Items To Have For Urban Survival/ Bugging In?

I've started my SHTF survival journal covering both urban and rural survival. The first half is on urban survival. I have a list of a few items needed for bugging in (though I want to bug out to avoid looters and riot mobs). So far, the items are:

. Canned Food
. Rice, Beans, Pasta
. Honey
. Firearms, Ammo, Knives
. PVC piping
. Honda EU2000i 2000w quiet inverter generator
. Propane
. Gas
. Clorox
. Trash bags
. Pots, Buckets, and bottles
. Flashlight
. Rechargeable batteries
. Lighter/matches
. First aid kit
. HAM radio

That's it so far. Are there any more essential items to have on hand in urban survival or bugging in? Please let me know.

 

If you are going to ride it out in an urban environment I recommend bolt cutters and crow bars. You also might think about a basic bugler tool kit of jimmys and picks. After things settle you will want to scavenge and in that sort of place those will be your tools. Even in my rural area I have and will tote a Fubar for forced entry just in case.

 

You might consider some of the portable solar panels for charging a couple car batteries. Thus will help reduce your generator time & save gas. Plus the solar is silent.
Check out a "farm battery" at the auto store. They are large and intended for farm truck or tractor. 1000 amps for about a third less than the cost of an average car battery.
There are tons of uses for 12 volt power.

 

With the advent of LED lighting it is actually realistic to at least have light at night based on wind or solar power. You might want to think about trying so LED lights and see what they will do for you. This is actually a good idea for anone that is bugging in whether urban or rural. I have LED lighting in every room of my house already just in case.

 

LED's are fantastic. I'll bet you could have loads of light for quite a long time using one of those farm batteries.

 

Tom is correct, there are many battery options out there depending on how much you can afford. Deep cycle will have a longer run time than a standard battery. Another thing to consider, if SHTF & fuel is in short supply or non-existent, there is a battery in every car & truck on the road. I dread the thought of an urban bug in, but if that's your plan, plan carefully & extensively.

 

Depending on exactly how urban you are talking about you might need to start thinking about making your house more fire resistant and possibly armoring the walls under some of your windows. Even a so called brick house won't stop bullets dependably enough that you could shoot out a window and then duck down and be safe. If you are going to fight from inside your house you will need gun emplacements that are at least able to resist common rifle fore for a few hits. You don't need to do this to every window but you will need armored positions for every direction of possible approach.

If nothing else make a couple of plate steel shields that two people can move from place to place with handles welded on them. If you are in a house on piers you might think about making "foxholes" under the edges of your house that you can get to from a trap door in your house. This is what I'm doing. I have raised flower beds in the front of my house that means that I can get under my house and with little effort have a safe hide with a bullet proof barrier to hide behind.

You might also look into making your yard an unfriendly place for attackers. That means a clear firing line in all directions. You can wait and cut everything until after things go bad but you don't want to offer an attacker something to hide behind. After you clear this area, it you want to be proactive, you can dig them a few obvious little hiding spots like holes or ditches and either plants explosives there or like the bottoms with pointy sticks that you have smeared with nasty stuff. Punji sticks were nasty but effective in Vietnam!

The thing about being in an urban area is that you are absolutely going to have people around your location all the time. You want to be as unattractive as possible to those that might attack you. Make your house look abandoned or at least not prosperous. Board up all your windows except for viewing and gun ports. Never have a light on that can be seen from the outside at night. Get a rocket stove or use gas stoves for cooking and boil most of you meals No smoke and the last thing you want is to fill the air with the smell of cooking meat when people are starving!!!

When you are outside you want to look like someone that nobody really wants to mess with. Be openly armed at all times. I, along with a hand gun or long gun will be packing a battle ax or sword on my back for all to see. Strangely people find the though of getting chopped up to be more frightening than getting shot at. I guess they think that you will miss if you shoot at them but if you are close enough to bring a chopper into action they are going to get hurt BAD.

