Bushcraft and Survival Skills

Many of us realize that the city is perhaps the worst place to live, to prepare for a SHTF scenario. Should you choose to stay in the city, the following information may be helpful. This information has been gathered from various sources and compiled.

Cities are formed for the benefit of interacting with large groups of people for mutual benefit. However, they need resources from outside of themselves; most notably, food, water and electricity. Although electricity and water can sometimes be created or found within city limits, cities are dependent on the importation of food. For a long time they have been entirely dependent on the American farmer for their support, something almost all Americans take for granted.

The city presents serious risks during a crisis.
The four most serious are:

1. Rioting and the breakdown of order
2. Lack of water, or the delivery of water
3. Lack of food
4. The power grid going off-lineV

Social order is psychological. It could collapse under the right conditions. When people realize there is no longer law and order, they behave according to their own whims. Only the threat of immediate death stopped the looting and violence in the L.A. Riots, when the National Guard responded to the crisis. Eventually the National Guard assumed control. Remember, this was only an isolated event, with one city. In a more serious crisis, will the National Guard or local police be able to handle the load? Overnight this country could be turned into a war zone, requiring all-out martial law and military force. The reality is, however, the military would be stretched beyond limits to handle the load.

The greatest risk of remaining in the city is the breakdown of social order. Lack of food, water, and money will drive people to behave unethically towards other people. While certain areas will manage to keep things under control, people will be forming lines at the local (depleted) Red Cross shelter, while other cities will erupt in violence. The gang-infested regions of major metropolitan areas will not stand in line and wait. Racial tensions will simply serve as a catalyst for shooting people in order to get their food or other possessions.

Lack of money results in looting and mass theft, resulting in a collapse of social order. Lack of water has the same effect. The collapse of social order doesn’t require any collapse of the power grid, telecommunications, transportation or banking. Social order is psychological. Global panic can quickly remove the mental barrier that right now keeps people basically “lawful.”

Water treatment plants are electricity dependent. Some plants have already failed emergency testing in the event of a shutdown of the power grid. In one such test, the water treatment plant released a fatal dose of fluoride into the water system when tested. The computers thought they were 99 years behind in releasing minute doses of fluoride, so they made up the difference. If you happened to be downstream, drinking that water, you were dead. Fluoride, no matter what misinformed dentists tell you, is actually a fatal poison. A major crisis likely to demonstrate this fact in more than one city.

More importantly, however is, what do you do when the water stops flowing or is not drinkable? People can live without water only 2-3 days. During the first day of the water crisis, many people will only be inconvenienced. As the day wanes, they'll get worried. By the second day, more will realize the water isn't coming. Social order will begin to break down while they search for water. People will searches stores and eventually those supplies will vanish. If water stops flowing, there will be looting of all the grocery stores, outbreaks of violence with some shop owners defending their goods, a mass exodus from the city by residents in search of water, ransacking of any houses or farms within a gas-tank radius of the city (presumably by desperate people with guns), mass traffic jams as people abandon their vehicles when they run out of gas, and outbreaks of water-borne diseases as people use streams and rivers as drinking water and lavatories.

Supplies of food will dwindle quickly. Breakdowns in the transportation sector will result in major delays. Any shipment of food that arrives will be quickly grabbed and eaten or stored. Expect the atmosphere to be that of a “near panic”, the level varying from city to city, if food is delayed by as little as three days. A shortage of food results in the same behavior as a shortage of water.

The power grid goes off-line. Nothing is as suddenly obvious nor has such a psychological impact as a power outage. When electricity stops, almost everybody knows it at the same instant (unless it happens at night). People assume it’s temporary. What if it doesn’t back online? Without power, everything shuts down. Looting begins in the more crime-ridden cities. The longer the power stays off, the worse the social disorder. Vehicles may get around, but businesses won't be operating. Houses that use electricity for heat will reach Winter temperatures, freezing many occupants to death. Those that depend on electricity for AC will just as quickly reach Summer temperatures, some dying from heat stroke. Hospitals and police stations may have generators with a few days worth of fuel, but eventually that will be depleted. Water treatment plants will almost certainly be off-line causing all the events mentioned in the water section. If you have power, you can survive a food shortage, perhaps even a short water shortage. If you have a “bug-out” vehicle stocked and ready to go, this might be the time to bail.

