Buried Treasure

Remember back when SKS rifles were selling for less than $100 a pop? Survivalists picked those things up like crazy. They are nice little semiautomatic rifles shooting an inexpensive common round so why not?

They were so cheap that many were buried in case there ever came a time of gun confiscation. It was easy enough to do. Take a section of PVC drain pipe, add rifle, moisture absorbers, ammo, then seal the ends. If you were really clever you'd bury your pipe standing straight up to make a smaller footprint for metal detectors.

It's hard to get a good idea how many were buried that way. After all the whole point is to keep it secret. Blabbing about your buried gun defeats the purpose. Even so, I've reason to believe there are quite a few of them out there somewhere. People tell me things.

I do wonder how many of those guns will ever be recovered? People die, get divorced, have to move suddenly -stuff happens. Even if you have some idea that there's a gun buried out in the back 40, it might be nearly impossible to locate. Just think of the difficulty people have finding time capsules. They are usually buried with some ceremony and records are kept. Even so, after 20, 30, 50 years or so, many are never found again.

As for myself I never thought burying things underground was a good idea around here. About half the year the ground is frozen and could be under eight feet of snow. The whole idea of having an emergency back up is so you can get to it in a reasonable amount of time.

Maybe hundreds of years in the future those old rifles will be popping up by accident.

-Sixbears