Anyone had group of 100+ for more than 10 years?

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I don't think having your animals nearby is a "US thing?!
I think it's the same around the world.

We're not in that boat because our members just have home sized pets. We have all our meat stored in off the grid freezers so we don't need cattle, sheep, and chickens, although some fresh eggs would be really nice if we could figure out how to raise live poultry inside our facility...they would need their own ventilation duct to the outside for sure!
How long can you store your frozen meat with your system and how do you prep it?
 
I know our walk-in meat freezer is at -20 F, but I don't know how they wrap the various meats or if they do anything special. I'll find out. I DO know we were eating 2 year old meat during our 6 month trial run back in January and no one including me thought it tasted old or freezer burned. We had chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, venison, bison, scallops, shrimp, salmon, and crabs. Something else, but I can't recall what it was. Oh yeah, bacon! And we had sausage too!
P.S. and frozen scrambled eggs and I did miss having fresh eggs!
P.S.S. The cook during our 6 months just told me our grocery butcher is the one that prepared it all so I asked him and he said it was all about temperature (0 degrees F or colder) and moisture....if you vacuum pack it correctly, it will come out on the other side pretty fresh but you also have to thaw it correctly...best to refrigerate for 24 hours. so it's a slow thaw and safe from bacterial exposure.
 
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Follow on up the creek through the canyon and check out one of the underground bunkers, and machine gun towers. Up mulheron creek. Looks like they own thousands of acres collectively.
 
Follow on up the creek through the canyon and check out one of the underground bunkers, and machine gun towers. Up mulheron creek. Looks like they own thousands of acres collectively.
I thought we had a lot of money tied up in our community!
We didn't put tens of millions into it, but our facilities are definitely valued in that range in today's dollars...but if those guys at Mulheron Creek have thousands of acres and all that it looks like they have, they are in the hundred's of millions of dollar range and way beyond the scope of anything anyone but a billionaire (or mega-church?) could ever afford.

We're boxed in by the dimensions of our shelter, the grocery basement, and the school. It appears those guys at Mulheron Creek could support a militia, their families, their congregation, and pretty much anyone else they want to invite!

We have a hard ceiling on our capacity of about 340 to 350 people because when we run the numbers from our 6 month trial, that's the best we can support (with some buffer) for 5 years completely off the grid. Now if we gained back some resources midway, that number or the duration could change. We also accounted for births considering we have a lot of young families. But since our membership is currently not even 200, we feel like we're in pretty good shape. While we have quick access to our facility, chances are there may be plenty of warning for most SHTF situations, so I like that Disturbed1970 can use outside resources like the hunting grounds all around him and has the ability to expand all he wants, anytime he wants. We on the other hand, have to be constantly paranoid we may do something that gets us noticed by a nosy real estate agent or a new member of the town's police. Lot's of close calls, but fortunately we've normalized our exteriors to the point that we've not had those issues in quite a while.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for....Move along!
 
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Dave, you blow my mind out! If you give us one of your money computers we could maybe do the freezer too?! That place on the creek is like the city - they are huge! Yes, our shelter is most like your shelter because we can not get bigger. We can not build to surface because of the lake and we cannot build deeper because of bottom. Good news, the engineer has say that bottom is not leak and place where the water has come in is at top where the water overflow from the lake is going down side. Bottom is now complete dry! Engineer has put overflow in the pipe and will stop water in future. This is very very good and now fans have inside very nice. We have the big heaters now and it stays very good inside. This is the best we have had!
 
I know you had PM'ed me before the type of concrete you were using in your forms and what you had poured on the floor and I hadn't done the metric conversions...you definitely have non-porous concrete so now it makes sense that it wasn't coming up from below or from the walls, it had to be coming from your camouflage lake that sits on top of your sinkhole shelter. You must have some serious steel cross beams and vertical columns to support that water even if it is just a couple of feet deep of muddy water! You said everyone always wears a head lamp AND carries a flashlight on their belt. Is that because there are NO LIGHTS or are there just a lot of dark spots? Also, you said you have some heat. How are you handling the fumes or are you using electric heat and if electric, how are you getting enough electricity out of that one wire running from that nearby house?? Sorry so many questions!
 
