Dead drop spikes in the Bazaar

Sean Michael Ragan of Make: Online reviews a piece of essential equipment - the dead drop spike. It's for sale in the Boing Boing Bazaar.

For those who aren't up on their tradecraft, a "dead drop" is a place where spies or other clandestine-y folks drop off items for later retrieval by other agents. A "dead drop spike" is a particularly ingenious little container devised for the purpose. Basically, it's a hollow metal spike, with a threaded watertight closure at the top. You put your top-secret microfilm or whatever inside the spike, take it to your dead drop, and stomp it into the ground with your foot. Then you cover it up with a rock or a piece of trash or whatever. The lid has a pull-loop built into it, so that when your contact comes by later to clear the drop, he or she can grab the spike by the loop and yank it out of the ground again.

Dead Drop Spike $37

• [Eli the Bearded]

  Is it big enough to hold a Minox film cartridge? Inner diameter is not specified. (But if outer is 3/4″ I don’t think one will fit. Inner at 3/4 would probably work.)

  camera:
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/elithebearded/2598284132/

  film:
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/elithebearded/2597439391/

• [Anonymous]

  but, really, it should be made out of plastic. metal is too easy to find anomalous unless it’s disguised as a bolt or a big railroad spike or something.

• [Dewi Morgan]

  Geocaches can be any size, but yeah, journals make it more fun – they can be really tiny though, with nothing but a thumbdrive for people to use as a journal.

  Buried caches get scowled on: same with covering them with rocks. Reason being that doing that makes everyone searching for the cache go around digging, waving metal detectors around, moving rocks… it’s all very intrusive and destructive, can cause drystone walls to be damaged, etc.

  So a lot of people say it’s best to leave stuff in “plain sight”, where the person looking for them at least stands a chance of finding them: between or behind boulders, rather than under them. Think “easter egg hunt”, not “pirate’s treasure”.

  If you do intend to bury a geocache, and require metal detectors to find it, please make sure you check with the land owner. It’d suck if you found out later that you ended up inadvertantly getting an ancient burial ground dug up or something, through poor choice of placement of your spike.

• [Anonymous]

  Looks like a geocache to me.

• [MB]

  Alternatively, you can send me $30, and I’ll send you a certificate attesting to your World’s Most Prepared Spy status.

• [igpajo]

  Aren’t most GeoCache’s a a little bigger so you can store a journal for people to sign and some trading trinkets? Would be cool for a really complex cache where you have to find the dead drop that has a reverse azimuth and distance to the actual cache.

• [gwailo_joe]

  If I was indeed a spy and could pass on the cost to my nefarious government agency; I’d get a few of these spikes. . .but since I’m not a spy (and I’m cheap), if I need to hide something I’ll just dig a hole.

• [ill lich]

  They also double as “Drop Dead Spikes”– you just. . . you know. . . stab people with them.

• [rebdav]

  When I look at spy gadgets I get this weird thrill, and the need to get that gadget, whatever it is. Then the reality sets in , what would I do with that… And I go back to dreaming of building some crazy ham radio gadget.

• [Studz McBeefcake]

  These would be good for geocaching

  • [Anonymous]

    Just what I was thinking.

  • [murrayhenson]

    My though exactly. $37 ain’t a cheap cache container tho. Maybe a premier-members only cache.

• [Anonymous]

  Cool looking, but I have to say — I don’t get it. If I’m a spy, and I’m caught with these things, then I’m deep in the shit. Why not skip the middle man, and leave the dead drop in something that legitimately looks like garbage: a tuna fish can, last month’s newspaper? If I’m caught, maybe they don’t find/understand the papers/microfiche/film cannister that I would put in the spike.

• [Anonymous]

  wwooowww something i can hide my weed in and realy loose it

• [Anonymous]

  These are awesome, and I recommend them highly. I bought one and it was well worth the price. I am ordering another.

• [Pantograph]

  Now here’s something Makers can solder together out of copper plumbing materials. (Although you’d have to get fairly creative if you insist on having a pointy end.)

• [Anonymous]

  How many micro-SD cards will it hold? Can I fit the plans for the Death Star in it?

• [Anonymous]

  Heck… just buy a section of pipe and an endcap, smash the bottom into a spike and there you go…

• [muteboy]

  Good for a game of Clandestine Lawn Darts.

• [Anonymous]

  oooh ooooh make it of wood so it doubles as a vampire stake!!!!

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Because who’s stupid enough to pull a stake out of a vampire.

    • [Anonymous]

      exactly!