Hunkering Down in the Big City?
I’ve been asked many times over the years if it would be possible to ride out a major societal collapse by keeping hidden in a major metropolitan area. Frankly, I do not think that it is realistic. Your chances of survival would probably be low—certainly much lower than Getting Out of Dodge to a lightly populated area at the onset of a crisis. Undoubtedly, in a total societal collapse there will be some stay-put urbanites who survive by their wits supplemented by plenty of providential fortune, but the vast majority would perish. I wouldn’t want to play those odds. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’re considering hunkering down in an urban area:
Water
Even with extreme conservation measures you will need at least one gallon of water per day. That one gallon will provide just enough water for one adult for drinking and cooking, and none for washing. If you run out of water you will be forced to go out and forage for it, putting yourself at enormous risk. And even then, you will have to treat the water that you find with chlorine, iodine (such as Polar Pure—now very scarce), or a top-quality water filter such as a Katadyn Pocket.
Food
You will need a large amount of food in order to survive. Work out a daily menu and budget for an honest six-month supply of food with a decent variety and sufficient caloric intake. See Chapter 5 for more details. Don’t overlook vitamin supplements to make up for the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. Sprouting is also a great option to provide vitamins and minerals, as well as aid digestion.
Sanitation
Without water for flushing toilets, odds are that people in neighboring apartments will dump raw sewage out their windows, causing a public-health nightmare on the ground floor. Since you will not want to alert others to your presence by opening your window, and no doubt the apartment building’s septic-system stack will be clogged in short order, you will need to make plans to store your waste in your apartment. I suggest five-gallon buckets and a large supply of powdered lime to cut down on the stench before each bucket is sealed. Since you won’t have water available for washing, you should also lay in a supply of baby wipes.
Space Heating
In midwinter you could freeze to death in your apartment without supplemental heat. A small heater or just a few candles can keep the air temperature above freezing. I strongly recommend installing a quality wood or coal stove. But even apartment dwellers can use a kerosene heater (such as one from Kero-Sun), with proper ventilation.
Ventilation
If you are going to use any source of open flame, you will need lots of additional ventilation. Asphyxiation from lack of oxygen or slow carbon-monoxide (CO) poisoning is the alternative. Unfortunately, increased ventilation required to mitigate these hazards can pose a security risk—as a conduit for the smell of food or fuel, as a source of light that can be seen from outside the apartment, and as an additional point of entry for robbers.
Security
The main point of entry for miscreants will probably be your front door. Odds are that you have a traditional solid-core wood door. It is best to replace wooden apartment doors with steel ones. Merely bracing a wood door will not suffice. Furthermore, if you have an exterior window with a fire escape or access to a shared balcony, then those are also points of entry for the bad guys. How could you effectively barricade a large expanse of windows?
If you live in a ground-floor apartment or an older apartment with exterior metal fire escapes, then I recommend that you move as soon as possible to a third-, fourth-, or fifth-floor apartment that is in a modern apartment building of concrete construction, preferably without balconies, with steel entry doors, and with interior fire-escape stairwells.
Self-defense
To fend off intruders, or for self-defense when you eventually emerge from your apartment, you will need to be well armed. Preferably you should also be teamed with at least two other armed and trained adults. Look into local legalities for large-volume pepper-spray dispensers. These are marketed primarily as bear repellent, with brand names like Guard Alaska, Bear Guard, and 17% Streetwise. If they are indeed legal in your jurisdiction, then buy several of the big one-pound dispensers, first making sure that they are at least a 12 percent oleoresincapsicum (OC) formulation.
If you can get a firearms permit, then I recommend that you get a Remington, Winchester, or Mossberg 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a SureFire flashlight fore-end. The best load for defense in an urban environment where over-penetration (into neighboring apartments) is an issue is #4 buckshot (not to be confused with the much smaller #4 bird shot). But if getting a firearms permit proves too daunting, there is a nice exemption in in even New York City’s firearms laws for muzzle loaders and pre-1894 manufactured antique guns that are chambered for cartridges that are no longer commercially made. It is not difficult to find a Winchester Model 1876 or a Model 1886 rifle in a serial-number range that distinguishes it as pre-1894 production. You will be limited to chamberings like .40-65 and .45-90. You can have a supply of ammunition custom loaded. Be sure to select rifles with excellent bores and in nice mechanical condition.
For an antique handgun, I would recommend a Smith and Wesson double-action top-break revolver chambered in .44 S&W Russian, with semi-custom extra-mild loads.
Firearms training from a quality school is crucial.
