Urban Survival Planning – Be Prepared to Vacate Your Home

The alternate titles for this post are: When Home no longer is an Option; Being ready to execute your Survival Bug Out Plan; or, Withdrawal to the Safe Location.
In any event, we have written several times about not only having a safe location and a plan to get their,…remember Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency Routes?

Remember making your vehicle ready to get you there with extra stored food, extra spare tire, tools and even material to camouflage your vehicle if you have to hide it or remain over night or day at a location in between? Remember planning for foot movement overland in case your vehicle craps out or the roads or even the situation dictates moving on foot?

We have also said that most urban Survivors will make probably the decision to leave their Urban or Suburban homes later rather than sooner, in any case the Urban Survivor needs to be prepared to go at a moment’s notice. The last thing you need to be doing is throwing loose Survival Gear and Equipment and other odds and ends, however so necessary, into your vehicle.

The key is organization. And the key to organization is labeled containers. Cardboard boxes, plastic bags and fragile, one use containers should be avoided. Instead look to store your Survival Gear and Equipment, and other commodities such as food, seeds, tools, clothes, ammunition, and hardware to name some categories, in containers like buckets with lids, ammunition cans and gears bags such as rucksacks or daypacks.

This is separate from your Survival Bug Out Bag. Remember, your Survival Bug Out Bag is a last ditch small to medium sized rucksack that contains only the immediate essential Survival Equipment and Gear that you absolutely require.

Buckets can of course be purchased. However you may have some rural friends with livestock and they probably routinely throw supplement buckets with lids away. Lowe’s and Home Depot throw used paint buckets away. Check with the store or look in the dumpsters (probably better to ask first). We use a lot of buckets and hardly ever throw them away, unless they are flimsy. The picture (left) depicts many styles and type of plastic buckets.

Military ammunition cans are great storage containers. In good condition they have a rubber seal, however they are heavier than plastic buckets. Surplus stores and gun shows are the primary place to procure military ammunition cans. On-line or hard copy Survival Equipment stores also sell these. The large ammunition can in the picture (Left) is a 40mm ammunition can, while the smaller one is a small arms ammunition can.

Both types of containers have dual or multiple uses. They can of course be re-used for many different Survival Equipment and Gear; can be used to collect water or other foraged material in; can be used for expedient seats or tables; and importantly will last along time.

We use both kinds with labeling to rapidly identify what the contents are. The ammunition cans are particularly good for storage fragile or semi-fragile items like battery powered lanterns, other electronics, medical supplies, and liquids such as cleaning solvents, bleaches, etc.

Having organized Survival Gear, Equipment and Material in durable and labeled containers will not only store your items in a protective manner but will greatly assist in the decision making and packing of Survival Equipment and Gear when you have to rapidly vacate your Urban Home for a withdrawal to your planned Safe Location.

Urban Survival Skills – Communications Security 101 and Brevity Codes

The average Urban Survivalist using FRS/GMRS radios, like the various brands and models you buy from Wal-Mart, Target, etc., will need to develop communications protocols to ensure he/she and his/her survival group are using the radios in the most secure fashion possible.

Without some sort of communications security, the Urban Survival group risk providing potential threats with information that can be used against the Survival Group.

You, the Urban Survivalist, just may be more technical savvy than what we have to offer in this post. This is designed to help the Urban Survivalist adding common off the shelf FRS/GMRS radios to their Survival Gear and Equipment inventory and who do not have any idea of what communications security may mean.

Some of the FRS radios come with a voice scrambling mode using a form called voice inversion. This type of scrambling or Voice Inversion is easy to break using common voice inversion defeating SD type cards in handheld off the shelf frequency scanners. I understand that there is free software available on the internet that can be used in combination with computer sound cards to decode voice inversion.

So be aware that what you say on the radio will be easily picked up, decoded and understood by anybody who tries. There will be people who be able to determine a direction, from them to you, based on intercepting your signal. This can be accomplished using commercials radio direction finding equipment (called Signals Intelligence in the Military) or by skilled amateurs determining the direction of the strongest signal from your radios.

Simply, the Urban Survivalist needs to understand and use these precautions when using FRS radios.

Use Minimal Transmission Time. The longer you are on the air or transmitting the easier it is for someone to determine your direction and location, and, the longer you are transmitting, the more information you will be providing to eavesdroppers to exploit.

Protect Essential Information. Develop a list of information that you will never transmit or talk about on the radio. Some of these will be: Names – never names on the radio, instead use fictious names or code names; Locations – never send location, grid coordinates or any information that could be used to determine where you are; Assets – never talk about any assets you may have like people, food, vehicles, firearms,…anything!

