Are there woodlice in LA? They’re crustaceans, so need a moist environment, and will eat paper. Silverfish eat paper too, and also like humidity.

I think I’d remove some of the dirt covering the papers, add some potato peels to the hole, cover the hole with a piece of wood or a slab of stone propped up on one side by an inch or or so to provide shade, and keep the area under the cover moist.

Also, any reason why water or—dare I say—urine wasn’t sprayed on top of the documents? If anything that could help speed up the process… Or at least make one feel like a peeing Calvin!

A good shredder will mow through 52 pounds of paper in the time it takes the SWAT team to reach your corner office; buried paper will probably still be there for the SEC to dig up a week after your high-profile arrest.

What you’ve done there, as far as I can see, is buried stuff in a hole that’ll probably protect the pages to some degree, rather than destroying them, at least until winter/it rains a great deal.

Curious to see how it works out, but it’s basically useless without a couple of controls (i’d say paper on surface and paper in actual proper compost heap)

Hint – decomposing broccoli and bananas emit gases that say, ‘come eat me’ to the kind of microbes you want to eat that paper.

Regarding the experiment, I guess it could last a while, especially if the hole is deep and the paper doesn’t get enough rain water. The place looks really dry to me.

1) Dig hole.
2) Place papers in hole.
3) Bury papers.

In the right environment (i.e. [moisture + microbes + cellulase]), this would be an effective (if slow) means of destroying documents, all while enriching the soil. All good aims. But why not do these things faster– and thus more securely –with the following method?

1) Dig hole.
2) Scramble and crumple (don’t stack!) papers into hole. Forming air pockets is essential here.
3) Lightly douse in acetone/denatured alchohol.
4) [optional] If wind is present, cover hole with metal grill/mesh/grate.
5) Light a match.

Quick, effective, very entertaining– and my plants seem to love it.

You dug a hole in your yard and threw paper in it, effectively making your backyard a landfill.

Great job!

It may have been somewhat secure (by obscurity) before he told the world that there are intact, sensitive documents buried at his place for at least the next couple years.

Absent that – kiddie pool and a garden hose? Bonus that you’d have paper pulp for making new paper. Burying them just seems silly (and ineffective, as others have mentioned).

For me, I send all my paper to the nearby scrap collecting company for recycling, secretive documents, with credit card numbers and such, I’ll tear them up and make sure the numbers part are thrown out on different trash days ^^” … too many detective movies, who is going to shift through my trash anyways and paper most likely gets wet and mushy in the compactor in the rubbish collector truck.