Unless your neighbors are just a total loss you need to connect with them and set up a mutual defense agreement. Think of it as your own little NATO. You can share with them a little bit and help them but make sure that they do their share and won't run and hide the first time someone gets ugly. I have one neighbor that I won't have anything to do with and if he wants to stay alive after things got to hell he will stay away from me. He is a user that wants you to help him and to borrow your stuff all the time but never has the time to help you and either never returns what he borrows or tears it up. I cut him off years ago. He and his family will be in trouble 48 hours after the lights go out. His idea of prepping is a big bag of popcorn and a case of coke. The last hurricane that left us without power for about a week they were trying to cook with a propane torch in their all electric house. I felt sorry for the wife and kids so we fed them but never again.

 

I believe in the acronym KISS, keep it simple stupid. Water, food and Air are all you actually need. Beyond that everything else is for your comfort not survival. You'll need the good sense to keep secrets so that you aren't having to fight the whole damn world to keep hold of your own.
What you need for every survival situation is good sense..whether it is urban, rural or whatever. Learn to see opportunities and make the most of them without being noticed and making yourself into a target. Blend in, it will be the grey man that survives.

 

Unfortunately if you have water and food someone that doesn't have it is going to take it away from you if you don't also have the will and means to protect it. This has been the story of human relations and history forever so I don't expect it to change if something happens now. Trying to hide just hasn't been an effective survival technique in the past because when people get desperate they start hunting for you. I don't want to be helpless if/when they find me. That is just me though. I don't have a lot of faith in the kindness of the human heart.

 

Forting up will just tell people that you have something that you're willing to fight for, better not to fight if you don't need to because you won't win every time and if you lose its a zero sum game.
Much better not to be noticed then make yourself the Center of attention, I didn't suggest hiding....I suggested not being noticed, there is a big difference.
Ask yourself who is the more likely target, the grey man that you barely notice at the back of a crowd or the big bloke who's trying to assert himself by carrying so many weapons that he clanks when he walks (and is probably a threat.)
I think your approach to this is fundamentally flawed TexDanm

 

You mentioned propane and gas in your list but what are you cooking with? Your list included rice so are you using propane to cook with? You will need to be in a ventilated area. If you have to go out onto a balcony to cook your rice, it will leave you exposed. Do not count on natural gas running because if SHTF then chances are high that utilities will stop.

 

Now, now. There us validity to both approaches. To each his own AND to each situation we will adapt

 

Urban survival takes on a completely different approach.. I lived in the city & I can't hardly think of anything that is sustainable. Cities are pure consumptuon, & have little to no sustainability. All resources are imported. Chances are all utilities will fail. No flushing toilets when water is out, sewage is pumped out so toilets will back up.No hunting or foraging available ( unless your hunting stray cats & dogs. Any resources will be depleated very fast & then what? Become a looter? Or a lamb up for slaughter?

 

I love your batteries Keith. You are already in a good position, living a sustainable lifestyle. I envy you my Brother

 

Our house is urban, and we may be here when the SHTF. We have a shed in the backyard, in which we put enough rebar and razor wire to cover the block wall fence we have on all sides of the backyard. We set up battery-operated motion detectors surrounding the entire property. We measured all windows and purchased plywood, cutting pieces to exact size for each window, and each having a sliding gun port. We planted cacti in the front yard, and will run fishing lines around that perimeter when needed. The four measures above are only for temporary security, we know, but it's a start.

For food we have enough food on hand to feed a family of four for 1 year. We made two rocket stoves which we will use inside our wood-burning fireplace, and a supply of wood in the shed. For water we have a 12k gallon supply in the form of a diving pool, and additional water inside the house to last us about two months.

During recent research I found other great ideas on darlinsplace.com, like the hidden generator under alternative energy and the spy stuff under prepping, which we plan to implement soon. Always something to do in the prepping world.

 

Excellent

 

You need to go back and read my original post where I talked about making your house look either abandoned or not worth raiding. Camouflage is the first step of any good defensive plan. The easiest way to win a fight is not to fight it BUT if you expect to survive on the milk of human kindness you will be disappointed. When the grey man gets attacked he will either be prepared to fight or die. If I die I will go down fighting. As I said though that is just me.

