Urban Survival Planning – Economic Collapse Scenario Part II

Continuing on with the excellent Economic Collapse videos from endtheilluson, we begin Day Six of the economic collapse.

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com has written several times about a Survival Decision Matrix, where as situations or trends become apparent, prudent Urban Survivalists fulfill certain tasks. This is not to say wait until the beginning of a collapse before you begin to accomplish Survival and Preparedness tasks, ..no,….if you are a reader of this site, you have already taken many steps towards preparing to survive a collapse. These tasks and steps on your Survival Decision Matrix are the last minute things you do to enhance your already pre-existing Survival Preparations. They could be filling up all the empty gas cans stored in your shed; buying the last minute, semi-perishable foods to consume first before your survival food stocks are used; boarding up your windows; making last minute e-mail, text or phone calls; filling up all your empty water containers, etc.

Day Six – Mass demonstrations appear all over the World as the economic collapse spread particularly as a rebound effect from the U.S. collapse; power goes out...repeat,...power goes out.

Day Seven – National Guard deployed to restore order, especially in large cities – however too many troops are still overseas fighting terrorism and large percentages of National Guard troops fail to report to their unit; people all across the Nation are thinking “Why didn’t I prepare better?”; cash totally worthless; gold and silver accepted – barter society begins.

Day Eight – Still no power (little do most people know, it will be years until a small percentage of reliable power is restored and only in a small number of places); radio station still broadcasting but the amateur radio network is provides the majority of news being spread.

Day Nine – Water pressure stops – no water. Real panic sets in.

Day Ten – No emergency services whatsoever – no police, no fire, no emergency medical responders as all stay home to protect their families; Neighborhoods starts to organize for protection – some are successful, some are not; Government fails at all levels; total breakdown of social order; armed gangs organize to roam and loot; Martial Law declared.

Ask yourself these questions: At what level of preparation are you sitting at right now? If you have no more than 4 or 5 days worth of food in you pantry then you are in the majority of people - people that are unprepared.  And you will be dependant upon someone else’s benevolence to survive.  Can you protect yourself – do you have firearms and sufficient ammunition? Can you survive in your home without heat or without air conditioning? Where will you go if forced to vacate your home? Do you have a panned Safe Location? Do your have the means and the Survival Gear and Equipment to facilitate not only survival but cross country movement to a Safe Location?

The Economic Collapse Part II -

Urban Survival Planning - Economic Collapse Scenario Part I

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com begins a look at a possible/probably economic collapse scenario using two excellent videos from endtheillusion.

With the underlying rot in our system, not necessarily from our economic system, but our tendency to try and combined capitalism with socialism, we have placed ourselves very close to an economic collapse scenario.

The loss of our manufacturing base and downturn in our ability to not only feed the World but feed ourselves; massive wall street bailouts combined with a rickety up and down market; continued growth of banks and obscene bonus to managers of failed institutions even though we have massive bankruptcy and home foreclosures; growing list of vacant commercial properties; and, unemployment near record highs when combined with the numbers of non-working people that the government does not want to know about nor do they count when measuring the unemployment percentage.

But wait there’s more,…….unrestricted corruption of politicians and non accountability; decline of inner cities and a population shift away from large urban areas; enormous trade deficits; growing dependence upon foreign oil and our lack of will to develop our own fossil fuels and alternate sources of energy (nuclear plants); growth of both our prison population and the homeless; public school deterioration despite large tax increases; unsustainable government spending; rapidly increasing foreign debt (China practically owns us); and unpredicted expansion of social programs – all set up the likelihood of an economic collapse,…and soon.

We like these videos, part I which is below and part Ii will be posted soon, as they articulate a very probable ten day period in which the economic collapse becomes overt, obvious to most everyone, with a probable day by day timeline.

Day One – Reports of the dollar collapsing; gas station take cash only – not credit cards; Gold prices shoot up.


Day Two – Runs on Supermarkets as word of hyper-inflation, devalued dollar spreads and food distribution begins to shut down (largely due to no fuel) – no country wants to take the dollar and most countries are suffering financial breakdown effects as well. Mobs at Supermarkets and all shelve emptied.

Day Three - Banks closed; those open limit withdraws to $200; Stock market in free fall then closed. Gun Stores almost empty of guns and ammunition, prices sky rocket, but the only transactions are in Gold and Silver.

Day Four - Panic in Cities (ever heard that we are nine meals away from collapse?); Stock Market briefly opens, then rapidly closes; Government meet in emergency economic crisis meetings – but to no avail as hyper-inflation continues out of control – there is simply too money that was printed to make up for previous budgetary shortfalls.

Day Five – Bank Holiday begin; families start to re-locate for mutually support; reports of pension funds failing – particular for unions which suffer from massive corruption; work stoppages spread even to emergency services providers.


The Economic Collapse Part I

Urban Survival Skills – OP/LP’s and Training your Survival Group

In previous posts on Urban Survival Home Defense and Preparation we briefly discussed Observation Posts/Listening Posts (OP/LPs) and the requirements for these positions to be in a place where they could observe, listen and report on any potential threat moving towards your Urban/Suburban or Safe location. 

 

Again, OP/LP’s should have a covered and concealed route from the Home or Base Camp to their position.  The OP/LP positions themselves should be covered and concealed positions to avoid detection from advancing threats.   And they should have a means of communications from their position to the home or Base Camp.  In keeping with PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency), multiple means of communications is necessary to ensure OP/LP’s can perform as you need them to, primarily reporting the presence of a Threat.  

