Urban Survival Planning – Initial Considerations for a Longer Stay at Home

If you’re an urban or suburban dweller we think your first survival tasks are to plan and prepare for a withdrawal to a safe area – we have talked about that several times on this site. You can read about Jim, in the Chronicles of Jim, planning much the same. His Survival plan, in nut shell, is to be prepared to Bug Out from his home in the city to a remote area cabin.

Jim has prepared a basic Survival Bug Out Bag, procured a couple of firearms for survival and defense, planned routes from the city to the cabin and is in the process of emplacing some interim Survival Caches near the cabin.

The next question for him and us is how prepared are we to remain in our homes until Bugging Out is the only option? The two biggest concerns immediately following a societal collapse or TEOTWAWKI scenario would most likely be security and water.

Food is another concern. Most people or families could go to a minimal rations plan and ration their existing food supplies for a couple weeks. It would not be pleasant, but you do what you have to do.

Back to water. The Urban Survivor should have a Survival Decision Matrix or Plan that simply mandates specific actions based on the situation or indicators. If certain indicators are present then the Urban Survivor would do certain things like start stockpiling water. Five gallon jugs available at surplus stores or the ever present Wal-Marts can be stored empty, then filled when necessary, to prevent the water from becoming too stagnant,…or you can store water now and replace on a timetable. Consider a planning figure at 1.5 gallon per person, per day minimal.

Once the water is shut off you need to figure out just how long you can stay with your existing water supply. With just drinking alone, you are most likely going to consume ½ to ¾ gallon per person per day. Bathing, cleaning and using to flush toilets has got to be of much less importance.

Another thing you could, especially if you are a bottled water drinker, so is buy several cases of water at once, then routinely (say once a week), buy replacements for what you drink and rotate that case into your stock. Same with any other consumable, buy extra now then on your routine buys, rotate that into your stock and use the oldest first.

Security is more problematic. It will take a minimum of four adults to man a location. One on guard/security at all times, while the others are on rest cycle and completing survival tasks like cooking, procurement, security enhancements, radio monitoring, fixing things, etc. Certainly two people could manage security and survival tasks but only for a short period of time until their security became degraded and two people, and we talking trigger pulling capable adults, aren’t much of a defensive team against a group of bandits or a gang bent on taking what they think you have.