Brit comments on Urban Preparation for SHTF

”Hi there. I've been following your site from the UK. It's good. Over here there's a general feeling of unease. It's hard to say exactly what it is but things only ever seem to get worse as the years go by. Everyone seems to be out for themselves and I can only imagine what these people would turn into during a real crisis. I see you guys reviewing all the great gear on here and I think to myself ‘Wow, that looks really cool, I gotta have one'. However after a while I started to think 'If I have one, people will want it and probably take it'.

It's great to have the neatest gear but I think making yourself look like a walking outdoor store might be a bad idea. It may be different in the US but here in the UK , someone dressed for the outdoors in an urban environment is gonna stand out like a sore thumb.

I've read a few accounts from special forces guys who talk about being the 'gray' man. The one who doesn't attract attention and can go unnoticed.

With that in mind, I now carry a pair of dirty overalls and keep my walking boots dirty. My bug out bag, which is an unassuming consumer rucksack is also dirty. I still carry everything I need, but from the outside I'm just another guy who got caught out while at work, with nothing, and is trying to make his way home. No-one ever notices the workman. In an urban environment he's supposed to be there. It's the ultimate urban camo. Who's gonna stand out as the guy who has what you want, the guy with the urban camo assault vest and tactical bag full of goodies or the plumber on his way home from work?”


UrbanMan replies: UK reader thanks for your comments. Roger the “gray man” concept and your other points. I don't think I ever advised people to run around in military style uniforms and kit. In the last 38 years, one of the key rules of my work and life has been to "not draw attention to yourself".
Gear hogs are gear hogs, whether in the States or the U.K. Most of these people are “arm chair commandos”, and some will even have their gear taken away before they get a chance to use it.

While I have a lot of camouflaged uniforms and kit to outfit the eight family survival team I am associated with, as well as the expected straphangers, we get by with various jean pants.  I like 5.11 pants but in some environments I work in, you can't throw a rock without hitting a government type wearing 5.11 pants.  

Colored  jeans,....green, tan or brown levis or wrangler jeans, work well as does the Dickie type work pants.  I have a pair of blue Dickie type work pants and usually a pair of jeans rolled up in my supplemental BOB carried in the trunk of my car. 
We'll save the camouflage uniforms and gear for when the situation dictates.

Along with dressing non-descript your planning and decision making to mitigate your risks as well as your mannerisms/body language are all part of the process for non-drawing attention to yourself. It’s an art form to appear not important but not to also look like a target. All along while observing and being able to detect threats, and, prepared to act.

Back to gear, since that’s what you wrote about in the first place. My all-the-time Bug Out Bag is however, a military style, Coyote Brown in color, FRG bag stored in the trunk (what you would call a boot) of my car with a more civilian looking Cabela’s bag carried in the passenger compartment and which accompanies me inside the buildings I work in.  I call the FRG bag my supplemental BOB. 

Depending upon the environment, I carry a couple different types of handguns in several different fashions. A pocket .380 auto in my vest pocket sometimes when I can’t carry anything larger. I always have a Glock 19 (9x19mm) in my vehicle and sometimes will put a Remington 12 gauge pump action shotgun in my backseat or car trunk.  On occasion,...maybe three times in the last year, I have carried an M-4 or other rifle if I leaving the city by vehicle for a overnight or longer trip.  Sometimes your Spidy sense just tells you to do something.   

I know a guy who carries a handgun and some other kit in a thick mil plastic shopping bag. He said something to the effect that Fast Action Gun (FAG) bags gave the fact that you were carrying away. He cut down a padded gun envelope and included some dividers for a spare knife, flashlight and spare magazines. It’s been years since I saw it but I remember him telling me nobody gives him a second look when he carries in urban crowds, shopping malls, etc.

No, I don't think that it is absolutely necessary to be wearing an assault vest to prepared. One of the points you brought up was the workman and that "cover" would allow a person to be toting work or tool bags without undue scrutiny.

Urban Survival Preparation - Baby Boomer Couple Preparing

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following interesting letter: "I read your site several times a week. Allow me to introduce myself and my wife, call us Jim and Maybelle. We live in the desert Southwest and although my house and plot are not fenced, and we have on open field on one side, and we are across a two lane state road from a sub-division we still call ourselves urbanites.

I am 63 years old, my wife 61. I did well enough in several business enterprises to retire early with a small pension from a 401k and now rely on rental house income, a home based business income and early social security. I am an outdoorsman and have hunted for nearly four decades including the hunt trip of a lifetime in Africa. I saw the way this country was going several years ago and started to position much of my assets for better short term control.