 

A simple reporting format based on the Army SALUTE format will work for most any OP/LP’s in a survival scenario.  The SALUTE report format is:

S – Size (Size of group)

A – Activity (What the Threat is doing)

L – Location (where is the Threat – what direction and distance from the OP/LP)

U – Unit and/or Uniform (this refers to who the Threat is, if that can be determined, and how they are dressed)

T – Time (time of report)

E – Equipment (primarily what weapons and vehicles that the Threat is equipped with).    

 

The easiest type of OP/LP would be one or more located on or in the home or Base Camp, such as in a second story window or on the roof to enable the height or elevation necessary to view longer distance and see the threat coming at the earliest opportunity.  Communications from an integral OP/LP is much easier than from a remote OP/LP, plus it allows you keep your combat power on site and useable – which may be important for a small Survival Group.  Without any electronic communications means such as radios, landline field phone or electric or battery powered horns, an OP/LP at your home can use a pull string with a bell or even a series of tin cans filled with rocks can be activated for an alert. 

 

It is not simply a matter of selecting an OP/LP and telling them to report what they see.  You have to train them to use any observation device you have available such as binoculars, spotting scopes, night vision devices, etc. 

 

One of the best methods to train your Survival Group to perform as a viable member of an OP/LP team is through Observation Exercises. 

 

All members of the Survival Group should be able to use all common observation devices you have on hand.  Teach them scanning and searching techniques with these devices, both day and night.     

 

The first step in an Observation drill is to position the OP/LP members in the selected OP/LP position or a like position.  Have them draw a Sector Sketch of the area of responsibility for that post.  This trains them to develop sector sketches and sketching in general but also familiarizes them with the objects in their field of view or area of responsibility. 

 

Then, send them away from the OP/LP position, and emplace objects in the field of view or area of responsibility.  Such objects can be soda cans, tools, toys or anything else that is small and hard to see, but clearly visible from the OP/LP.

 

Bring back the OP/LP members and have them use their naked eyes and observation devices to try and find what is the different in their area of responsibility,…what stands out,…what doesn’t belong there.

 

They should be looking for shine, straight lines or patterns and also movement will help cue to them to the object or threat.   

 

When defending the Urban Home, you are going to be at a disadvantage already, not to make use of any advantage you can glean.   Knowing the terrain, emplacing OP/LP’s where they detect the threat at the maximum possible distance will all help your Urban Survival Home defense.     

 

You should have an emergency evacuation plan for the OP/LP, so in case they get compromised they can return safely to the Home or Base Camp.  This plan may include route to use, and, passwords or visual signals (colored or blinking lights) to identify themselves as friendly.   

 

Comments on Night Time Observation:

 

At night, especially at remote OP/LP’s, team members may have an enhanced sense of isolation.  This can manifest itself into seeing things that aren’t there or neglecting their duties to detect threats and give early warning.  Being forewarned of this may help you ensure your task organization or OP/LP team makeup can reduce this possibility. 

 

Also at night, the human eye sees differently.   The eye uses cells on the periphery of the eye, called rods, which creates a type of blind spot in the center of the eye. This can cause someone to stare at one spot and produce images of an object moving when it is not, or even cause the observer to miss the object.  Scanning techniques will help reduce this.  Lateral scanning by systemically, viewing at a slowly moving pace, from left to right, then right to left, or in a vertical “S” shaped pattern of bottom to top, top to bottom, and repeating itself until the observer has completed a scan through the entire area of responsibility.   

Urban Survival Skills – Land Navigation, Resection Using a Compass

Our previous map reading posts were meant as an orientation to the individual new to Urban Survival Preparation and we will continue to drip land navigation tips and skills. The intent is for the fledgling Urban Survivor to practice these techniques and tips, first in a controlled environment building to a rehearsal like practice either on similar terrain to, or the actual terrain he/they may be moving through if withdrawing from their urban location to their prepared safe location.

The technique in this post is called resecting your position from a known point. The military calls this intersection and resection. It is basically locating two (or more) terrain features on the map then finding them visually. These terrain features should be easy to pick out and will most probably be hills, mountain peaks or can even be man made structures that are annotated on your map.

Again, resection is used to determine your unknown position by determining lines of bearing or azimuths from known terrain features.

The steps are:

From your unknown position you determine two or three terrain features, ideally 120 degrees apart, that you can locate on the map.

You shoot a compass azimuth from your unknown position to each terrain feature, then compute the back azimuth. The back azimuth is simply your azimuth plus 180 degrees or minus 180 degrees. If you are at an unknown point and can identify a mountain both visually and on the map and you shoot a compass azimuth from your unknown point to the Mountain, lets say the magnetic compass azimuth is 170 degrees, you can determine that from you to the Mountain the direction is 170 degrees magnetic and from the Mountain to you the magnetic azimuth is 350 degrees magnetic (170 degrees plus 180 degrees).

You will have to convert the magnetic azimuth to a grid azimuth (see previous post), then plot (on your map) a line coming from the mountain at 350 degrees. Your unknown position is somewhere on that 350 degree line of bearing that you plotted.

If you find another terrain feature and do the same, you will have two lines of bearing (or back azimuths) that cross. Where they cross is your unknown position.

Again, from each known terrain feature plot the back azimuth on the map, after converting for G-M angle. Where the lines intersect is your unknown, now known, position.