 'safety shelters'!

As for the mini van, I was just thinking you could also dig a big hole on the ground, fully stick the van in the there, fill the rest of the hole, cut a hole on the ceiling, and cover it to conceal it.

reply to post by PoorFool
the reason for the ravine is quick water dispersal. if you bury it in any eastern states it will quickly fill up with water and then you have a cistern...hahahaha

Like this:

sports.webshots.com...

But it's not a very good example

reply to post by YourPopRock

you leave the windows in. you can cover them with celitex or foam if you desire, then cover the entire van with one full length piece of plastic. not tarps, unless they are the real heavy ones that don't leak.

as for pics? we never took any and where the hide is, its many miles away, but if i happen to go up, i will surely bring some and share.. its all pretty basic and simple. i did remove all the back seats though, and the front seats recline if you want to relax without setting anything up ..i rerouted the battery inside so i could use the radio and inside lights i use a 12 volt gel 300 amp car starter so there is no poison vapor and i have direct contact if the cigarette lighter plugin ever went bad. you have plenty of room to store lots of bells and whistles comfortably also

reply to post by PoorFool



yes...kinda..lol

and then you cover it over with sandbags and soil and make it look like a natural berm. then grow sod over it, and put a bird feeder over the entrance

Originally posted by anumohi
reply to post by PoorFool

 

yes...kinda..lol

and then you cover it over with sandbags and soil and make it look like a natural berm. then grow sod over it, and put a bird feeder over the entrance

Brb copyrighting it

another really great concept that we looked at was, if you had land, and you were considering putting a pond or lake on your land, you could bury the minivan in the dam of your lake or pond and the drainage culvert if large enough? could be used as an entrance to the HIDE. you could even ventilate it through an over flow pipe and no one would ever be the wiser

Culverts are very good if you have one nearby. They are below road level and excellent cover. Keep an eye out for them so you know where your local ones are.

This is probaby a great idea for you to look into.

Its a concrete tent type thing that takes 40 minutes or so to put up, comes in a bag, you simply add water and da da. One bullet proof tent. It takes 12 hours to harden.

I'd seen it on a program called Dragons Den here n the UK. It's now used by the Red Cross

I suppose you could then burry it

news.bbc.co.uk...

reply to post by JonoEnglish


that's pretty cool. i think just about anything could be used. 500 or thousand gallon propane tanks that have been opened and properly degassed/sanitized

the object is to quickly cheaply create a hide. the minivan if running? could be buried or hidden anywhere you might need to drive it, was our concept. but thanks for that info. it is very interesting

why not just use a large 50,000 litre rural water tank ? Dig it in the ground, just don't connect the water Its like 4.5m wide x 3.2 high (14' x 10') Here in Australia the govt will even give you a rebate for them LOL - maybe even an underground shelter..... hmm they can spy on you all they like, youre only putting in a water tank

I have one in a dry desert mine.

There is a mine shaft/ore-pass that comes down into the main haulage tunnel.
I timbered the top of the shaft over where it came out at the top of the hill and just have a pipe sticking out of the dirt i put over the timbering.

All i have to do to get to the side tunnels of the shaft is to drop a mountain climbing rope down this pipe over a steel bar then go into the mine and use a set of Ascenders to clime up the rope about 50 feet. once there i can drop a climbing ladder.
en.wikipedia.org...
These side tunnels run about 50 foot in each direction and give me plenty of room for hiding and storage.

I set this up over 40 years ago to store my mining equipment and explosives.(this is a high theft area if someone is not there all the time)
In those 40 years no one has ever been able to find out the trick of climbing up the smooth wall of the shaft.
I even let the local mine rescue group use the mine for training and practice.(i am a member)

I keep a stockpile of 2 liter soda bottles full of water in these tunnels plus a few other idems(dry canned food) and add to the water supply every year.(i now have over 500 gals stored now)

This is a combo hide and nuclear war bomb shelter.

Originally posted by JonoEnglish
This is probaby a great idea for you to look into.

Its a concrete tent type thing that takes 40 minutes or so to put up, comes in a bag, you simply add water and da da. One bullet proof tent. It takes 12 hours to harden.

I'd seen it on a program called Dragons Den here n the UK. It's now used by the Red Cross

I suppose you could then burry it

news.bbc.co.uk...

edit on 19-1-2011 by JonoEnglish because: (no reason given)

edit on 19-1-2011 by JonoEnglish because: (no reason given)

Where would you buy the concrete tent? I really would

reply to post by ANNED


that's really cool, you're set

reply to post by ANNED


that is true and we have used water cisterns in the past..one big draw back if you don't have padded on the inside is the bastard echos...hahahaha drive ya crazy just breathing.

No need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Simply do a little research...talk to some old timers...and follow suit.

Moonshinners and whiskey still entreprenuers used to hide their operation in a ravine or "holler"...hollow. Find a "V" impression or cut in a hill or ravine...then lay beams..logs...across the top. Then cover with boards, or ply wood or roofing tin...then cover with dirt, leaves, and voila... To cover the entrance/exit...cover the front of the "V" in much the same way...with logs...boards...limbs...then dirt and leaves and brush and leaves.... leaving a narrow slit entrance.

A good example of such a set up can be seen in the Civil War guerilla epic "Riding With The Devil" with Toby McGuire.

This type of "nest" was used considerably in the Civil War by not only bushwackers and raiders, but by deserters.

As for heat and cooking, a small fire pit can be built and lined with rocks or even a shallow chimney fireplace... since smoke/heat rises... a flew or chimney can be built using 6" or 8" stove pipe... use elbows to run the pipe upward and away from the nest...even running on a gradual BUT upward slope so that the smoke comes out at a distance from the nest and up further along the ravine or hollow.

If you build such a set up close to your home or along the edge of the yard... you could actually run the pipe so that the smoke comes from a dummy building or a smoke house or even the chimney of your own house. This fooled even the best "revenuer" in the day...

Just finished wathing the movie "RED" (good movie by the way) and i thought i might share the hide in the movie...

They have an old Chevy Bel Air sitting in the woods and he opens the hood and voila a staircase into a huge cement dugout... Not real cheap but I thought it was an excellent idea to conceal the entrance. Maybe you could bury a mini van then pull the old junk big bodied car onto the top of it and BAM not only are you hidden but with a little bit of paint you look good hiding