Urban Command and Control Center for SHTF

I received an e-mail from anonymous concerning set up and operation of a Command and control center during a collapse: “I’m living in a condo in basically downtown (city name removed) and am prepared well for SHTF. Guns, water and food are my main preps. Read all your posts now wondering what your thoughts are on setting up a command center for SHTF.”

UrbanMan replies: I removed the city you mentioned in your e-mail. My first advice would be to get out of that city. I know that one of the first rules of life is to have an income, but even a substantially lower income than what you have now, is better than staying where you are. The city and the state are bankrupt and there are plans for razing much of the city because of cost of maintaining all those local government and state owned buildings. You may be living in a urban wasteland in the near future.

Second of all, what do you have to command and/or control?

Command and control (C2) centers also called a Tactical Operations Center or TOC are necessary to Command (receive communications and give direction) and Control (deconflict primarily) by receiving information about current friendly operations (such as routes, locations and actions) and the threat (locations, strength and actions). Really un-necessary if you are a lone survivor. As a lone survivor type or even with a very small group you may just want a situation map posted so you can keep track of intel/info you gather through observation or actual one man patrols.

I read a story in a post-apocalypse city where survivors would mark buildings with chalk to represent if they searched it already and used coded marks to annotate if this building has a safe site and which floor it was located. A Situation Map would do largely the same thing, a way to annotate things and events so you could start analyzing trends and such, which would help your situational awareness and planning.

If you have a larger survival group, and especially if you have a large enough survival group to conduct multiple operations such as security patrols, procurement/foraging patrols, observation/listening post duties, etc., then a Command Post or TOC makes sense in order to have a single point of receptions of communications be it from radios, cell phones or even just from a returning debrief.

For instance, I have eight families currently, not counting the inevitably straphangers who will come, in my planned survival group. I have a large flat roof home. The primary Listening/Observation Post (LP/OP) that will be on top when SHTF will have FRS radio, TA-1 landline communications and a pull cord to a mechanical bell as a way to alert the survival member who is manning our TOC. Our TOC’s mission is to monitor the Weather band radio, monitor the scanner, monitor FRS and VHF radios for all of other team members an deployed patrols, and, serve as an alert for all members on crew rest (that means asleep since we will be running 24 hour operations).

As a deployed patrol radios into our TOC using brevity codes, the TOC will annotate that report and position on a map overlayed with thick plastic using a grease pencil or erasable marker. For any observations such as newly vacated houses, newly occupied houses, signs of activity, sighting of criminal or gang activity thing or any other information of importance, the patrol will re-enter the Base Camp (our Bug In location) and update the Situation Map (SITMAP).

The good thing about this process is that it is exportable in case we Bug Out to a different location. All male members of my survival group are comfortable and knowledgeable about this process and can rapidly terrain others that we absorb into the group.

If this doesn't answer your question, please get back with me. Prepare well.