I like the Chapters on Jim and more recently the discussion on whether or not to have Gold and Silver. Actually it is a no brainer. All should have at least a small quantity of Silver, the easiest and cheapest to procure. A small amount bought each month can stack up fairly quickly. I did not start buying either until three years ago. I am certainly glad I did. I own a few rifles and sporting shotguns but never bought anything for "personal defense" until a couple years ago. Now my wife and I are pretty competent with Springfield XD-45 pistols and I just bought a Ruger Ranch Rifle in .223 and I am incredibly impressed by this little, lightweight gun.

I am not quite to the point where my wife and I are willing to give up our great life accessing restaurants, close friends, the local gym and swimming pool but understand very well that where we are at may be an untenable place to live due to close proximity to a large population who will surely be "have nots". Thanks for the constant reminders about building a survival team but for many people this is not feasible. I have a private joke about building a survival squad of geriatrics! I did however buy a Range Rover and am getting better prepared all the time to "Bug Out" as you call it. Also have started a garden which is the first time we have grown anything at all besides flowers.

If you can manage it, how about writing something on vehicle preparedness, tools, maybe some common supplies to keep vehicles running during a collapse where maintenance providers will not be available? Thanks for all the information so far!"

Urban Survival Preparation - Civil Unrest into a Collapse

Civil Unrest into a Collapse,...or perhaps civil unrest as a result of a collapse.........

With the recent civil unrest occurring in Los Angeles after Police shot and killed a Guatemalan immigrant who was threatening them with a knife, we starting thinking about the potential for civil unrest and anarchy resulting from large scale protests and civil unrest over social issues.......and not just from the protests over perceived injustice. We must face the fact that the policies of this Country has bred a dependancy upon Government.

When the Government is no longer able to provide for people,...this change will create large groups of angry people demanding their "share". There will come a point when the government just cannot provide anymore. With the growing gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" and the elimination, or at least great reduction of the Middle Class, we will hit a point where there are a great percent of the population who think they are not getting theirs.

Add possible, nay probable, unrest and anarchist activity from radical ethic groups, such as the stated on-going strategy of militant Hispanics to implement the “Reconquista Plan” where parts of the Southwestern United States revert back to Latino control, or God Forbid - Mexican Governmental control - and we have a caldron of problems brewing. Whether it will cause a collapse or be initiated from another form of collapse remains to be seen.

In fact there is a series of books of post collapse on the Reconquista Movement, called “Domestic Enemies” by Matthew Bracken that is actually pretty good reading and I’ll probably get around to doing a book review on it sometime.

Mob mentality and behavior, spawn more Mob mentality and behavior, not necessarily to the intent where it can threaten large areas of population especially for durations longer than a few days. However, the ability to hunker down, protect yourself and your family and live for a few days to a week or so if you found yourself in an area influenced or controlled by a Mob, could be life sustaining.

Imagine if these riots went on for longer than the 4 days that it did and you found yourself forced to leave a safe and defendable position in order to procure food items. That would be dangerous, especially looking like an Anglo in a Hispanic riot or vice versa.

The lesson learned from this is to add the indicators of a riot or civil unrest into your pending collapse indicator tracking system especially if you live in or near urban areas where the lower income level of the population live as this group of people are more pre-disposed to demonstrate and/or demonstrate violenetly against all levels of government as they actually are or just feel more slighted by authorities than other groups. Concentrations of ethnic minorities are also viable subject groups from which mob’s are raised due to the same reasons.

Now to be clear here, I am offering no judgment on the validity of complaints that generate first civil un-rest, then mobs and the resultant possibility of violence. Every group’s perception is their reality. I am more concerned about the resulting dangers from mob operations than the “why”. You should be too. And then plan the "what" you are doing to do.

Urban Survival Planning - The Collapse That Awaits Us

One of my guys who is acutely tied into wide and collective analysis of financial issues in order to determine indicators of any collapse tells me we are just short of tipping into a full fledged economic collapse and then into chaos. I don't pretend to be smart enough to understand all the issues and co-factors that impact on the economy and a potential collapse. I'm just like probably many of you,...we know things are bad and we know they can get alot worse. Hell, that's why we are preparing. Packing Survival Bug Out Bags,....buying or loading ammunition,....Planning withdrawals to our safe areas,.....stocking survival food and collecting seeds.

I am convinced that most self sustaining Survival Preppers are not involved in the political process, other than voting, as they see no reason to hope that this headlong dive into economic oblivion can be halted with a change in government. Most see it has we have came too far, too fast to correct the National Economic azimuth and that giant iceberg called economic chaos looms just ahead.

The video below, Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis, is long but necessary to understand what we are facing and put, perhaps again, a bigger need into our preparations to survive the collapse.

Once you get past the Wheat Thins commercial in the front, as the beginning of the video actually starts at the 3 minute mark, you'll hear this quote "The clock is ticking and time is not working in our favor." This is applicable to most of our Urban Survival Preparations. Knowing that we'll never really be prepared as well as we want to be, use this as motivation to just be better prepared,...better equipped,....and refine your Survival Plan.