There are many scenarios that can place any one of us into a Urban Survival Scenario,....Nuclear Strike or terrorist radiological bomb, EMP aftermath, computer sabotage on our digital banking systems, communicable disease pandemic across this country, civil unrest and outbreak of fighting in the cities, and, probably the most likely scenario which is hyper-inflation reducing us into a great depression followed by an infrastructure collapse.
Although the below video is eight months old, yesterday's passing of the Obama Health Care Bill will certainly create more National Debt, put a great burden on tax payers, increase unemployment, cause small business to fail or sell out and generally bring this nation much, much closer to Hyper-Inflation and therefore a collapse of society as we know it and place us all in a Survival Scenario.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Urban Survival Planning – Home Vulnerability Assessment
Most likely the Urban Survivor is going to stay past the appropriate time when a Bug Out to the Safe Location is indicated, therefore preparations to make the Urban or Suburban home safer after a collapse of society or the infrastructure is vitally necessary.
This starts with the Urban Survival Vulnerability Assessment.
Look at the directions from which possible threats may come and the avenues of approach to bring threats onto your property or the vicinity of your property.
Are their any friends or neighbors that you could rely on for mutually supporting observation and early warning? If so, what is the mechanism for that warning? A simple extended wiring of your vehicle horn can be lead into the house and used to alert the neighborhood using a simply code to indicate direction and threat.
Can you get better observation from your roof or second story? Is there a nearby location to establish an observation post/listening post (LP/OP)? If so, does the LP/OP have a covered and/or concealed approach and withdrawal route back to your house? Be careful about over extending your manpower if you have too few people to provide near security on the house and also accomplish survival tasks like preparing or cooking foods, purifying water, or resting, etc.
It there an unimpeded access along these avenues of approach that presumably threats will come from, straight into your neighborhood or directly to your house? If so, what can you do to minimize this? Large earth planters filled with dirt to stop vehicles? What about placement of, maybe even a re-location of landscaping timbers or large rocks? Thin slats of wood with nails pounded up through them can make effective anti-vehicle spike units.
What about covered or concealed routes for bad guys on foot to approach your house undetected? What is your visibility from all windows in our house? What are the dead zones – meaning the areas that you cannot see? Do you have to cut down or be prepared to cut down brush? What is the soil or ground like next to all your entrances? Remember that windows often make better entrances than doors so consider these too.
Loose gravel next to the house and especially doors and windows will make noise when someone approaches. Windows are easily broken. In the winter time this means a less comfortable and warm place to live. You may decide to collect windows to build a greenhouse to grow life saving food and would therefore need to take a page out of the Florida folks that are imminently prepared for Hurricanes with ½ to ¾ inch plywood cut for all windows with mounting hardware.
Lighting. Can be used several ways. Illuminating approach routes to your house may make intruders look for a softer target – maybe not. If you have solar powered lights when the electrical grid is off, this may draw attention to your house. With solar powered motion detecting lights, you may want to re-route wiring into your home in order to have a command initiated outside lighting system. I would mount these with easily re-moved hardware, wing nuts and such, in order to be able to take them with you once you have initiated the Survival Bug Out Plan as those lights may come in handy someplace else.
Doors. Most every modern home has dead bolts above the door knob, but nothing a shotgun won’t take out (we call that ballistic breaching). Consider commercial or man made braces that go into the floor either on a slot or by friction, and fit underneath the door knob. This is added security that would make intruders spend more time in the fatal funnel of a door way before making their way into the interior of your home.
The ability to defend your home with small arms, meaning the ability to shoot from your home would be important. As important is the ability for you to withstand small arms fire. Most homes provide terrible cover (protection) from small arms fire. Aside from sand bagging or laying sheet steel on the walls around your windows, or using rail road ties or 4”x4” posts, this would be a major job. Any containers that hold dirt would also do.
Need to use the term “wargaming” again. The best vulnerability assessment would come from you wargaming various situations based on the environment you live in then develop counter measures to mitigate the threats and weaknesses you have determined. Again call it “what if’ing” but it is an effective way to look at contingencies and resources needed to implement better plans and contingencies.
This starts with the Urban Survival Vulnerability Assessment.
Look at the directions from which possible threats may come and the avenues of approach to bring threats onto your property or the vicinity of your property.