Dave, In the start we only have a lot of dark rooms but we have done many things since you saw that picture! We have 5 levels with all having the LED lights and many more walls for the rooms! You can not just walk across like before and no more big holes to fall down, it is much better and safer now. And we have very good electrician and he has connect the house with bigger service and now we have MANY wires and we have breaker box INSIDE shelter!! Wires on ground are now in PVC pipe and all underground - you can not even know they are there now! The sounds are still bouce off the walls so we are working on insulation and maybe panel wood or other wall material for rooms. We did not plan correct for some plumbing so we will have to cut some very difficult holes in floors for the toilets and other pipes. Also the room under the lake is much taller than we planned because of steel beams so we can use for some storing of equipment. It is very silent in that place for some reason. Yes we have the electric heaters - we are not killing us all with the fumes!!
 
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Wow, you have really come a long way since I saw those pictures! I was always afraid one of you would fall through one of those huge openings walking around in the dark like that. Amazing work! You guys have really turned the corner by getting that power and lighting. You room height is very good too! Glad to know that you are safe from fumes and no longer freezing down there! Maybe you can get a carpenter to build you some bunks once you figure out where you want your living quarters to be on each level or maybe just some levels?
 
Wow, I'd like to see that setup. Its massive.
Ignore if you don’t care about generators or water tanks!

We’re not going to make our goal of getting all of the new 5000 gallon water tanks in by Halloween because our new power engineer and his team decided we needed to install a couple of walls on the far side of the “trench” to house 4 side by side 1000 gallon propane tanks and move the natural gas/propane generators off the top of the parking deck.
This is not a job for the faint hearted because it’s taking some major rewiring and timing so we’re not left vulnerable and without back-up power if “S” were to “HTF” during this process.

Firstly, let me apologize for not knowing what I was talking about.
I apparently “heard wrong” (something I seem to be doing more often this year?!) about the tank layout. We are only installing a total of fifty vertical 5000 gallon water tanks. I have NO idea where I got 75 but I was assured that that many would NOT fit in our trench!
Maybe originally they were looking at smaller tanks, anyway, I definitely got it wrong. Sorry!

I looked at the original and also the current plans today and on paper, I can see it “looked like” we could install walls to isolate the new propane tanks and their ventilation system and still fit all fifty 5000 gallon tanks to their right in 25 rows of two with about 3 foot spacing. Fortunately I’m not the one doing the measuring, calculating, and ordering because I thought “sure it’s all going to fit! “ It doesn’t! I thought I remembered that the trench dimensions were 20 feet wide by 300 feet across parallel to the shelter wall, but it’s actually 25 feet by about 340 feet. I guess I tend to round a lot to make things easier to remember.

The problem is that each propane tank is almost 16 feet long. Just looking at it, it looks like you could easily fit a generator between the shelter wall and each 16 foot tank, but I didn’t realize the required spacing or that the newest generator has almost a 10 x 5 foot footprint!

By turning the 16 foot long propane tanks to 45 degrees, they only take up about 11 feet of the 25 foot trench width, but in turning them, instead of occupying their 4 foot diameters plus 3 feet on each side (3+4+3+4+3+4+3+4+3 = 31 feet) or about 31 feet they NOW occupy twice the left-right space at about 59 feet !!
(3+11+3+11+3+11+3+11+3 = 59 feet)

Aggh, so that meant ALL the water tanks they already carefully spaced and filled many (!) had to be moved over so that their spacing is now about 2 feet between rows instead of 3 feet!
Those tanks are heavy as hell even without water and now had to be emptied in order to move!

So before looking to add the propane tanks, the spacing was:
26 x 3 ft spacing + 25 x 9 ft diameter tanks = 303 feet with about 37 feet to spare !

