Urban Survival Planning - Intelligence Prep 301: Electronic Intelligence Collection Devices Part I

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com is continuing on with Intelligence support for Survival. Previously I have talked about general Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield and how it applies to Urban Survival; debriefing your own patrols; interviewing refugees and other people for intelligence information; and developing Situation Maps to maintain your intelligence perspective and situational awareness.

This post is Part I on using electronic devices to augment your intelligence collection. In my mind the two most effective electronic devices that are easy to use and can bring good intelligence and information benefits to your Survival Group in order to develop your situational awareness are Radio Scanners and Game Cameras. In this post, Electronic Intelligence Devices Part I, we will focus on Game Cameras.

Game Cameras are simply a combination of motion detector and digital camera. Which detect motion and will snap a photograph, a series of photographs or even a short video of the movement that triggered the motion detector.

Game Cameras can send pictures to a cell phone via wireless connectvity, or send the image or video to a computer terminal with a wirless radio signal. However these models of game cameras are fairly expensive.

I'm going to focus on Game Cameras less than or around $100, within the budget of most Survival Planners and Preppers. With these economy Game Cameras you will get the same range, pixel resolution however the images have to be downloaded from the cameras either using a USB cable or swithcing out SD Cards.

Not necessarily useful for monitoring six lane roads as the extended range required would be near the outer limits of the game camera, unless you used one camera on each side of the road, still these game cameras would certainly work on natural lines of drift, county roads, suburban streets or anyplace else you need electronic intelligence and surveillance devices to determine ectent of traffic...especially the two legged kind.

The series of segments depicted in the strung together videos below were taken with a game camera set up along the Arizona Border showing illegal aliens and drug smugglers - notice the burlap wrapped bundles of marijuana fashioned into back packs. This will give you an idea of the auaity of video these game cametras are capable of....as well as probable piss you off.



Moultrie D-40 Game Camera

With an infrared motion sensor with a range of 30 feet and 22 degrees, the camera delivers clear footage of moving game, day or night, with multiple operational modes. With an average battery life of 60 days, the Moultrie Game Spy D-40 gives you the ability to spy out the game even when you're away for days at a time. Adjustable elastic mounting cords make it easy to mount the camera in trees or other stationary locations. The camera responds rapidly with FDA Class 2 laser aiming and a passive infrared sensor that activates as soon as motion is detected. Pictures are clear and easy to read in full color day and night, with 4 megapixel images that can be shot in low, medium, or high resolution.

Auto mode activates the motion sensor, allowing you to leave the camera alone to capture images while you are not present. In automatic mode you have the ability to capture still images day and night with or without flash operation, 10-second AVI clips-video images during the daytime that will automatically switch to still photos with the flash in low light situations, and capture multi-shot images of up three shots. The camera is also equipped with a handheld-removable manual operation, and a setup mode that allows you to customize menu settings. The electronic flash can be set to automatic or in off-security mode. The flash range is from five to 45 feet.

Designed for multi-day, automatic use, the Game Spy D-40 has a built in memory of 16 MB of video and picture storage. Up to four GB of additional SD memory can be added. The camera images can be accessed via the 2-inch LCD display or output to a TV or a computer via USB. Imprints time, date and camera ID on every photo or video The camera imprints still and video images with date, time, and camera ID so that you always know exactly when the stand is active. Has an weather-resistant, airtight camera housing.

Moultrie D-55 Game Camera

Billed as high-end scouting equipment on a budget. Moultrie 's Game Spy D-55 flash scouting camera gives you a feature-rich game camera at an affordable price. Loaded with features including 5.0 megapixels, camouflage housing and much more. Possess rapid response time; a 50-ft flash; Infrared (IR) sensor for immediate game capture; Temperature, moon phase, time, date and camera ID on every photo; Color day and night pictures; Video clips during the day (5/15/30 seconds); Display showing battery life remaining, pictures taken and remaining, and delay timer; IR aim for quick and precise camera setup; Picture delay, set 1-60 minutes; Multi-shot pictures (up to 3 shots) with 5 seconds between multi-shots; Three picture resolutions to choose from; Two video resolutions; SD Memory Card Slot – up to 16GB; Includes weather-resistant casing, USB cable and mounting strap; External power port for optional Moultrie PowerPanel; Operates on 6 C-cell batteries.




Powering Game Cameras

You will have to have to ability to re-charge batteries or re-configure power supply to the game camera. Having the ability to recharge the larger D and C batteries wuld be important. Given the battery life on these Game Cameras, a modest supply of re-chargeable batteries would be needed. Please visit All-Battery.com for rechargers and rechargeable batteries options.

Urban Survival Planning - Intelligence 201: The Situation Map

Following on the Urban Survival Planning – Intelligence Prep of the Battlefield 101 of 14 August 2010, this post concerns with developing an operational intelligence capability for your Urban Survival Group.

Simply, if you don’t utilize intelligence information to plan operations, then you are planning in an intelligence vacuum and will greatly decrease your chances of success.

You should consider intelligence for two geographical areas: the Area of Operations (AOR) , which is the immediate area around your Survival Base that you can direct power to or directly threatens you; and the Area of Influence (AI) which the area outside your AOR that events or actions occur in and can affect you in the near future. An example of an AOR would be your street and maybe one street parallel to you in each direction, or how far you could observe and engage with small arms. The AI would be an area outside of your AOR which may include many blocks away and even miles away. Again the AI is defined as th area outside your AOR that events can occur in that may threaten or impact on your AOR.

An example of an event in your AI could be gangs or mobs looting homes, which once finished it is likely they would move in your direction. Another example would be routes into your AOR that refugees would travel once the inner city unraveled.

This goes back to Survival being a team sport. You have got to be organized, even if loosely. If you don’t get it done pre-collapse, you’ll need to do it post collapse but it will be harder. You need to have some type of connectivity with any people or groups around your AOR and AI, for information and intelligence sharing. Not only for intelligence and information sharing, but for mutual support as well. Consider, if you have enough radios, providing a trusted neighbor with a radio for contact at selected times to pass off information or to coordinate movement or support.

Your Survival Group may assign one member as the Intelligence Officer, but in any case you will need to collect, collate/sort and store information of anything of value which may include: empty houses; houses that have been looted or intentionally burned; dead bodies; water sources and conditions; sign of any activity especially threat groups; covered and/or concealed routes; concentrations of refugees; locations of possible material of value; and, anything that pertains to your safety and continued survival.

One of the best ways to collect intelligence and information is to conduct debriefs on people passing by or people who are remaining in their homes. Debriefing your patrols is vitally important. You can annotate this information on a Situation Map (SITMAP) or a series of SITMAPS, so you can keep the area situation updated.

The below imagery shows the patrol that the Survivors conducted, see post on Opn’l Planning – The Patrol Order, after they returned to Base and were debriefed. The information they collected gave them a better picture of the AOR and AI around their base. In the absence of being able to access computers and print new images or maps, you can make sketches or even use chalk on a painted or a cement wall.

I have both blown up 36 inch x 36 inch charts, laminated so I can draw on them with dry erase markers. I have both maps and imagery, and multiple copies so I can provide other individual or groups with the same map or imagery for the purposes of being on the same sheet of music when talking about or reporting locations.

I can annotate events and other information using pieces of yellow stickies or plain paper and scotch tape and post them to my map or imagery creating a SITMAP or situational picture of my AOR and AI.

It is also useful for operational planning such as deciding where to put obstacles in place, or to establish LP/OP's, etc.