 

I also have a 12,000 gallon pool along with a 1500 gallon cistern that is kept full from roof run off. I am also fortunate to have an old school septic system so I can use grey water for flushing and won't have to dig latrines for a while.

Aren't rocket stoves great?? I have a Eco-zoom and have made another outside with fire bricks and cinder blocks. I also have a big 110 lb smoker but that is going to be like putting shark chum in the water for a while. It puts out a wonderful smell.

I am about to seriously upgrade my emergency food supply. Things that are happening right now on both a domestic and international level are making me somewhat nervous. I am mostly going to put away what I consider staples. Canned meats, Beans, Rice, Corn, Corn meal, Lard, Salt, Oats, Sugar, Flour, Spices and such.

 

Every time I turn the news on I see foreign & domestic forces tearing at the fabric that holds our fragile society together.

 

You and me both Brother. I am a late 60s sorta hippie and I really thought that we had the racial things going the right way. Hell I was part of the George Wallace integration generation and honestly we got along better then than people are now. I had lots of friends that were black and to tell you the truth never really had any trouble with much of anyone except rednecks. LOL they judged my by my long hair but if they had looked down they would have seen my Tony Lama cowboy books before I kicked their butts with them.

I think that what has happened is they stopped having any expectations for black kids. They could do anything and well, they were black and if you said anything you were a bigot. It's human nature to do whatever you can get away with. That is like this Black lives matter business. Most black deaths from gun shots are black on black by a huge majority but the media never covers those killings.

When that guy was killed in Ferguson Missouri the media created the lie that he was on his knees with his hands up when he was shot in the back. It later turned out and was PROVEN that he was charging the cop AND the black people that the media had interviewed to create the lie were NOT EVER THERE! They lied and later lied to the cops and later confessed to lying but well they were black so there were no repercussions. The media yells "Freedom of the press but the press is supposed to tell true stories NOT FICTION. They have no protection when they decide to publish fiction. They are tearing this country up.

I know too many really good black folks to go for it but a lot of people both black and white are getting scared and it is just a matter of time before someone lights the match and BOOM! This crap with the confederate statues is going to blow up. What next are they going to want to tear down the statues of Washington and Jefferson?? They were slave owners too. That was then and this is now. If you think that you can change the past by making us refight the civil war again over our RIGHT to have a history and honor our ancestors too you may be surprised how violently we will resist that.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

 

The rocket stoves are a great idea, while you can still smell them they produce very little smoke (non if you split your wood down to kindling size pieces) That makes them harder to locate.
Like both you and GS have implied, urban survival is at best temporary. It's a wonderful resource to have the 12k gallon water storage pool but even that huge amount will have a finite storage life once the pumps and filters are off. Others in this thread have used the key word...sustainability

 

We will have to start a different thread to discuss this topic. It's a major issue today. Racism is an ugly part of human nature. There is little discussion of how today it's being perpetuated & who is inciting it. I'm seeing it more & more coming from the minority groups themselves. Reverse racism is the same ugly stuff now being committed by yesterday's victims of racism. No one alive today had any part of slavery. I have never oppressed anyone, Ever. I will not stand to be blamed for the actions if others two centuries ago.

 

Make sure you turn OFF the main breaker in your home to the main grid Before connecting. Be safe, always

 

Just for safely sake & excluded ANY possible issues, 2 seconds to flip off your main breaker prior to engaging the generator.

 

The pool and water for after TWDE (The Worst Day Ever...Like TEOTWAWKI but shorter)...

After TWDE you need to pipe the water off your roof into the pool. Our system was designed for two big cisterns but we haven't put the second one in yet. As it is the one 1500 gallon cistern stays full all the time. It will fill easily with three inches of rain. Both the cistern and the pool have a chlorine based system and then for drinking we would run it through a 2 micron filter if we have power or through a regular high volume Sawyer filter 5 gallons at a time via gravity.

If you are bugging in, whether rural or urban, it isn't hard or really very expensive to set up a roof water collection system. You could use barrels instead of a cistern or even after TWDE a cheap vinyl swimming pool for your reservoir. We installed vinyl rain gutters with leaf screens on top. By doing it ourselves it was not very expensive. The down pipe and transfer pipes are 4" schedule 20 pipes.

