Urban Survival - Fuel Emergencies: Making Gas From Wood

For some of you more technical or mechanically sound individuals, it is apparently possible to build a Biomass Gasifier Unit that can provide fuel for internal combustion engines for use in a Petroleum Emergency.

This technology is not recent. Fuel gas produced by the reduction of coal and peat (from Peat moss) was used for heating as early as 1840 in Europe . Although not common, nor widely used, it was familiar technology. During World War II, due to gas shortages for the war effort, these gas generators were much more common and even common to Korea into the 1950’s.

All internal combustion engines run off of vapor not liquid. All liquid fuels are vaporized before they enter the combustion chamber. The purpose of a gasifier is to transform solid fuels into a gaseous form to keep the engines free of particles. So think energy converter and filter.

FEMA,…yes the infamous FEMA, produces many publications, and one of the more interesting documents was a 90 page report entitled “Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines in a Petroleum Emergency”,..whew!,…that’s a mouthful even for a recently de-classified document.

The entire document is available here, and it may be a good idea to print a copy and put in your 3 ring binder of other Survival and Collapse information. You do have a 3 ring binder of good Survival information, don’t you?

Reader Response on Sniper Rifles and Street Gangs

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received a comment on the "Urban Survival Firearms - Sniper Rifle Necessity?" post,....I think most people who expect STHF have basic fire arms skills. and out of those (only) a few have basic long range fire arms skill. I don't think its a necessary piece of equipment but if you have the ability to use it then its going to be a primary tool when engaging hostile targets at 300 yards or more. Also it would be used with you team you need to build for cover and observation of the surrounding area. I myself have little knowledge of using a scoped rifle but I am learning and learning fast. with the world looking more and more like its going to in a sense turn in to a mad max world its good to have the ability to see and asses targets or bands of targets.

Also if you get a laser range finder and use it to set up range markers at your bug out base or even long term camp or "base" the sniper rifle would a tool worth its weight in gold. my opinion...its better to shoot someone who you deem a threat before he shoots you. also one thing I haven't seen this website talk about is street gangs. In a disaster such as massive black out or natural disasters street gangs go on massive offensives and like to kill rape loot and and start chaos. so in an urban or suburban area if you can find a suitable bug out location or temporary base camp with a nice field of vision set up range markers....subtle ones. maybe a group of rocks or tin cans every hundred yard going out to 700 yards or whatever you feel is decent.

UrbanMan replies: Good comment. Glad you are learning the art of the scoped rifle. Sniping is all together a different subject, but the ability to use a scoped rifle to increase your ability to engage at longer ranges, when your environment supports it or even necessitates it, can be huge. Laser Range Finders are good kit when taking a shot from unknown terrain, but the Survivalist can mitigate that need by prepping the terrain as you mentioned with range markers - way too many historic examples of that. A flag or way to determine wind value if helpful too.

Did you say Street Gangs? You mean like: Barrio Aztecas; Bloods; Crips; Folk Nation; Gangster Disciples, Mexican Mafia aka La EME; MS-13; SUR 13; Surenos; Texas Syndicate. If you count in the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMG’s), then you can add the Bandidos; Hells Angels; Mongols; and Pagans...plus others. Where I live there
are over 70 Street Gangs. The vast majority of them are just a bunch of neighborhood punks,...but one has to respect the power of mobs and the capability of already existing organized groups of criminals.

Know your enemy or your potential threats. The way to begin is to understand their operational territory and boundaries; operational routines (the how of their criminal actions) then analyze how that can impact on you and your Survival Groups safety and mobility, especially Bug Out routes.

Getting tied into the local police through personal contacts or serving on a civilian advisory board; talking to other emergency providers, as well as reading the paper and talking to commercial vendors in the area can help you build and maintain a Situation Map, aka SITMAP (see the below map graphic as an example...this is a fabricated example and no way intends to depict real world conditions). The next step on a SITMAP is to keep track of criminal actions and events,..e.g..shootings, robberies, car jackings, etc. Eventually you will be able to see a pattern - this is called Pattern Analysis.....and lets you forecast with some degree of accuracy future criminal operations.