To add the propane tanks (and generators)
Water tanks had to be shifted to the right (parallel to the shelter wall and access doors)
26 x 2 ft spacing + 25 x 9 ft diameter tanks = 277 feet
plus we need 59 feet for the propane tanks at 45 degrees = 336 feet
so we now have only 4 feet to spare ! (And the wall will eat up some of that.)

So when everything is in place, the isolated and super (redundantly) ventilated propane tank room will be about 58 by 15 feet and contain the four 1000 gallon propane tanks at 45 degrees. Then there will be another wall with an access hatch parallel to the shelter, creating another super (redundantly) ventilated room about 58 by 9 feet and contain the 4 natural gas/propane generators that by default will use natural gas unless that is no longer available, then they can be switched to propane. The largest on the left is 150kW, and then the 100 kW, the 60 kW, and the 30 kW generators.

To the right of these rooms, on the other side of a 25 ft wide wall, is the fresh/gray/black water tank room with
two rows of 25 (9 foot diameter) vertical 5000 gallon tanks with approximately 2 foot spacing. The room will end up being about 280 feet by 25 feet.

They started the moving process about a week ago. It was sort of like the stupidity of being told to move that pile of gravel over there…now move it back, but necessarily, so we would never be without water, they left the two far right tanks in place and filled, and then while the next two tanks were emptied, they filled the two farthest left tanks so we didn’t get caught without water. They were going to pump it, but we ended up just wasting it, but they did get to see that our 24 inch drainage pipes would handle a burst tank in short order. After each pair of tanks is moved, it gets refilled (if it's supposed to.) As of this afternoon, they have moved most of the water tanks to the right already. The forms for the concrete walls (with lots of steel inserted) also got removed today, but they have to wait a bit to cut the hatchways to give the concrete some time to cure. I think next week, they’ll lower in all four propane tanks and then move and lower the 150 kW generator and have it completely wired, hooked to natural gas, and have the far left propane tank filled and piped, then test that generator and the transfer switch BEFORE they start moving the rest of the generators. Meanwhile the water tanks that are supposed to be filled will be filled and the other 3 propane tanks will be filled. I’m guessing this is going to drag out until November…I could be wrong, but I seem to be mistaken a lot recently!
 
Things are moving pretty slow....water tanks shifted, walls finished, hatch holes cut, one propane tank lowered, but no generators moved. Slow because there's a lot that could go wrong. I hate slow, but that's how it needs to be to get it right.
 
Moving generators has been a pain, but all are in place.
Here's one of several new transfer switches, I'm told are pretty kick-###.
Transfer.png
 
An alternate source of gray water for some of the 5000 gallon water tanks in the trench is runoff from the top level of the parking deck. The placement of one of the conduits had to be modified to line up with the tank feeders. It's always something!
Runoff.png
 
I thought we had a lot of money tied up in our community!
We didn't put tens of millions into it, but our facilities are definitely valued in that range in today's dollars...but if those guys at Mulheron Creek have thousands of acres and all that it looks like they have, they are in the hundred's of millions of dollar range and way beyond the scope of anything anyone but a billionaire (or mega-church?) could ever afford.

We're boxed in by the dimensions of our shelter, the grocery basement, and the school. It appears those guys at Mulheron Creek could support a militia, their families, their congregation, and pretty much anyone else they want to invite!

We have a hard ceiling on our capacity of about 340 to 350 people because when we run the numbers from our 6 month trial, that's the best we can support (with some buffer) for 5 years completely off the grid. Now if we gained back some resources midway, that number or the duration could change. We also accounted for births considering we have a lot of young families. But since our membership is currently not even 200, we feel like we're in pretty good shape. While we have quick access to our facility, chances are there may be plenty of warning for most SHTF situations, so I like that Disturbed1970 can use outside resources like the hunting grounds all around him and has the ability to expand all he wants, anytime he wants. We on the other hand, have to be constantly paranoid we may do something that gets us noticed by a nosy real estate agent or a new member of the town's police. Lot's of close calls, but fortunately we've normalized our exteriors to the point that we've not had those issues in quite a while.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for....Move along!

