Urban Survival Planning - Courtyard Vegetable Garden

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following e-mail from a reader who appears new to Survival prepping, but seems to be catching on, learning skills and acquiring Survival Gear and Equipment.

Dear UrbanMan, I am a HVAC technician and am located within the city with a population of just over 500,000. I am living in a quad plex one street of a main six land boulevard. I started a courtyard garden this late spring with the intent to gain some experience growing some vegetables as well as produce some food for the table!

I am growing two types of squash, egg plant, cucumber, mini tomatoes, onions and beets. I tried growing carrots and peas, but that didn’t work out.

You can see from the picture that my squash is large,…..I placed the coke can for scale. With four squash plants so far this year I have harvested 13 or 14 squash fruits. I have about six or seven other fruits coming to ripeness. Each squash fruit is large enough to last three, sometimes four meals easy. I add them to everything, but in a Survival situation I would use the vegetables to augment the rice, beans and pasta I have stored in buckets.

I use one egg and some flour to bread the sliced squash and fry up in a pan, then added to the cooked rice. I have grilled the sliced squash like shisk-k-bobs over the grill and also over an open fire. Pretty good actually. Next I’m going to try baking in a dutch oven over an open fire with rice, beef bullion and some beans – sort of like Survival Jumbolaya.

I am learning how to preserve by canning so I can make some of these vegetables last into the fall. I live in a climate where I think I can grow vegetables through late October. I am also thinking about a small greenhouse so I can grow late in the winter.

I bought a couple of those Suisse Sport Alpine Sleeping bags and Aqua Mira Water Filter Bottles from your Survival Store and am in the process of building some Bug Out Bags.

In my quad plex, I have witnessed Survival Prepping to two out of the three other occupants. I myself have a wife; the other people I’m beginning to develop into a Survival Group are also couples, but not married. One I took to the range shooting my Bushmaster copy of the M-4 and now he bought a Mini-14 and a .357 Magnum handgun. I am working on the other couple as well – at least he owns a 12 gauge shotgun. But both have also planted some vegetables and are about ready to stock some basics like rice, beans, salt, soup stock and such.

So you can see we are starting to get prepared. I have gained a lot of confidence as I am beginning to get prepared but scary as I have along way to go before I satisfy I am ready. Can you ever be really ready?

So thanks for all the information on your site.

Urban Survival Planning - Financial Collapse Likely

We're three feet away from a thick curtain. When it raises it'll be a bleak picture.

From The Dollar Collapse, "Why We’re Ungovernable", by John Rubino on July 14, 2010

For the first time in 250 years, politics has become irrelevant. Not uninteresting or unimportant; obviously the way a society organizes itself matters to its citizens and its place in the world.

But today there are no policies left on the “possible” menu that will save us from what’s coming. So a rational person’s time is better spent preparing rather than debating.* (Later, when we’re trying to decide what to build from the rubble, the argument will get interesting again.)

The most recent batch of election and poll results illustrates this point:

The Social Democrats and Greens took over Germany‘s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, on Wednesday in a minority government the centre-left says could one day challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel at federal level.

At a time of weakness for conservative leader Merkel nine months into her second term, the Social Democrats (SPD) speculate that they and the Greens could form a minority German government after the next federal elections due in 2013.

According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, registered voters are increasingly critical of President Obama’s work on the economy, and by an 8-point margin they say they’d prefer to see the Republicans take control of Congress. It’s a clear sign of GOP opportunities and Democratic risks going into the 2010 midterm elections, with 51 percent of poll respondents saying they would rather have Republicans run Congress “to act as a check on Obama’s policies.”

So what’s happening? Just a few years — in some cases just a few months — after sweeping into office with promises of “change” and a quick clean-up of their predecessors’ messes, leaders of major democracies from across the political spectrum are being swept right back out.

Did they turn out to be incompetent, or their policies wrong-headed? There’s hardly been enough time for either verdict. But if not that, what?

The answer, in a word, is debt. When an economy’s borrowing passes an historically identifiable point it loses the ability to navigate from crisis to solution. In the case of Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the range of choices has narrowed to only two, inflation and austerity, and neither is working.

When Europe tried inflation by promising to bail out the PIIGS countries, the euro collapsed, as the global markets correctly saw an oversupply of paper currency on the horizon. When it switched to austerity, workers across the continent saw their livelihoods threatened. Either way, the folks in charge get blamed and have a tough time holding their jobs.

In Japan, public debt keeps soaring no matter who is in charge. The government, believe it or not, will borrow more this year than it raises in taxes. So the newly-elected Prime Minister proposed doubling the national sales tax to 10% and then backed off in face of falling poll numbers, thus becoming a tax raiser and a ditherer, a combination that hardly ever wins popularity contests.

The U.S. government has been flooding the system with liquidity for two years, but unemployment remains in double digits. Three of the five biggest states are functionally bankrupt and will either lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in 2011 or receive a bailout that will dwarf what Goldman and AIG got last year.