Do Not Use Military Type lingo. We debated about this, but we think the easiest thing to do would be not to use military language as any eavesdroppers could determine you are a fairly well prepared Survival Group with Survival Gear, Equipment and Supplies but not too proficient to be able to hold onto to if the eavesdroppers attacked you. The flip side is that if you sounded too competent and well prepared then potential attackers may leave you alone. We think it’s better to try and stay under the radar screen.

Brevity codes are short words or phrases that have a longer meaning. Codes names are a replacement name for a location, person or thing that would not identify it.

A radio conversation that would transmit too much information may sound like this:
Person A: “House Security this is Security Patrol”
Person B: “Go ahead Recon Patrol”
Person A: “We finished with the Security Patrol and am heading back to your location, will be there in 15 minutes”
Person B: “Good copy Security Patrol”

Substitute some fictious names and some brevity codes and the sme conversation may sound like this:
Person A: “Hey James this is Charles”
Person B: “Go ahead Charlie”
Person A: “I got the house cleaned and mopped”
Person B: “Excellent”

House Cleaned means "Security Patrol finished". I’m cleaning the house means "still conducting the Security Patrol". Mopped may mean "I’m 15 minutes from re-entering the Survival Location". Excellent may mean "good copy".

We at UrbanSurvivalSkills.com will be doing some additional communications posts in the near future – please stay tuned, stay safe and get prepared.

Book Review - Financial Armageddon, by Michael J. Panzner

Full Book Title: Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse, by Michael J. Panzner

Financial Armageddon depicts a disturbing collapse of the U.S economy plunging us all into a very dire Survival Scenario. Michael Panzner takes financial gogbbledegook and makes it understandable for all. It is pessimistic and predicts hyper-inflation, a terrible depression and other very bad scenarios. And this was in 2006 when he finished the book, with an update in 2008. None of the things that have happened since have basically affected how the book was written, but present day events will certainly correlate what he predicts.

This book is really depressing, however realistic. If the crash comes like Panzner predicts it will be a horrible event. Urban Survival Skills.com believes this is the most likely Urban Survival scenario.

Panzner does provide some preparation guidelines so people can prepare themselves financially. This book “worst cases” a total economic breakdown making each of us on our own. Pensions, be it social security, private or governmental just may not be there. How can it with the U.S. falling steeply into debt?

Read this book, understand the possibilities of several scenarios, all not good at all, and come away better informed and with a will to prepare much better.

Publisher: Kaplan Publishing; Revised edition (May 6, 2008); ISBN-10: 1427797412; ISBN-13: 978-1427797414

Survival Chronicles of Jim - Chapter 12

It's been awhile since I wrote last about my Urban Survival Preparations and Survival Gear and Equipment procurement plan. Just as well as I needed the time to order some of the essential Survival Gear I was missing.

I finally bought some Silver bullion in the form of 1 ounce Silver Rounds from Northwest Territorial Mint. I bought ten (10) of them and it costs me a total of $194.10

Bought two of the Suisee Sport Alpine Adult Mummy (Sleeping) bags from the Survival Store (link to the right). This purchase cost a total of approximately $100.00 (can't remember exactly). When they arrived I realized I made a good buy on this item of Survival Gear. The Suisse Sport Alpine Mummy bags are green and sage in color, have a lot of room, are good for comfort to zero degrees and compress into a small package in the compression-stuff sack.

My Urban Survival Preparation in the Survival Foods area was weak, not counting some Mainstay Food Bars I have in my Survival Bug Out Bag and in my initial cache near my Safe Location, so I bought a case of dehydrated food, from EarthWaveLiving. This case consisted of six #10 cans (large coffee cans) so I bought one can each of powdered eggs, hash brown potatoes, carrots, peas, blueberries and peaches. Oh by the way, this case of food cost approximately $110.00, not too bad for what I figure would be around 30 days of food for two people if rationed correctly. I'm going to have to talk to Neomi about buying, storing and caching food.

I also went to the grocery store and bought three 50 pound bags of dog food and will replace each one as I use it to ensure that when I do bug out I have at least 100 pounds of dog food to take with me to the safe location. I will probably cache some more near the cabin but have to figure out how to package it.

My next task is to buy and store some rice and beans and prepare a cache of rice and beans near the safe location as well. And I'm going to see about buying another gun so my son can use it. Being new and clueless to guns I'll talk to the boys (the Survival Cadre who write this blog) and see what they think.
You all be safe and get prepared.