Are their any friends or neighbors that you could rely on for mutually supporting observation and early warning? If so, what is the mechanism for that warning? A simple extended wiring of your vehicle horn can be lead into the house and used to alert the neighborhood using a simply code to indicate direction and threat.
Can you get better observation from your roof or second story? Is there a nearby location to establish an observation post/listening post (LP/OP)? If so, does the LP/OP have a covered and/or concealed approach and withdrawal route back to your house? Be careful about over extending your manpower if you have too few people to provide near security on the house and also accomplish survival tasks like preparing or cooking foods, purifying water, or resting, etc.
It there an unimpeded access along these avenues of approach that presumably threats will come from, straight into your neighborhood or directly to your house? If so, what can you do to minimize this? Large earth planters filled with dirt to stop vehicles? What about placement of, maybe even a re-location of landscaping timbers or large rocks? Thin slats of wood with nails pounded up through them can make effective anti-vehicle spike units.
What about covered or concealed routes for bad guys on foot to approach your house undetected? What is your visibility from all windows in our house? What are the dead zones – meaning the areas that you cannot see? Do you have to cut down or be prepared to cut down brush? What is the soil or ground like next to all your entrances? Remember that windows often make better entrances than doors so consider these too.
Loose gravel next to the house and especially doors and windows will make noise when someone approaches. Windows are easily broken. In the winter time this means a less comfortable and warm place to live. You may decide to collect windows to build a greenhouse to grow life saving food and would therefore need to take a page out of the Florida folks that are imminently prepared for Hurricanes with ½ to ¾ inch plywood cut for all windows with mounting hardware.
Lighting. Can be used several ways. Illuminating approach routes to your house may make intruders look for a softer target – maybe not. If you have solar powered lights when the electrical grid is off, this may draw attention to your house. With solar powered motion detecting lights, you may want to re-route wiring into your home in order to have a command initiated outside lighting system. I would mount these with easily re-moved hardware, wing nuts and such, in order to be able to take them with you once you have initiated the Survival Bug Out Plan as those lights may come in handy someplace else.
Doors. Most every modern home has dead bolts above the door knob, but nothing a shotgun won’t take out (we call that ballistic breaching). Consider commercial or man made braces that go into the floor either on a slot or by friction, and fit underneath the door knob. This is added security that would make intruders spend more time in the fatal funnel of a door way before making their way into the interior of your home.
The ability to defend your home with small arms, meaning the ability to shoot from your home would be important. As important is the ability for you to withstand small arms fire. Most homes provide terrible cover (protection) from small arms fire. Aside from sand bagging or laying sheet steel on the walls around your windows, or using rail road ties or 4”x4” posts, this would be a major job. Any containers that hold dirt would also do.
Need to use the term “wargaming” again. The best vulnerability assessment would come from you wargaming various situations based on the environment you live in then develop counter measures to mitigate the threats and weaknesses you have determined. Again call it “what if’ing” but it is an effective way to look at contingencies and resources needed to implement better plans and contingencies.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Urban Survival Planning – Preparing Your Home for a Longer Stay
The primary focus on Urban Survival Skills as been to prepare the individual new to Survival Planning & Preparation to surviving a collapse of society as we know it or some calamity that would sufficient degrade or destroy the existing infrastructure so that individuals would have to fend for themselves or band together in groups for survival.
The basic premise on Urban or even Suburban Survival is the Survivor will most likely be forced to re-locate someplace else in order to provide for a better survival chance.
The problems with surviving in an Urban or Suburban environment are, in part, due to large concentrated population; issues with security that are compounded by buildings and population groups in close proximity; presence of organized criminal gangs that do not exist in rural or remote areas; limited resources to spread throughout a large population.
We have endeavored to help the new Urban Survival Planner with the need to select a safe location, probably with relatives or friends at a rural or remote location; prepare a Survival Bug Out Bag to make the withdrawal or movement to the safe location possible; necessity for firearms for survival and self protection – and in this area we focused on common and simply firearms rather than the need to arm oneself like a para-military unit; we have touched on Survival skills such as map reading, basic land navigation and water purification for example; and, we have wrote about survival gear, equipment, food and books.
We know the individual new to Survival Preparation may be over whelmed with the enormity of preparing for a collapse and the cost associated with procuring Survival Gear, Equipment and material. So we have attempted to consider the cost of completing these preparations and Survival Equipment procurement in our recommendations.