The next round of elections will bring either new leaders or old ones who adopt the other side’s ideas in order to hold power. Either way, the death spiral of the military industrial complex/welfare state/fiat currency system will continue, and accelerate.

Entire article here.

Urban Survival Skills - Fire Starting with Magnesium and Steel

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received a comment on a recent Bug Out Bag Post,...."Anonymous said...Good information and good tips on all the bug out items. Can you do a couple short videos on fire-starting for those if us who don't do it very often? Also with the metal sticker creating sparks technique? Thanks."

UrbanMan replies: Fire Starting should be a basic skill for all. However, I imagine there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who either have not started a fire or have only used a butane lighter to start a fire and then maybe using a flammable source (I'm thinking charcoal briquets, propane grills, etc.)

I carry several butane lighters in my kit. I use green duct tape over the plastic part of the lighter to protect against cracks and crushing. I also carry several boxes of wooden stick matches in my Bug Out Bag, and, Strike Anywhere Storm matches in my small, complete Survival Kit. Wow, alot of fire starting tools, but starting a fire is so important.

The key to starting a Survival fire is to have a flame source, igniter material (something that catches on fire easy and burns with a flame, and your tinder. I carry small strips of newspaper rolled up and dunk in liquid wax, compressed cotton wads and a small bag of dryer lint (save that dryer lint!). You should keep your igniter material in a water proof container.

You need to have tinder (dry wood works best) from small pieces to feed into your ignited material to increasingly larger pieces and fuel (larger pieces of wood to burn longer). Wet wood makes a sizeable amount of smoke which can give away your position if this is a concern. So be careful with your tinder material and fuel. Have this available so you can rapidly use it as your igniter material may quickly burn out, and no sense using more than you have to.

I also carry a magnesium stick and steel. The steel is struck against the magnesium to produce sparks onto your igniter. Why the magnesium and steel if I have more lighters than I can use at one time plus matches? Same reason why you learn to navigate by the stars, tell direction from the sun's shadows and filter water with expedient means such as charcoal and sand. You may need this skill.

I am traveling right now, so I asked a friend of mine to shoot a video using magnesium and steel to start a fire. He is very familiar with living off and reading the land and if you are into horses you may enjoy his site: http://www.functionalhorsemanship.com

Hope you can get something out of his fire starting with magnesium and steel video.

Oh and my apologies to Xcalbr8 I told the Functional Horseman, who shot the video, that a reader named Xcaliber8 asked for it. Sorry buddy.

Urban Survival SKills - More Readers Questions on Survival Bug Out Bags

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com continues to receive many comments on Survival Bug Out Bags. I’m going to address a couple of them here:

“Anonymous said.......Excuse my ignorance, but why not have a small caliber handgun with your Load bearing kit?

“John in Kansas asked,……What do you think about building Bug Out bags around the Maxpedition SITKA gearslinger or KODIAK gearslinger bags? I like the water bladder and concealed weapon feature.”


UrbanMan replies: Concerning the small handgun in my Load Bearing Kit…….. I actually have six rigs, only two of which I posted pictures of. A couple of the other rigs have molle plackets with Blackhawk Serpa holsters for my Glocks. I have pretty much settled on Glocks as my family and group Survival handgun. If I did it all over again, I probably would have went with the S&W M&P semi-automatics. These are highly touted by some friends of mine who use them regularly in bad places.

With different rigs and configuration I can select the rig I need for the purpose. Some rigs are light, no armor and other’s have soft armor and/or plates. For the rigs I use without a Glock holster, I can wear a handgun on my pants belt or a drop rig, and although I am not fond of drop rigs, I own several…mostly for carrying Glocks with the excellent Surefire X200 pistol light.

So to answer the question, I don’t carry a small handgun on my rigs. I do however always carry a Kel-Tec .32 auto. In my shirt or BDU/ACU type pocket all the time. I guess you could carry a small handgun on your rig, and I am interpreting your question to mean an additional handgun.

I am a big believer in having some gear on your body in your clothing, such as a folding knive, belt knife, handgun in belt or shoulder holster, firestarting equipment, etc. in case you are separated from your load bearing rig for any reason. I know, I know,…but as much discipline as you have not to be separated from your kit, it happens…and a good example would be a river crossing when you have to jettison your kit.

As far as the other question on Maxpedition SITKA and KODIAK bags. The best bag for a Survival Bug Out bags are like anal orifices,… ….everybody has one. All gear and equipment from Maxpedition is quality gear. Either bag would an excellent Bug Out Bag. I like Small Rucks with a hydration bladder and Molle compatible so extra smaller bags can be hooked to the outside.

As far as the hidden compartment for a handgun,…that’s a decent feature, but I would carry my handgun in an more accessible location. If I was actually using my Survivial Bug Out Bag for it’s intended purpose I would also be carrying a M-4 carbine in my hands. So I see no reason to hide a handgun unless you are using the Bag before the collapse.