Urban/suburban Survival

wolfmother said:
Note; a cyclone recently destroyed a town in northern Australia - Innisfail.
Many residents were frustrated that they couldn't access there money as the atms and banks were all closed due to no power etc. They knew they could buy what they needed but they couldn't access there cash. So they have had to sleep in community shelters and live on army rations for days- not much fun- if only they'd had a few hundred dollars stashed they would have been a little happier..
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Yes. The disaster planning training that I recently took through my city spent some time on strategies for storing equipment/food/water against the threat of the next earthquake or large-scale disaster. This seqment of our training was all about what to store and how to store it. Since we worry about houses falling down around here, people are encouraged to place supplies outside their homes in a corner of their property where a falling structure won't bury it. The best container that anyone suggested, and what I'm going to use (I'm still putting my supplies together), is a large PVC garbage can on wheels. These allow you to drag your supplies away from burning/collapsed buildings if it comes right down to it.

There's a lot of stuff that you can put in those things, and there's a strategy for placement (you want, for example, a change of clothes and shoes for everyone living in the house at the top of the can in case you all have to bail out in the middle of the night). But one of the things they really recommended was at least a few hundred dollars in cash and an emergency-use credit card. Of course, sticking that in my "bug out can" makes me nervous because of possible theft, but my backyard has a high fence around it, the only gate in and out is locked, and my neighbors are all good about looking out for people who don't belong in the area.

Plus, I think I'll put the money at the very bottom of the can. That means that anyone who wants to get at it will have to dig all the way down through all the other stuff.

Taking that emergency training course is the bedrock of my survival strategy, by the way. It qualifies me to help the city with light search and rescue operations in the event of an emergency. Even better, I'm now known to the city's police and fire departments (in a helpful way) and I know how to participate in the emergency command structure that would be put in place in the event of a disaster. In otherwords, I'm as plugged into the city (and by extension, the county and state) and its resources as I can be without actually joining the police or fire departments. So if things go south, I have a prayer of being able to hook up with a well-organized, well-equipped group of people. This is the best "circle the wagons" strategy that I can devise without completely turning my life upside down.
 
bulgron said:
Personally, I'd prefer a .22 pistol with match-grade sites and a couple of bricks of ammunition for going after small game.
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For wilderness survival, I agree. But I would no only want the pistol but a good scoped, bolt action in .22LR.

For the city survival, I prefer an auto pistol in .45ACP and/or a twelve gauge shotgun. In the right conditions of social breakdown, you could hunt pidgeons, rats, etc. But you would also have a very threatening weapon with lots of knockdown power if need be. If, hypothetically, I was faced with a choice, I would take the shotgun.
 
Sgt. Art said:
As I have read through the replies it has helped focus my concerns, which is the long term ecenomic depression as opposes to a war or end of the world type thing.
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I don't know if it'll blow up into a full-on depression, but I think we're about to see a serious recession. I just put up a thread in the Politics forum, this time centered on the housing bubble.

I know that this board mostly focuses on wilderness survival. But in terms of urban survival, I recommend that you do everything you can in the near future to eliminate your debts and save as much cash as you can. My personal feeling is that unemployment is looming for a lot of us.

In an urban situation, cash is without question the most important survival tool.
 
Sgt. Art said:
Although most survival discussion revolves around surviving in a remote area I believe that one of the most probable scenerios is survival right in our own neighborhoods. Most of us will never face a remote survival situation. But if there is a break down of order, supply systems etc... We may be forced to live as the peoples of Sarjevo, Beruit, Stalingrad, Bagdad etc... If so what are the tools and skills that you would consider important for long term survival of yourself and family faced with situations where food, water, fuel, medical supplies/treatment were in extreamely short supply or non exsistant but there was still a level of government order?
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Sense enough to abandon the city and go to the country where some food is available. Shelter is easy to build. Water is easy to boil.
 
DGG said:
Sense enough to abandon the city and go to the country where some food is available. Shelter is easy to build. Water is easy to boil.
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Only problem with that is the people in the country may object to refugees moving in on their home turf. If something bad happened and a flood of refugees flooded out of the cities, I can see some very ugly senerios taking place when farmers, ranchers, townships say "not here you're not!"
 
jackknife said:
Only problem with that is the people in the country may object to refugees moving in on their home turf. If something bad happened and a flood of refugees flooded out of the cities, I can see some very ugly senerios taking place when farmers, ranchers, townships say "not here you're not!"
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Yeah, as I've mentioned elsewhere, there's something like 2 million people between me and "out of town." Plus, there's very limited land routes out of here. If TSHTF there is almost no chance that I can actually evacuate.

I keep telling my wife that we need to move. She keeps coming up with reasons why not. :mad:
 
Hi Folks,

For post pandemic survival tips you could try www.ludlowsurvivors.com for more info, I know it's my site and a lot of it is UK based, but over here we don't have the problem with fire arms, so all are more equal.

S1
 
survivor1 said:
I know it's my site and a lot of it is UK based, but over here we don't have the problem with fire arms, so all are more equal.
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God Made Man, Samuel Colt Made Man Equal.

There is no equality in brute force among humans.

Grandma with a Glock is equal to a home invader. :thumbup:
 
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