Anti-muggles Charms & Spells

[+JBDiver]

Any good hints (besides hiding well) on how to avoid getting muggled? I want to put out a replacement cache, but don't want to get muggled again .

 

Thanks, JBDiver

[+briansnat]

Place it where searchers are not likely to be observed by passersby and local business and homeowners

[+sbell111]

Right on target, BrianSnat!

 

As he stated, the best way to avoid having your cache muggles (or destroyed by the bomb squad) is to hide it in such a way that muggles can't find it. For all caches other than urban micros, that generally means that you will move the cache to where the people are not. For urban micros, that means you have to hide it very, very well and hope that finders will not give it away.

[+Team JSAM]

Also there are just some spots where muggles are to common it only takes one cacher to hide it back while someone is watching for the cache to get muggled.

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

My own advice would be to hide it well in an area largely or entirely free of muggles. And, if muggles continue to be a problem, I suggest that you issue -- on the cache listing page -- a key code which must be entered on a keypad within the container by any legitimate geocacher/finder within ten seconds of opening the cache container, else the small thermonuclear device which you have installed in the container will detonate, vaporizing everything within a 400 yard radius, thus eliminating the muggle. Yes, this method does leave a bit of a crater at the cache hide site, with the nearby surface of the earth barren of vegetation and glazed over with a hard glassy radioactive rocky layer, but there will be no trace of any environmental damage within 12,000 years, execpt for some of the longer-lived radioisotopes.

[+rhelt100]

My own advice would be to hide it well in an area largely or entirely free of muggles. And, if muggles continue to be a problem, I suggest that you issue -- on the cache listing page -- a key code which must be entered on a keypad within the container by any legitimate geocacher/finder within ten seconds of opening the cache container, else the small thermonuclear device which you have installed in the container will detonate, vaporizing everything within a 400 yard radius, thus eliminating the muggle. Yes, this method does leave a bit of a crater at the cache hide site, with the nearby surface of the earth barren of vegetation and glazed over with a hard glassy radioactive rocky layer, but there will be no trace of any environmental damage within 12,000 years, execpt for some of the longer-lived radioisotopes.

 

I bet that crater/glass layer would make great camo for the replacement container assuming you camo it properly to blend in.

[+Moore9KSUcats]

One problem we've had is that once a cache is muggled, someone (most likely a kid) knows where it was, and watches to see if a replacement cache is put out. This has happened in neighborhood parks. Some kids just like to take something that isn't theirs!

[+Torry]

Keep in mind that kids are naturally curious. When hanging out at the shelter while the old folks digest their potato salad and fried chicken, the kids are off poking sticks into snake holes. Should one happen to stumble on your box of treasure... Well! Hey-hey! Bonus!

 

Try to remember that you're putting something out there that wasn't supposed to be there. The maintenance crew is not likely to make any effort to protect your exquisitely hidden micro-cache, especially if they see all the table-top footprints and loosened bolts in the shelter the previous hunters left behind.

 

Try not to hide your cache in a sensitive area where the squashed plantlife will mark the trail after a few visits. If I'm hiking a batch of woods and spy an obvious path leading to a huge hollow log, I might just go check it out.

 

Fake electrical boxes will most likely be tossed when the maintenance man comes to work on the real ones. Fake rocks next to a bench might get grabbed up by someone who notices a black round rock in the middle of a bunch of crushed limestone. Magnets fail, Tupperware floats, raccoons like the smell of scented erasers... all can contribute to a missing cache.

[+Renegade Knight]

Rule one. Don't place them in busy areas where seekers are likely to be seen while looking for the cache.

 

Rule two. Don't place them where muggles poke around.

 

One is easy. Two is a bit harder. If there is one tree in a field, that's were the muggles will go. If there is a cool rock formation in a field of rocks that's where muggles will go. After a time you learn hides that even if they do go to the spot and poke around they won't find. But better still is learning that a cacher will still see that cool rock formation if you hide the cache 300' out of the way where muggles don't go to begin with.