Fire Detection and Contingency Bugout
A battery-powered smoke detector is an absolute must. Even if you are careful with candles, lanterns, and cookstoves, your neighbors may not be. There is a considerable risk that your apartment building will catch fire, whether by accident or by others’ intentions. Therefore, you need to have a “Bugout” backpack (BOB) ready to grab at a moment’s notice.
Although they are no proper substitutes for a fireman’s compressed-air breathing rig, a commercially made egress smoke hood or a military-surplus gas mask might allow you to escape your building in time.
Fuel Storage
Bulk fuel storage has three problematic issues: 1) safety (fire hazard); 2) security (odors that could attract robbers); and 3) legality. Most urban fire codes would not allow you to have more than a week’s worth of propane on hand, and they completely prohibit keeping more than just one small container of kerosene or Coleman fuel. From the standpoint of both safety and minimizing detectable odors, propane is probably the best option. But of course consult both your local fire code and your apartment lease agreement to determine the maximum allowable quantity to keep on hand.
Odds are that there will be no limit on the number of candles that you can store. If that is the case, then lay in a large supply of unscented jar candles designed for long burning (formulated high in stearic acid). I suggest the tall, clear-glass-jar-enclosed devotional candles manufactured in large numbers for the Catholic market. You can even heat individual servings of food over these if you construct a stand with a wide base out of stout wire. Watch for these candles at discount and closeout stores.
Cooking Odors
In addition to the smell of fuel, cooking food will produce odors. I recommend that you store only foods with minimal spices. In a situation in which you are surrounded by starving people, just frying foods with grease or heating up a can of spicy chili con carne could be a death warrant.
Fireflghting
Buy at least two large multipurpose (ABC) chemical fire extinguishers.
Noise and Light Discipline
If you make noise or if you have any source of light in your apartment, it could make your presence known. In an extended power blackout, it will become obvious to looters within a couple of weeks who has lanterns or large supplies of candles and/or flashlight batteries, and I predict that it will be the apartments that are still lit up that will be deemed the ones worth robbing. So if you are going to have a light source, you must systematically black out all of your windows. But sadly these efforts will be in direct conflict with your need for ventilation for your heating and/or cooking.
Heat
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bsp; With the aforementioned restrictions on fuel storage, heating your apartment for more than just a few days will probably be impossible. Buy an expedition-quality sleeping bag—preferably a two-bag system such as a Wiggy’s brand Flexible Temperature Range Sleep Syatem (FTRSS). To maximize your chances for survival, construct a small room-within-a-room—perhaps under a large dining-room table, or by setting up a camping tent inside your home—to hoard heat. Even if the rest of your home drops to twenty-five or thirty degrees Fahrenheit, your body heat alone will keep your demi-room in the forties. Burning just one candle will raise the temperature another five or ten degrees. For the greatest efficiency retaining heat, your demi-room should be draped with two layers of Mylar space blankets.
Exercise
While you are hunkered down, you will need to maintain muscle tone. Get some quiet exercise equipment, such as a pull-up bar and some large elastic straps. Perhaps, if your budget allows in the future, also purchase or construct your own quiet, stationary-bicycle-powered generator (snipurl.com/hotd5). This would provide both exercise and battery charging.
Sanity
Hunkering down solo in silence for an extended period would be a supreme challenge, both physically and mentally. Assuming that you can somehow tackle all of the aforementioned problems, you also need to plan to stay sane. Have lots of reading materials on hand.
When one considers the preceding long list of dependencies and complexities, it makes staying put in a worst case very unattractive. In less inimical circumstances, it is certainly feasible, but in a grid-down situation with utilities disrupted, the big city is no place to live.
Mobile Retreats
“Land-mobile” retreating in a recreational vehicle (RV) is another invitation for disaster. In a TEOTWAWKI situation, a fixed-location retreat is vastly superior to going mobile. If you choose to go entirely vehicle-mobile you will eventually lose a battle—most likely in a roadblock ambush—or your RV will break down. Or it will run out of fuel—with some likelihood that it will be on exposed terrain in an untenable situation. Also, since the logistics that you can carry will be limited, you will start out with an inherent disadvantage compared with fixed-location retreats. This also creates the prospect that once your food supplies are depleted you will be tempted to take what you need from others.
A live-aboard sailboat or motor cruiser is another frequently touted retreat option. Unless you are an experienced blue-water yachtsman with many years of experience, I cannot recommend “sea-mobile” retreating.