Okay, so you're stuck in the city and made the decision to stay. What now? You really have only two options. You can (1.) Stay and defend your home, or (2.) Bug out. Of course this is not an either/or situation. You can begin by staying in your house and assessing the situation. You'll want to have a “bug-out” vehicle stocked and ready, but you may never actually choose to bug out. When you bug out, you face major risks and disadvantages. Among these: You're severely limited in how much you can carry; you have limited range due to fuel; you expose yourself to social chaos, roadblocks, random violence, etc.; your house will certainly be looted; you run the risk of mechanical breakdowns; you must have a place to go that you know is in better shape than where you currently are.

In general, unless you have a specific, known safe place as your final destination, it's not advisable to bug out. Staying and defending your house is sometimes the only reasonable course of action, even if it seems dangerous. For the most part, looters and people looking for food are going to have plenty of easy victims, so if you show a little willingness to use force to defend your property, you’ll likely send people on to the next house. That is, until the next house is already empty and you appear to be the last house on the block with any food and water left. Your neighbors may “gang up” on you. The best situation is to keep your neighbors informed and help them get prepared. Then you can act as a group, defending your neighborhood and sharing supplies with anyone willing to help defend you.

Storing food is important, but hiding it is far more. That’s because in the worst areas, marauders will be going house to house, demanding your food or your life. To count on having any amount of food left over after the marauders break in, you'll need to hide your food. One alternative is to plan on defending your home with force. If you have enough gun-wise people in the house, and enough firearms and ammo, you can probably pull this off. But most of us aren’t nearly as experience with firearms as the gang members. The best way to hide your food is to bury it inside airtight containers. Bury your food at night so nobody will notice, and make sure you don’t leave a map on the refrigerator door! Try to get the ground to look normal after you're finished. You’ll want to bury your food as early as possible give the grass time to grow over. If you’re in an area that snows, you’ll have great concealment. Most marauders won't go to the trouble to dig up food, especially if you insist you don't have any. Also, have smaller amount of food stashed around the house, letting them find something. Better to give them something and send them on their way. Be creative in hiding your food. Use the walls, the floors, and the structure of the house. If hiding your food is not possible, then don't advertise it. In reality it would be easier to simply build a false wall in your garage and seal up your food behind the false wall. Sure, you might loose 2-3 feet of usable space in your garage, but the trade off is knowing everything is safe.

Water can be stored in exactly the same way. Make sure you treat your storage water, rotate it or have filters on hand when you get ready to use it. If you don’t have a yard, or it's not practical to bury your water, you’ll have to store it inside your house. Water takes up lots of space and is difficult to conceal. It’s best to get containers made for long-term storage, but you can use almost any container: soda bottles, milk jugs (although it's very difficult to rinse the milk out), and even rinsed bleach bottles (in that case, you won’t need to add bleach). Many of these containers will deteriorate quickly, and they may break easily. Also, consider what happens if your water may be subjected to freezing. Will your containers survive? Be sure to leave enough air space to handle the expansion. Stock at least six months of water at a minimum two gallons a day per person. That’s nearly 400 gallons of water if you have two people. Even with the best preparations you may find yourself short of water. In this case, one of your best defenses is to have a really good water filter that can remove parasites and bacteria from the water. You can also treat your water in other ways (iodine, distillation, silver solution, bleach, etc.). The best solution for obtaining long-term water is to drill a well. Many cities simply don’t allow the drilling of wells, so you may not be able to get one drilled even if you want to. The deeper your well, the more expensive it becomes.

Now regarding defense. In rural areas most people are going to find ways to cooperate. However, some cities will suffer complete social breakdown and violence will rule. If you happen to be stuck in one of these cities, you’re going to need to use force to defend yourself. Also, do not use your lights at night. Avoid drawing attention to your house. Defending your house is a crucial element on your stay-in-the-city plan. Make your house your fortress, and hold drills to help other family members practice some of the more common activities such as hiding, defending, evacuating, etc. Some useful items for home defense include: a guard dog, pepper spray, firearms, smoke bombs, and trip wires. The guard dog probably eats a lot of food, but the investment is worth it. Dogs also tend to sleep light, so have them sleep near food storage areas, and make sure you sleep within earshot. If the dog barks, don't consider it an annoyance, consider it an INTRUSION. Pepper spray will incapacitate people and certainly give them a painful experience to remember. On the downside (potentially), it might just remind them that next time they come back for food, they better kill you first. Firearms are useful for obvious reasons. When looting is rampant, you may have to shoot someone to protect yourself or your family. If you’re squeamish about pulling the trigger under these circumstances, don't plan to stay in the city. Use the “bug out” plan instead. Smoke bombs can be useful for covering a planned escape from your house. You can purchase high-volume smoke bombs that will quickly fill up any house with an non-breathable cloud of military-grade white smoke. Trip wires are great perimeter defenses and will give early warning.