Land-wise, we are set. Plenty of hunting/farming acreage. However, the area we have setup for living area is fairly constrained. There is room for some growth, but it's definitely finite as it sits on top of a mountain.

Trying to balance the low footprint in terms of visibility from public lands and roads, with security, while getting as close to the ultimate goal of providing a lifestyle that is as close to "normal" as possible, was difficult.

Architecture/layout were melded to topography to make the actual living space invisible from any direction but up, until you get to the top. Security was near the very top of our requirements when starting up (and still is), so expanding beyond that is going to be difficult.

We also have hard caps, with a significant buffer. Essentially everything was planned with our cap number (which is still a ways away from being met) being the basis of all calculations. Taking that cap, we calculated power/water/etc requirements with EVERYTHING running at max to give what we call our minimum requirement. Those number were then doubled, and that number became what we built to. So, while our hard cap is one thing, we actually have the capacity to double it...even more, if we are even somewhat frugal with resources.

Our food production is way over that final number, as is water. Electricity is the main sticking point, along with actual available buildable space at the living area.
 
Land-wise, we are set. Plenty of hunting/farming acreage. However, the area we have setup for living area is fairly constrained. There is room for some growth, but it's definitely finite as it sits on top of a mountain.

Trying to balance the low footprint in terms of visibility from public lands and roads, with security, while getting as close to the ultimate goal of providing a lifestyle that is as close to "normal" as possible, was difficult.

Architecture/layout were melded to topography to make the actual living space invisible from any direction but up, until you get to the top. Security was near the very top of our requirements when starting up (and still is), so expanding beyond that is going to be difficult.

We also have hard caps, with a significant buffer. Essentially everything was planned with our cap number (which is still a ways away from being met) being the basis of all calculations. Taking that cap, we calculated power/water/etc requirements with EVERYTHING running at max to give what we call our minimum requirement. Those number were then doubled, and that number became what we built to. So, while our hard cap is one thing, we actually have the capacity to double it...even more, if we are even somewhat frugal with resources.

Our food production is way over that final number, as is water. Electricity is the main sticking point, along with actual available buildable space at the living area.

You’re probably too far from civilization for a drone to find you, but spy satellites are everywhere and overhead at inconvenient times, so be careful what you leave exposed! Download the app SPYMESAT if you want to have an idea of what may be overhead at any particular time.

With our recently expanded solar and natural gas/propane generator capacity, expanded water system, and extensive food stores, we’re set hiding in plain sight, but we also have a hard cap of beds. If we were to exceed our cap, like Disturbed1970, we’d have to shorten our protected time, but worse, we’d significantly affect the comfort of members who would certainly volunteer to take in unplanned-for-refugees. We are fortunate to have over one hundred spare beds at this time with a hard capacity of 340. As we approach a membership of 300 (only around 230 now) we will have difficulty maintaining family grouping because of the bed space capacity of our containers. We already have bunks for families larger than 5, but they were provisioned ahead of time by our fabricators because we planned for those specific families. Obviously, it would be better planning if we could store the equipment to add more bunks on-site because families certainly could grow during deployment.

We have looked at possibly double-deckering containers on the lower level because we have close to an 18 foot ceiling in sections not beneath structural beams, but because our residential containers are nine foot and six inches in height, we cannot stack another on top. It is possible a standard 8 foot high container might fit, but it would be a real squeaker for the forklift drivers to manage if they would fit at all? It hasn’t been tried yet, but if they could be installed, the plan would be to create a 4 foot overhang on the back-side and install a rail across the front-side, leaving a 4 foot balcony on the front-side for those residing in the upper containers. A full-sized staircase would have to be fitted on the side nearest the school entrance/grocery basement/infirmary and on the far-side nearest retail row/fast food.