This is a beginning of Intellignce Prep of the Battlefield (IPB) or you can call it Intel Prep of the Area of Operations - doesn't much matter. It is simply the process of understanding the threat and how their intent, criminal operational routines, and capabilities can effect you.

The reader is absolutely right about the large threat from organized and armed street gangs especially in a degraded infrastructure - hence the necessity of being armed yourself, having a survival team for mutual support, having safe protocols for operating your patrols and performing all survival tasks, and utilizing rudimentary intelligence related practices to keep yourself safe.

In a total collapse, Street Gangs will sooner rather than later expend all the loot (food, water, etc) in their given original "gang territory" and will eventually expand to other areas, especially the areas that are 1 - easy targets and 2 - high yield targets.

Be smart, be prepared.

Urban Survival Planning - The Aftermath of the Storm

Following up with the aftermath of the giant storm that gripped our nation, on the first day when temps went above 20 degrees, which is very cold for the desert southwest, I went to the local version of Sportsman Warehouse around noon and guess what material was flying off the shelves?

Sleeping Bags. I saw a crowd of a dozen or so people in the sleeping bag aisle picking over what was left, and that wasn’t much.

Ammunition. The clerks were telling me that .32 ACP, .380 ACP, .40 S&W and .45 ACP were flying off the shelves as was .270 of all things. They said they sold more ammunition that morning then in the previous 2 or 3 weeks.

Firearms. While I was hanging out around the firearms section, four people purchased guns - three of them 12 gauge pump shotguns and one a semi-auto handgun.

Battery Powered Lanterns. There were almost none left. However, flashlights were a slow seller. Most of the lanterns that were bought used D sized batteries which very few people have the capability to recharge – so I hope they bought enough batteries. This store still had a large amount of batteries of all types so it was hard to tell how many were bought that morning.

Several of the convenience stores I stopped at were out of cases of water.

I keep a running list of equipment and material that are on my short list for purchase/procurement once the collapse indicators start indicating the collapse is near term imminent. Some are things I can do without now, or just nice to have during a collapse, and others are items with a shelf life so I want to purchase them at a point where I’ll get the longest use out of them.

The below list of items was sent to me by a friend in North Dakota, relating to the most common things that are bought by people in panic,…preparing for a hurricane, storm or whatever. What do you think are the first things to go?

Water, Batteries, Flashlights, Ice, Candles, Matches, Toilet paper, Paper plates, paper towels, Heavy duty aluminum foil, Water filters, Flour, Sugar, Milk, Powdered milk, Coffee, Canned soup, Soup mixes, Bouillon cubes, Hand‐held can openers, Dry cereal, Diapers, Wet wipes, Baby food, Baby formula, Sanitary napkins & tampons, Bath soap, Laundry detergent, Waterless hand sanitizer, Disinfectant, Bleach, Trash bags,

Re‐sealable plastic bags, Toothpaste, Tooth brushes, Shampoo and conditioner, Shaving equipment, Lanterns, Lantern fuel, Lantern wicks or mantles, Butane igniter, Charcoal grills, Charcoal, Camp stoves, Propane for camp stoves, Pocket knife, Army knife, Vitamin supplements,

Antacids, Antibiotics, Rubbing alcohol, Hydrogen peroxide, Laxative and diarrhea remedies, Antihistamine, Epsom salts, Bandages, Sterile gauze pads, First‐aid tape, Portable toilets, 5‐gallon plastic buckets, Gas‐driven generators, Gasoline storage containers, Duct tape, Chain‐saws,

Cast iron Dutch oven, Cast iron frying pan, Bug spray, Mouse traps, Mouse bait (D‐Con), Thermal underwear, Insulated coveralls, Heavy work gloves, Boots / rain gear, Band saws, Axes, Solar panels, Hand‐crank radios, Canvas and nylon tarps.

While many of us involved with Survival Preparation had many of the above items, a lot of the aforementioned items on that list we are thinking WTF? If anyone wants a free copy of an e-book containing details on the above and other items, just e-mail me and I’ll send it to you. Depending upon the response, I may only be replying for the next two weeks.