We also know that human nature being what it is, most people will make the decision to move from their Urban or Suburban location to the safe area, in other words, execute their Bug Out Plan much later than prudent. People will natural accept a incremental change decreasing their standard of living, such as shortages of commodities, high inflation for goods and fuel, water shortages, etc. And when the collapse hits, most of these people will be waiting for the government to fix it.
Well the truth be told, the government is made up of people and largely due to bureaucratic problems are at best going to be like a Aircraft Carrier trying to turn – in effect slow and cumbersome, if it does fix anything which isn’t likely. We believe in self responsibility hence taking it upon you to prepare for survival in trying times.
Knowing that people will remain in their known and somewhat comfortable Urban or Suburban homes, even when the threats indicate a growing danger, we now want to focus a little information on preparing your home for an extended stay during a collapse until the Bug Out Plan is initiated.
The first order of business is a Vulnerability Assessment. Don’t be intimidated by this large word, it is simply assessing your home to determine vulnerabilities.
Common vulnerabilities include weak locks on doors and windows; size, location and number of ground floor windows that are more easily breached than doors; vegetation masking approaches to your house and limiting observation from the house to the immediate area; outward signs of “well to do-ness” where possible burglars, robbers, looters or criminal bands would be attracted to your house.
Other vulnerabilities would be lighting. Now lighting strikes two ways. Full time illumination and/or motion detecting lights can serve as a deterrent. It would be nice to have solar powered motion detecting lights in the event of a power failure or utilities grid infrastructure collapse, however if everyone else’s lights are off and yours are on, who does that attract attention to?
We’ll address these things in up-coming posts to help prepare the urban or suburban home for an extended stay before the Survival Bug Out Plan is initiated. Stay safe – stay tuned.
The basic premise on Urban or even Suburban Survival is the Survivor will most likely be forced to re-locate someplace else in order to provide for a better survival chance.
The problems with surviving in an Urban or Suburban environment are, in part, due to large concentrated population; issues with security that are compounded by buildings and population groups in close proximity; presence of organized criminal gangs that do not exist in rural or remote areas; limited resources to spread throughout a large population.
We have endeavored to help the new Urban Survival Planner with the need to select a safe location, probably with relatives or friends at a rural or remote location; prepare a Survival Bug Out Bag to make the withdrawal or movement to the safe location possible; necessity for firearms for survival and self protection – and in this area we focused on common and simply firearms rather than the need to arm oneself like a para-military unit; we have touched on Survival skills such as map reading, basic land navigation and water purification for example; and, we have wrote about survival gear, equipment, food and books.
We know the individual new to Survival Preparation may be over whelmed with the enormity of preparing for a collapse and the cost associated with procuring Survival Gear, Equipment and material. So we have attempted to consider the cost of completing these preparations and Survival Equipment procurement in our recommendations.
We also know that human nature being what it is, most people will make the decision to move from their Urban or Suburban location to the safe area, in other words, execute their Bug Out Plan much later than prudent. People will natural accept a incremental change decreasing their standard of living, such as shortages of commodities, high inflation for goods and fuel, water shortages, etc. And when the collapse hits, most of these people will be waiting for the government to fix it.
Well the truth be told, the government is made up of people and largely due to bureaucratic problems are at best going to be like a Aircraft Carrier trying to turn – in effect slow and cumbersome, if it does fix anything which isn’t likely. We believe in self responsibility hence taking it upon you to prepare for survival in trying times.
Knowing that people will remain in their known and somewhat comfortable Urban or Suburban homes, even when the threats indicate a growing danger, we now want to focus a little information on preparing your home for an extended stay during a collapse until the Bug Out Plan is initiated.
The first order of business is a Vulnerability Assessment. Don’t be intimidated by this large word, it is simply assessing your home to determine vulnerabilities.
Common vulnerabilities include weak locks on doors and windows; size, location and number of ground floor windows that are more easily breached than doors; vegetation masking approaches to your house and limiting observation from the house to the immediate area; outward signs of “well to do-ness” where possible burglars, robbers, looters or criminal bands would be attracted to your house.
Other vulnerabilities would be lighting. Now lighting strikes two ways. Full time illumination and/or motion detecting lights can serve as a deterrent. It would be nice to have solar powered motion detecting lights in the event of a power failure or utilities grid infrastructure collapse, however if everyone else’s lights are off and yours are on, who does that attract attention to?