In addition to these devices, you can make significant fortification-style improvements to your home. While none of these are very affordable, they certainly help defend your home: replace glass windows with non-breakable Plexiglas; add steel bars to the windows; replace all outside door locks with heavy-duty deadbolts; replace all outside doors with steel doors (preferably without windows); remove bushes and other shrubs where people might hide; black out the windows entirely to avoid light escaping at night; build secret hiding places for food, coins, or even people; create escape hatches or passageways; and rig pepper-spray booby traps. Many people living in rough cities already have steel bars covering their windows, and removing extra bushes and shrubs is a well-known tactic for making your home a safer place.

To light your home when there’s no electricity, try the following: use LED flashlights and rechargeable solar-charged batteries; use propane-powered lanterns (be sure to purchase extra mantles and store lots of propane); purchase quality oil lamps and stock up on oil (you can also purchase cheap kerosene lamps then simply purchase and store extra kerosene); buy extra candles; purchase lots of olive oil. Not only can you cook with it but it also burns as a clean candle fuel. You can float a wick in a jar half-full of olive oil and light the wick for a home-made candle. Olive oil is a great item for your storage anyway because you’ll still need cooking oil. Well-stored olive oil can last for thousands of years.

Your best bet in regards to stocking fuel for your house is to stock up on UNCUT wood logs. The effort is worth it, because this will give you a ready-to-go source of heat and fuel that cannot be easily stolen. You'll need equipment to cut and chop the wood. Wood splits better when it’s frozen, so you might wait until Winter to start splitting. Only split a little at a time so as not to invite theft. Cut about to start drying out, then chop them as you need them.

Getting along with neighbors is important. The best situation to be in, is to have neighbors who are aware of the issue and who are getting ready, stocking their own supplies. If you do live in a bad neighborhood, do what you can to relocate. If you live in a good neighborhood, do the best you can to educate and inform your neighbors.

The gun-control politicians (and the people who supported them) have placed most Americans in a situation where the police cannot protect us in a timely manner, nor can we lawfully defend ourselves. Criminals unlawfully have firearms; citizens lawfully don't. The cities where rioting will likely be the worst is where firearms are most likely to be banned from lawful ownership (and where criminals may wield near-absolute power for a while.). Millions of people are going to have to resort to breaking the law in order to protect their families. And yes, you too will have to resort to breaking the law if you are to acquire a firearm in an area where guns are entirely banned from private citizens. After the disaster hits, if the situation deteriorates badly, local police will be begging law-abiding citizens for help. But if you carry a gun while you smash a window of the Wal-Mart and walk off with a stereo, be prepare to get shot. Police officers don't mind private ownership nearly as much as many believe. When the crisis hits, they'll be more than happy to have your cooperation. If you really feel you need a firearm to protect yourself and your family, your best bet may be to move to a city or state where people are a lot more accepting of firearms. Check the gun laws in any state you're considering moving to.

Suppose you’ve changed your mind about this city thing. You’ve decided to BUG OUT! Well, you will likely need a 4x4 truck in order to go off-road and around stalled vehicles. It should also be able to carry at least 1000 pounds of supplies. Yes, it requires more fuel, but you can carry the fuel as cargo. You will need an armed passenger in case you run into not-so-nice people. Here’s what you should take if you’re preparing to bug out with two people: your 96 hour kits for each person in the vehicle; 20 gallons of water; 40 gallons of extra fuel or more (and a full gas tank). As mentioned earlier, if you have a designated BOL, go for it. If not, you’re basically driving anywhere you can go, so try to head for an area that is forested and near a creek or river where you can get some water. The conclusion is this: choosing to remain in the city is a rational choice for many people in many situations. However, the further away you can get from population centers the better your chances of surviving. Most people have a difficult time accepting that a major disaster would be as bad as described. However, the very nature of a major disaster means that if only one or two major infrastructure components go down, the ripple effect will quickly create a much worse scenario. The most likely scenario at this point clearly points to massive disruptions, shortages in food and water, loss of power in some areas, and a breakdown of social order in areas where the population density is high. But you can survive anything with good planning, an open mind, and plenty of practice. Now is the best time to start.

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