Survival Planning - Zero Hedge and Internet Access After the Government Shuts It Down

Ever heard of Zero Hedge? They are another multi-dimensional analytical entity keeping track of the financial, political and political factors affecting our Country,....our individual survival, ..and predicting the coming monetary-financial collapse. A smart person would add them to growing score of intelligence sources.

I like the Zero Hedge motto, which is: “On a Long Enough Timeline, the Survival Rate for Everyone Drops to Zero”.

Zero Hedge can be accessed, by clicking here,…..be sure to bookmark it.

One of my technical guys sent me the link to Zero Hedge due to a recent article entitled: “How to Maintain Internet Access Even If Your Government Turns It Off”

Driven or at least accelerated by the events in Egypt are efforts to combat a Government’s shut down of the Internet. Thanks to Zero Hedge re-printing an excerpt from Get Internet Access When Your Government Shuts it Down, by Patrick Miller & David Daw there possible solutions if mass civil unrest strikes a country, a government may respond by banning internet access and severely restricting information flow.


Here is the excerpt:

"Even if you've managed to find an Internet connection for yourself, it won't be that helpful in reaching out to your fellow locals if they can't get online to find you. If you're trying to coordinate a group of people in your area and can't rely on an Internet connection, cell phones, or SMS, your best bet could be a wireless mesh network of sorts--essentially, a distributed network of wireless networking devices that can all find each other and communicate with each other. Even if none of those devices have a working Internet connection, they can still find each other, which, if your network covers the city you're in, might be all you need. At the moment, wireless mesh networking isn't really anywhere close to market-ready, though we have seen an implementation of the 802.11s draft standard, which extends the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard to include wireless mesh networking, in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop."

"However, a prepared guerrilla networker with a handful of PCs could make good use of Daihinia ($25, 30-day free trial), an app that piggybacks on your Wi-Fi adapter driver to turn your normal ad-hoc Wi-Fi network into a multihop ad-hoc network (disclaimer: we haven't tried this ourselves yet), meaning that instead of requiring each device on the network to be within range of the original access point, you simply need to be within range of a device on the network that has Daihinia installed, effectively allowing you to add a wireless mesh layer to your ad-hoc network. Advanced freedom fighters can set up a portal Web page on their network that explains the way the setup works, with Daihinia instructions and a local download link so they can spread the network even further. Lastly, just add a Bonjour-compatible chat client like Pidgin or iChat, and you'll be able to talk to your neighbors across the city without needing an Internet connection."

"[Another alternative is] FidoNet--a distributed networking system for BBSes that was popular in the 1980s. FidoNet is limited to sending only simple text messages, and it's slow, but it has two virtues: Users connect asynchronously, so the network traffic is harder to track, and any user can act as the server, which means that even if the government shuts down one number in the network, another one can quickly pop up to take its place."

"You could also take inspiration from groups that are working to create an ad-hoc communications network into and out of Egypt using Ham Radio, since the signals are rarely tracked and extremely hard to shut down or block. Most of these efforts are still getting off the ground, but hackers are already cobbling together ways to make it a viable form of communication into and out of the country. Given enough time and preparation, your ham radio networks could even be adapted into your own ad-hoc network using Packet Radio, a radio communications protocol that you can use to create simple long-distance wireless networks to transfer text and other messages between computers. Packet Radio is rather slow and not particularly popular (don't try to stream any videos with this, now), but it's exactly the kind of networking device that would fly under the radar."

"In response to the crisis in Egypt , nerds everywhere have risen to call for new and exciting tools for use in the next government-mandated shutdown. Bre Pettis, founder of the hackerspace NYC Resistor and creator of the MakerbotApps for the Appocalypse," including a quick and easy way to set up chats on a local network so you can talk with your friends and neighbors in an emergency even without access to the Internet. If his comments are any indication, Apocalypse apps may be headed your way soon. Tons of cool tech are also just waiting to be retrofitted for these purposes. David Dart's Pirate Box is a one-step local network in a box originally conceived for file sharing and local P2P purposes, but it wouldn't take much work to adapt the Pirate Box as a local networking tool able to communicate with other pirate boxes to form a compact, mobile set of local networks in the event of an Internet shutdown."