We’ll address these things in up-coming posts to help prepare the urban or suburban home for an extended stay before the Survival Bug Out Plan is initiated. Stay safe – stay tuned.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Urban Survival Planning – Barter Goods
This post follows the Survival Financial Planning posts concerning possessing Gold, Silver and the various phases of Survival purchasing where very possibly paper cash and precious metals may not be as valuable or even accepted by many.
As a re-cap, we think that after a infrastructure collapse, we would go through several different periods of commerce where paper money, then precious metals, then material items (barter items) would be distinct. We can’t even begin to determine how long each period would last. Paper Money, in a Survival Situation, may only be good for two to three days,…maybe more, maybe less, but certainly no-good after the realization that things are not going to go back to normal hits the people square in the head.
Gold and Silver had traditionally and historically been of value. Their value based would fluctuate based on the increasing inflationary value of life saving material, e.g..food, water and material things during a Survival situation. Commerce using Gold and Silver may rebound if and when various segments of the population achieve some sort organized society. This may be based on locations and access to material goods than it is anything else.
Barter goods in a Survival Scenario will always be of value. Imagine negotiating with someone for 3 gallons of fuel: “Yeah, I got 3 gallons of fuel,…what do you have to trade?” “How about 4 Morgan Silver Dollars?” or “How about 6 cans of vegetables and a bag of rice?” What do you think this guy is going to want to trade for?
In a Survival environment where commodities are in very short supply, what products do you think would be of high value?
Obviously food such as high caloric/high carbohydrate items; Water and devices to carry water such as canteens are a sure bet; Alcohol may be a prime barter item; First Aid supplies especially anti-biotics pills and ointment, aspirin and other pain killers are also good Survival barter items; Lighters and/or butane fuel for lighters; firearms and ammunition would be high, may even be number one on the Survival item Barter List.
Plant seeds for vegetables are another good bet; clothing items such as socks, sweatshirts, sweat pants; backpacks may be another good Survival barter item.
The idea is not to try and stock a retail store, just realize that what may be important to your survival is also important of others facing the same commodities shortage.
The benefit to a total collapse of society as we know it, lapses us into a Survival mode, be it an Urban, Suburban or Rural environment is that your spouse may not be getting on your butt about getting rid of some things. The ‘Hey, maybe I can use that” excuse for all material things will take on a new meaning.
As a re-cap, we think that after a infrastructure collapse, we would go through several different periods of commerce where paper money, then precious metals, then material items (barter items) would be distinct. We can’t even begin to determine how long each period would last. Paper Money, in a Survival Situation, may only be good for two to three days,…maybe more, maybe less, but certainly no-good after the realization that things are not going to go back to normal hits the people square in the head.
Gold and Silver had traditionally and historically been of value. Their value based would fluctuate based on the increasing inflationary value of life saving material, e.g..food, water and material things during a Survival situation. Commerce using Gold and Silver may rebound if and when various segments of the population achieve some sort organized society. This may be based on locations and access to material goods than it is anything else.
Barter goods in a Survival Scenario will always be of value. Imagine negotiating with someone for 3 gallons of fuel: “Yeah, I got 3 gallons of fuel,…what do you have to trade?” “How about 4 Morgan Silver Dollars?” or “How about 6 cans of vegetables and a bag of rice?” What do you think this guy is going to want to trade for?
In a Survival environment where commodities are in very short supply, what products do you think would be of high value?
Obviously food such as high caloric/high carbohydrate items; Water and devices to carry water such as canteens are a sure bet; Alcohol may be a prime barter item; First Aid supplies especially anti-biotics pills and ointment, aspirin and other pain killers are also good Survival barter items; Lighters and/or butane fuel for lighters; firearms and ammunition would be high, may even be number one on the Survival item Barter List.
Plant seeds for vegetables are another good bet; clothing items such as socks, sweatshirts, sweat pants; backpacks may be another good Survival barter item.
The idea is not to try and stock a retail store, just realize that what may be important to your survival is also important of others facing the same commodities shortage.
The benefit to a total collapse of society as we know it, lapses us into a Survival mode, be it an Urban, Suburban or Rural environment is that your spouse may not be getting on your butt about getting rid of some things. The ‘Hey, maybe I can use that” excuse for all material things will take on a new meaning.
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