[+Big Max]

My own advice would be to hide it well in an area largely or entirely free of muggles. And, if muggles continue to be a problem, I suggest that you issue -- on the cache listing page -- a key code which must be entered on a keypad within the container by any legitimate geocacher/finder within ten seconds of opening the cache container, else the small thermonuclear device which you have installed in the container will detonate, vaporizing everything within a 400 yard radius, thus eliminating the muggle. Yes, this method does leave a bit of a crater at the cache hide site, with the nearby surface of the earth barren of vegetation and glazed over with a hard glassy radioactive rocky layer, but there will be no trace of any environmental damage within 12,000 years, execpt for some of the longer-lived radioisotopes.

 

I bet that crater/glass layer would make great camo for the replacement container assuming you camo it properly to blend in.

 

I wouldn't even think you would have to camo it. I would have to think twice (or even 3 or 4 times) before climbing down into the bottom of a bomb crater, even if my GPSr said that was it. Ah heck, no I wouldn't. Whatever it takes to log the cache.

 

Question, would the radioactive isotopes throw off my GPSr?

[+ThePropers]

One problem we've had is that once a cache is muggled, someone (most likely a kid) knows where it was, and watches to see if a replacement cache is put out. This has happened in neighborhood parks. Some kids just like to take something that isn't theirs!

 

I had that problem, but ended up moving the container 3 feet and problem solved (i.e. the muggle who kept taking it assumed I didn't replace it). I guess they never bothered going to the site to figure out which cache it was they had found, or they'd have realized I moved it slightly.

Edited June 21, 2006 by ThePropers

[+swizzle]

Using distracters might help as well. A pile of sticks covering nothing or a bark teepee a tree or two over will keep them looking and thinking that its already been stolen. If there is good sized rocks close by then displace them to make it look like someone was looking for something a short distance away. Take you're time with the hiding spot and do it right. A single leaf or properly placed stick can often hide a shiney box. Walk around it from a distance and see if its noticable and if it is try something else to camo it or move it completely. Just my 2 cents. Swizzle

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

My own advice would be to hide it well in an area largely or entirely free of muggles. And, if muggles continue to be a problem, I suggest that you issue -- on the cache listing page -- a key code which must be entered on a keypad within the container by any legitimate geocacher/finder within ten seconds of opening the cache container, else the small thermonuclear device which you have installed in the container will detonate, vaporizing everything within a 400 yard radius, thus eliminating the muggle. Yes, this method does leave a bit of a crater at the cache hide site, with the nearby surface of the earth barren of vegetation and glazed over with a hard glassy radioactive rocky layer, but there will be no trace of any environmental damage within 12,000 years, execpt for some of the longer-lived radioisotopes.

I bet that crater/glass layer would make great camo for the replacement container assuming you camo it properly to blend in.

I wouldn't even think you would have to camo it. I would have to think twice (or even 3 or 4 times) before climbing down into the bottom of a bomb crater, even if my GPSr said that was it. Ah heck, no I wouldn't. Whatever it takes to log the cache.

 

Question, would the radioactive isotopes throw off my GPSr?

The short answer to your question is that high levels of background ionizing radiation will normally not interfere with the signals reaching your GPSr nor with its operation, nor with its accuracy. However, at extremely high levels of ionizing radiation, albeit levels that would likely cook your body within an hour, then the intensity of the "hits" will likely be high enough to disrupt -- sometimes permanently -- the operation of the tens of thousands of diodes, transistors and capacitors embedded in the silicon microchips inside the GPSr, largely via oxidative damage, unless the unit has been "radiation hardened". For an example of GPSr performance in modestly hot settings , no one has ever reported GPSr problems in or near the final stage of our "hot" cache, aka Psycho Urban Cache #9 - Hot Glowing Tribulations