Mobile approaches to retreating have too many drawbacks to recommend them, except perhaps in a few cases for those with a huge budget. Pragmatically, you will need a fixed location with a deep larder, tools, weapons, barter goods, and friends you can count on. In essence, the only tenable mobile approach is for the very short term: a reliable vehicle that gets you to a well-provisioned and defendable fixed retreat.
Just One Trip Outta Dodge
It is essential to pre-position the vast majority of your logistics at your retreat. The following chapters will help you to determine what supplies you’ll need and what preparations you’ll want to make in advance. Of course, these preparations will be useless if you cannot reach your retreat WTSHTF.
Circumstances may dictate that you can make only one trip to your retreat before roads are unusable or unsafe to use. It would be tragic to have to pick and choose what portion of your gear to take in that one trip, so it makes sense to pre-position most of your gear. It is wise to do a “test load” once every two years to insure that those items that you keep in your home will fit in that one trip. And, needless to say, plan multiple routes using secondary roads in case the freeways are clogged. Have a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and a Plan D. The latter may be on mountain bikes or on foot.
For detailed information on your G.O.O.D. vehicles, see Chapter 12.
If family or work circumstances dictate that you can’t live locally at your retreat, then at least look like a local. If your retreat is across a state line, then carry the driver’s license of the state where you have your retreat (with the town nearest your retreat listed as your home address), and get dual registration for all of your G.O.O.D. vehicles. To get past roadblocks you will want to look like you are obviously headed “home” to your retreat. Paying a little extra each year for dual registration could save your life.
If you have a great salary and can afford to buy a retreat but can’t telecommute, you will need a caretaker. Just watering and pruning the dozens of fruit and nut trees is a big chore. Finding a trustworthy caretaker for a retreat can be problematic. When selecting a caretaker, it is important to find someone committed to staying long term, someone you can trust with certainty, and someone who has practical skills and is not afraid to get his hands dirty or paint-stained. Make each party’s rights and responsibilities perfectly clear from the outset. In many states, if you charge any form of rent, then that person is a renter and has all the legal rights of such under the law including the right to privacy—which might preclude your showing up at the door of your own retreat WTSHTF. If you’re charging rent, consult with a real estate lawyer to make sure you’re not stranded on your own doorstep.
One compromise approach is to leave your retreat house unoccupied and rent a commercial storage space in the town nearest your retreat. This constitutes pitiful operational security (OPSEC), but it is better than leaving valuable gear unattended and vulnerable to burglary. This approach also makes it difficult to practice using your gear, or to rotate your storage food or establish a garden and livestock between now and TEOTWAWKI, but it might be the best option for many of you.
G.O.O.D. Backpack
Put together a Get Out of Dodge backpack. This is especially important if you don’t live year-round at your retreat. The pack is intended only for a very short period—to get you to your retreat—in the event that for whatever reason a vehicle is not available. You should dread ever having to use that pack when you are overrun and forced to abandon a well-stocked retreat and taking off on foot to fend for yourself.
Recommended G.O.O.D. Backpack Contents
Tailor this list to meet your personal and regional requirements. Obviously, if you live in Florida, your list will be much different than if you live in Maine.
• Sleeping bag
• Jacket
• Gloves
• Boots
• Poncho
• Small tarp (six feet by eight feet)
• Financial and personal papers
• Cash and a roll of quarters for making phone calls
• Road maps
• First-aid kit
• Insect repellent
• Fire-starting kit
• Leatherman-type multipurpose tool with knife and pliers
• Utility knife
• Ten to fifteen MRE entrées
• Extra socks and underwear
• Two canteens or a CamelBak hydration pack
• Broad-brim hat
• LED flashlight with extra lithium batteries
• Firearms or other weapons (depending on your local laws)
• Cell phone
• GPS
• Brunton SolarPort (www.brunton.com/product.php?id=280) or similar compact photovoltaic-panel charger, with cabling and/or battery trays for all of your electronic gear
Add-on Kits:
• Note: These are usually too heavy or bulky to carry in your backpack, but can be carried in your vehicle. Store these in plastic tote bins to keep everything together and handy to load quickly.
Camp-Kitchen Kit:
• Stainless steel eating utensils
• Reusable plastic plates
• Cups and bowls
• Small grill to place over rocks
• Coffee pot
• Several large serving spoons
• Spatulas
• Kitchen knives
• Roll of heavy-duty aluminum foil
• Plastic wrap
• Box of strike-anywhere matches
• Long neck lighter
• Bar soap
• Small bottle of dish soap
• Washcloth
• Hand towel
• Steel wool and scrub pads
• Paper towels
• Coffee filters
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It Page 6