For now, it’s not any kind of priority as we’re spending the next few weeks testing every possible configuration of our new water and generator setup.

SOPs have been posted, so now we need to see if they make any sense. This is where we need to think about “What happens if some idiot opens this valve?” or “What happens if you throw this switch AND this one at the same time?” It can’t be fool proof, but we can determine most of the “NEVER DO THIS” actions along with the BEST practices.
 
You’re probably too far from civilization for a drone to find you, but spy satellites are everywhere and overhead at inconvenient times, so be careful what you leave exposed! Download the app SPYMESAT if you want to have an idea of what may be overhead at any particular time.

With our recently expanded solar and natural gas/propane generator capacity, expanded water system, and extensive food stores, we’re set hiding in plain sight, but we also have a hard cap of beds. If we were to exceed our cap, like Disturbed1970, we’d have to shorten our protected time, but worse, we’d significantly affect the comfort of members who would certainly volunteer to take in unplanned-for-refugees. We are fortunate to have over one hundred spare beds at this time with a hard capacity of 340. As we approach a membership of 300 (only around 230 now) we will have difficulty maintaining family grouping because of the bed space capacity of our containers. We already have bunks for families larger than 5, but they were provisioned ahead of time by our fabricators because we planned for those specific families. Obviously, it would be better planning if we could store the equipment to add more bunks on-site because families certainly could grow during deployment.

We have looked at possibly double-deckering containers on the lower level because we have close to an 18 foot ceiling in sections not beneath structural beams, but because our residential containers are nine foot and six inches in height, we cannot stack another on top. It is possible a standard 8 foot high container might fit, but it would be a real squeaker for the forklift drivers to manage if they would fit at all? It hasn’t been tried yet, but if they could be installed, the plan would be to create a 4 foot overhang on the back-side and install a rail across the front-side, leaving a 4 foot balcony on the front-side for those residing in the upper containers. A full-sized staircase would have to be fitted on the side nearest the school entrance/grocery basement/infirmary and on the far-side nearest retail row/fast food.

For now, it’s not any kind of priority as we’re spending the next few weeks testing every possible configuration of our new water and generator setup.

SOPs have been posted, so now we need to see if they make any sense. This is where we need to think about “What happens if some idiot opens this valve?” or “What happens if you throw this switch AND this one at the same time?” It can’t be fool proof, but we can determine most of the “NEVER DO THIS” actions along with the BEST practices.

As far as satellites go, only govts and billionaires have them. There is basically no chance that the govt doesn't know about us, and not because of a satellite. Billionaires have enough money to have a nicer place than us.

We break no laws, and remain apolitical, so there is little reason for the govt to mess with us (currently), and should SHTF, they will have bigger fish to fry.

Edited to clarify:

The only type of satellite that would even possibly be a concern would be one with real-time access, dedicated imagery analysts, and a reason to look closely. Satellites like Google Earth which use pictures that are months/years old, are of almost zero intelligence value. Without analysts to know exactly what you are looking at/for, the value drops even further.

Is it possible someone pays SPYMESAT for some custom tasking of our location? Sure, but why would they? Curiosity? Unlikely. And, even, if they did, what info could they glean from it? To pay for the tasking, they had to know we were there.

They won't get our security protocols from satellite. They won't get our real security features from satellite. A government satellite could, but again, why would they? We are not strategically significant, and we aren't anti-govt.

We know that folks in the area know our location. Our visible footprint matches 100% with what info we have given out locally. Unless someone with air assets, artillery, and armor decides to come our way, we are pretty confident in our security, in no small part due to the geography. I suppose a large mountain warfare unit could be problematic as well. There is no prepping for everything, and prepping to fight off the combined might of the US government is well outside our financial means, and our desires 🤣.

OPSEC is huge for us, but we temper that with knowing *somebody* knows about us, and it is impossible to avoid that.
 
