Someone asked me how I store all those magazines.

Answer: The same way I store anything that I feel is important, worth protecting, and might be in storage for a long time: in a hard, airtight, watertight, crushproof container.

For 99% of the things I put in the Deep Sleep, the container of choice is either a genuine GI ammo can of some kind, or a Pelican (or similar brand/quality) case.

Good, quality, name-brand, effective, just-what-the-doctor-ordered cases are not cheap. Only you know how much risk you’re willing to take to save a few dollars. Will the plastic ammo can from Harbor Freight store gear just as well as a GI ammo can? Maybe. If it’s just going to sit on the shelf in your basement for the next twenty years then all it has to do is sit there, quietly waiting in the dark for that one day when life changes in an exciting new way. And that is when the extra bucks you paid makes a difference. When you grab the can off the shelf, swing it around as you run up the stairs with it, it bounces off the doorway as you grab your backpack with your other hand. You run out the door and it’s five inches of snow and freezing rain as you literally toss the ammo can in the back of the truck into a pile of slushy snow and ice. Then its a two hour drive over bumpy roads until you get to your safe place. Then you drag your gear out of the truck, some of it falls and hits the ground, some bounces off other gear, and some just gets none-too-gently shoved into a corner of the room. Now, your headset radios, battery chargers, cables, batteries, and other gear were in those cans… which would you rather have used to store those items – the $7.50 harbor Freight made-in-China plastic “GI” ammo cans or the $65 Pelican case?

Everything I put away for the future is put away because I have concerns about those things being unavailable in the future. Maybe they are unavailable due to price..or legislative action…or simple supply/demand variations…the reason doesn’t really matter; all that matters is that this particular item is now unavailable and whatever ones I have are the only ones I’m gonna have. So…I don’t mind spending the extra money for what I feel is a heightened level of protection.

Of course, not everything requires a super-high level of protection. A Glock magazine can get dropped, bounced off the concrete, get wet/snowy/dusty/dirty and survive just fine thank you very much. Not the same story for a radio. Or your medical gear. Or your other critical-and-somewhat-fragile gear.

Only you know what is and is not important enough to you to warrant the expense of high-end protection. It’s very subjective. Personally, my opinion is that anything worth putting away for the uncertain future is worth protecting as much as possible so it’s there when I need.

You’re going to have to do some math in your head. If the Made-in-China case affords you 75% the protection of the Pelican or Hardigg case is that 25% difference in protection worth the difference in price? Does the 80/20 rule apply here? As a friend of mine said when I complained about the cost of a motorcycle helmet, “Whats your head worth?”

It seems ridiculous to spend as much on a protective case as you did on the item that you are protecting, but, again, whats it worth to you to have exactly what you need, when you need it, in perfect working condition?

As I said, I’m a bit of an evil ‘yuppie survivalist’ so I spend the dollars for the Hardigg, the Pelican, the SKB cases. Or, if they’ll do the job, the virtually new genuine GI ammo cans. It’s just not worth it to me to go through the pain and labor of buying a piece of expensive top quality gear, house it in a POS knockoff plastic ammo can, and then have the lovely surprise of having that item absolutely not work when I need it most. At that moment the last thing I’m thinking is “Man, sure glad I saved thirty bucks by buying that cheap just-as-good-as-Pelican case.”