Urban Survival Planning – Reconnaissance and Security Patrols

If the collapse hit and everything falls apart at the seams, and you are either held up in your Urban Home preparing to move to the your Safe Location, or you are on the move to your Safe Location, or, are at you Safe Location – what in the world does Reconnaissance and Security Patrols have to do with your Urban Survival?

Reconnaissance and Security Patrols are intended to find out what the threat’s capabilities and intentions are. They are used to gather information/intelligence concerning the area around your Urban Location or your Base Camp. It would be nice to know that a 300 person Motorcycle Group created an encampment six blocks from your house. Maybe a patrol to the nearest State highway could determine extent, if any, of motor vehicle traffic such as 18 wheelers on that roadway.

A Reconnaissance and Security Patrol may also be the best mechanism for placing Observation Post/Listening Posts (OP/LP’s) in place. As the Patrol moves throughout the area, the OP/LP team drops off, using the Patrol as cover, to make their way in a covered and concealed manner to their OP/LP.

A Reconnaissance Patrol is usually separate from a Security Patrol. The Reconnaissance Patrol is usually intended to go to observe and report on either a fixed site or a generally area.

Whereas a Security Patrol is intended to detect indicators that the threat has your Urban location or base camp under surveillance; indicators that the threat is preparing for an attack; indicators on refugees transiting the area.

An Urban Survival Group may also send out a patrol for a generally or specific procurement tasks like to collect brake light and backup light bulbs on vehicles; siphon fuel from stalled or dead vehicles; collect glass panes for a green house; or a thousand and one other tasks. No matter what the procurement tasks may be, the patrol should also be observant and collect information on what they see. They should be debriefed in a formal or semi-format process when they return in order to extract information they collected during their patrol.

Especially if you are a small Urban Survival Group, you may be pressing or utilizing women and teenagers into your patrols, not optimum, but it may be necessary.

The Patrol should have a plan; without burdening the reader's on a military style operations or patrol order format, the Urban Survivor would do okay to consider and use the 5 “W’s” as a minimum patrol plan:

Who (who’s in the patrol)

What (what the mission of the patrol is)

When (timeline for the patrol – when leaving, when coming back, when the base camp should consider the patrol compromised, lost, captured or dead

Where (where is the patrol going and what route(s), remember PACE, will the patrol take

Why (why is the patrol important enough to reduce combat power at the Urban Home or Base Camp in order to accomplish the patrol mission)

There should be standard procedures for the patrol that everyone knows well. Patrol inspection prior to the patrol moving out to ensure everyone has the required equipment, knows that day’s mission, is clothed and armed adequately and all shiny objects and noise makers taken off.

Common Arm and Hand signals should also be used to maintain control of the patrol and help maintain noise discipline. There should be an individual interval (distance) maintained between Patrol Members so that no two members present one target. Consider 5 to 20 meters as the high and low side interval suggestions.

Reaction drills for common events during the patrol need to be developed and rehearsed. Reaction drills for a sniper shooting at you, an attack from any direction, etc.

Contingency planning should be conducted to cover all imagined things that can go wrong. Here are common contingencies:

Where will the Urban Survivors go to if the base camp or the Urban home is attacked and over ran while the patrol is out of the base camp? This is called the Emergency Rally Point, should be at least a terrain feature away from the Urban Home or Base Camp, be somewhat defensible, and may be supported by a few small caches.

Where does the patrol exit and re-enter the Urban Home or Base Camp defensive perimeter?

What are the visual signal(s) and verbal challenge(s) and password(s) in order for the Urban Survivors defending the home to recognize the returning patrol as friendly?

Consider a duress word so that the other party will know that the first party is being forced by gun point or threats of death.

If the patrol hears a firefight at the Urban Home while they are on patrol, how should they return to the location and from which avenue or approach?

Running patrols from you Urban Home or Suburban/Rural Base Camp may not be possible if there are only 2 or 3 able bodied Survivor Group members. However, if you are in a Larger Urban Survivor Group, like a gated community or Neighborhood Watch program coming together, conducting Reconnaissance or Security Patrols as well as patrols to search, forage and procurement items will probably be a viable option if you follow the suggestions to have a Patrol Plan (5 W’s), train all members so they know the Standard Procedures and reaction drills.

Hope this helps, be safe.

Urban Survival Preparation – Convincing Someone to Prepare

This post is actually a response from a reader comment on trying to get his wife on board with Urban Survival preparation.

This reader is in a mid-sized city close to the Atlantic coast. He said he lived in a townhouse about 8 miles from center mass of the city, whose population was between 100,000 to 500,000.

He says he doesn’t have a whole lot of room to stock Survival Gear, Equipment or Material and his wife would not support a lot of his time or money spent in Urban Survival preparation.