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As far as satellites go, only govts and billionaires have them. There is basically no chance that the govt doesn't know about us, and not because of a satellite. Billionaires have enough money to have a nicer place than us.

We break no laws, and remain apolitical, so there is little reason for the govt to mess with us (currently), and should SHTF, they will have bigger fish to fry.

Edited to clarify:

The only type of satellite that would even possibly be a concern would be one with real-time access, dedicated imagery analysts, and a reason to look closely. Satellites like Google Earth which use pictures that are months/years old, are of almost zero intelligence value. Without analysts to know exactly what you are looking at/for, the value drops even further.

Is it possible someone pays SPYMESAT for some custom tasking of our location? Sure, but why would they? Curiosity? Unlikely. And, even, if they did, what info could they glean from it? To pay for the tasking, they had to know we were there.

They won't get our security protocols from satellite. They won't get our real security features from satellite. A government satellite could, but again, why would they? We are not strategically significant, and we aren't anti-govt.

We know that folks in the area know our location. Our visible footprint matches 100% with what info we have given out locally. Unless someone with air assets, artillery, and armor decides to come our way, we are pretty confident in our security, in no small part due to the geography. I suppose a large mountain warfare unit could be problematic as well. There is no prepping for everything, and prepping to fight off the combined might of the US government is well outside our financial means, and our desires 🤣.

OPSEC is huge for us, but we temper that with knowing *somebody* knows about us, and it is impossible to avoid that.
Good points. I always wonder if everyone in our community is just humoring me and that everyone actually knows about our facility...I don't think so, but maybe you're right and keeping a facility secret is impossible. If that's true, we sure have wasted a lot of resources and effort! Meanwhile, we're closer to "ready" than I thought possible and doing it with all the comforts of home!
 
Good points. I always wonder if everyone in our community is just humoring me and that everyone actually knows about our facility...I don't think so, but maybe you're right and keeping a facility secret is impossible. If that's true, we sure have wasted a lot of resources and effort! Meanwhile, we're closer to "ready" than I thought possible and doing it with all the comforts of home!

I highly doubt anyone local knows the extent of our presence. We have a public face that is very well known, and a private face which isn't. I don't think anyone in the state has been on top of the mountain since we bought it, and began improvements.

So, it is incredibly unlikely they know just how much is up there. Assuming someone got curious enough to pay for recent custom tasking, they would see a handful of buildings, including one very large one, and one commercial greenhouse. Without some pretty stellar analysts, they would probably not see the camouflaged buildings, the security points, any of our LP/OPs, or any of the underground stuff.

Nothing is 100% secure, and Uncle Sam has some crazy resources, so I imagine they know about our place. The question then becomes are they likely to want to do anything about it? Probably not. We take great pains to be law-abiding, have no mandated religion that would lead to cult accusations, and do not get involved as a group in politics/protests.
 
...they would see a handful of buildings, including one very large one, and one commercial greenhouse. Without some pretty stellar analysts, they would probably not see the camouflaged buildings, the security points, any of our LP/OPs, or any of the underground stuff.
I was just reading danil54grl's comments about "162,000 egg laying hens" so I Googled the phrase to see just how big of a place you'd have to have to house that many hens! BIG! We don't need very many! That got me to thinking...we both have greenhouses, but we only have frozen eggs. I REALLY would like fresh eggs! Are YOU able to raise chickens? If so, how many and how do you manage the waste etc? Thanks! Dave
 
I was just reading danil54grl's comments about "162,000 egg laying hens" so I Googled the phrase to see just how big of a place you'd have to have to house that many hens! BIG! We don't need very many! That got me to thinking...we both have greenhouses, but we only have frozen eggs. I REALLY would like fresh eggs! Are YOU able to raise chickens? If so, how many and how do you manage the waste etc? Thanks! Dave
We have chickens, rabbits, pigs, goats, and cattle, as well as several ponds/streams with fish.

I'm not sure on exact numbers, but a few hundred chickens? Chicken waste is used as fertilizer.
 

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