My response to him is: I don’t have too much advice for you other than to work on your wife understanding the need. If you can get her attention for 20-30 minutes, take her to the Economic Collapse videos and have her watch them.

Let her read my comments on how the political and economic environment are stacked against us having a normal life into the mid-term or even near future.

Tell her that Nazi Germany built and ran concentration-torture-murder camps very close to German cities without the main stream German civilian population realizing what was going on. Some of that was, for sure, people’s general disinclination not to believe things they don’t want to believe,…things too horrible to imagine…like an ostrich with it’s head in the sand.

Glenn Beck on his television program the other was talking about a probable collapse, as he believes this country has very little opportunity to avert an enormous chaotic collapse. He, like me, still hopes for the best but prepares for the worst.....like you should.

Take your wife to this site: http://thesurvivalmom.com so she can get another perspective on being prepared. Lots of females postingh survival and preparedness info on this site.

The great first danger is not to prepare. The second big danger is not to be ready to execute contingencies like when to vacate your Urban home and move to a safe location. Oh,..you don’t have safe location? Better find one and figure out how you are going to get there.

Get ready, get more ready and stay on the edge.

Responding to Reader Comment - Firearms

Thanks to the Anonymous Reader, a former PSYOPS soldier, who sent a comment regarding his recommendation of the Mini-14 as a good Urban Survival - self defense weapon. You had to have served at Fort Bragg. I know Fort Bragg well and thank you for your service to the Army Special Operations Community.

I concur that the Ruger Mini-14 is an excellent firearms. Very reliable. I have always thought of it as like a reduced scale M-14 or M1A1. The sights are kind of rudementary, but there are after market iron sights and scopes that can reduce this shortcoming. Plus, the magazines are not nearly as readily available as the AR-15 series. However, if all I had was an Mini-14, I would not feel under armed. It's the man using it and you make sense when you mention you do not plan to get involved in any protracted firefights, only to use the weapon to get you out of trouble and break contact.

I wish I still had the three Mini-14's that I have owned over my life, but I have since settled on the AR-15 design in an M-4 platform for my main carry Urban Survival weapon. Using and teaching this weapon for 30+ years makes me familiar with it. Plus there are lots of accessories, some necessary - some not, on the market.

The baseline model of Mini-14 is still around $500 to $600, whereas a baseline model AR-15/M-4 runs about $900.

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com believes that in any successful Urban Survival plan, the key is going to be your survival group. You simply cannot survival well, without at least a small team of like minded, skilled survival oriented individuals. Commonality among weapons is a good idea if it can be achieved.

Good luck to you and thanks for your comment. Urban Man.

Survival Chronicles of Jim – Chapter 14

It's been almost three weeks since I last gave Urban Man an update on my Urban Survival preparations to post to this site.

Since I finished watching the After Armageddon video series I have spent much more time thinking about my survival preparations. The 3 months or so it took the character in After Armageddon to finally pack up and leave the city was giving me a false sense of time. Then I watched the two part Economic Collapse series and it kinda put time in perspective - a collapse can hit any day!

I ordered another six cans of Mountain House meals from EarthWaveLiving, two each Peas, Granola with Blueberries and Milk, and, Eggs with Ham. That gives me about what I figure is approximately 70 days of two servings per two people (my son and me) not counting Neomi, if she ends up co-locating with us either in the City or to our safe location.

I also have about an easy ten days of food in the house not counting if I rationed it. Urban Man told me I need about a minimum of six months food per person to get through non-growing seasons then I can hunt, fish and grow crops for food...never hunted, fished quite a bit so that would be a challenge for sure.

I also bought six 5 gallon water containers so I can rapidly fillup water, along with all my other containers, when I get even a jingle of something bad coming.

I bought four more packs of rechargeable AA batteries for my flashlights and lanterns. One of the things on my short list to buy right before a collapse hits, if I get the warning or even a tingle, is another car battery so I can use it with my DC/AC converter.

My biggest purchase in the last three weeks has been a Mosin-Nagant rifle I bought at a local discount sporting goods store for $169. Urban Man looked it over and said it was in good shape and even gave me 60 rounds of 7.62x54mm ammunition for it to go with the 40 cartridges I bought from the store. So now I have amy .22 pistol, a 12 gauge shotgun and this Mosin-Nagant rifle.

Urban Man told me the history on Mosin-Nagants with the Soviet Army and told me it was roughly the equivilent of Neomi's .30-06 rifle, and would serve well for hunting and can be used in a defense purposes. Urban Man has advised me on buying an M-4 carbine, but I just ain't there yet. I just not a gun guy.

I have also started growing some squash and cucumbers in my back yard and hope to have some vegetables in the summer as well as gain some valuable experience in growing things.

Well thats my report for now. To many I am way behind, but I suspect to most Americans I would seem a kook for even doing what little I have done. Stay safe - be prepared.