On hooking up a generator...

You need to turn off your main breaker and unless your generator is putting out 220 volts you need to trip all of the 2 pole breakers to protect the 220 motors and to make sure that you don't creates a short. The only problem with the double male connection is that your house is actually two totally separate 110 lines. You only get the 220 when you put those two SEPARATE lines together. The double male into a plug in the house will only power up the things on that line and the rest of the house will be dead.

What I do is make my connection in the main breaker and after I turn off all of the two pole 220 breakers I put in a jumper between the two main lines so all the 110 plugs work. I know it sounds complicated but I made all the connections through switches so all I have to do is turn off the main, turn all the 220 lines off and turn the crossover on fire up the generator and you are go.

 

When I wired my house for new service I intentionally installed an outside disconnect next to the meter so I can shut down the main & wire my 220v generator direct at the disconnect box. I have previously ran a 10/3 romex cable from the genny to the breaker box thru the utility room door. That was a pain & I could not close the door.
So the disconnect outside is way better for me. It's also conveniently close to the L.P. tank for fuel. 8.5kW honda genny converted to propane. We always have a minimum 500 gals L.P. on tap. Way more efficient than gasoline.

 

I've thought seriously about getting a propane refrigerator. To tell you the truth I'm not sure that a refrigerator isn't about the only modern appliance that I will miss all that much...maybe a fan in the short term I even have that covered. Propane/natural gas refrigerators go back a long time and actually predated common use of electricity.

 

The great thing about running it off propane is that it is a lot more stable then petrol/gasoline and lasts almost indefinitely, I really like the sound of this set up.

 

My vacation cabin has a propane fridge. I was skeptical about them initially, but sure enough it worked great. I don't know about the rate of fuel consumption, will need to check that.
The cabins also are piped thruout with L.P. gas lamps. They use giant mantels just like my Coleman lanterns. Super bright.
The generator conversion to L.P. was a simple kit. Took about an hour to perform. & can be reversed so you can used gasoline again.
Under load, the genny uses about a gallon an hour of gas. That adds up quickly. During extended power outage, we ran the genny about an hour a day. Everyone lined up for showers, filled water jugs, charged batteries, etc.

 

Yes, L.P. is totally stable. It will remain as good as the tank that holds it. & it's practical to buy in bulk. We have gas furnace so our local supplier delivers the fuel. Tops off our tanks once a month. I'd like to purchase additional tanks for SHTF.

 

Can you get a wet leg conversion so that you can use your tanks to fuel up an LPG/petrol car...as far as I can find out there is very little drop in power output and it saves on engine wear. Over here in the UK it's also a damn site cheaper to run on LPG if you can. I've also heard of it being introduced into the fuel air mix of diesels to reduce diesel costs by half.

 

Need some research on this option. The L.P. delivery truck has a PTO pump that transfers the liquid fuel to fill tanks.
A regulator off the tank allows the liquid to change to gas state & give proper demand volume to equipment.
Yes, diesel engines can run a large portion of fuel in the form of L.P.

 

The propane fridges are pretty efficient. All that you really have is a tiny little pilot light flame. The RV fridges that will run on propane, 110 or 12 volt works the same. They basically have either a little flame or a 12 volt heating coil. The 110 is a 12 volt transformer. Instead of a compressor you have a little boiler filled with ammonia. The propane boils and creates pressure and the hot liquid Ammonia under pressure is piped to the evaporator where it is sprayed from a tiny tube into a much larger tube where it immediately vaporizes. The change of state and expanding gas absorbs heat that is then carried out of the fridge where the gas cools and condenses back into a liquid and returns to the boiler. I was the only person in three counties that worked on them before I retired.

Propane trucks are great. I had one. It was a Ford F 150 with a pair of 12 gallon tanks in the back under a tool box and the regular gas tank. It was a 5.0 V8 and you could change on the move with a flip of the switch with no real change in power or gas mileage. It was a used Texas State Highway Department truck. I bought it with 100,000 miles on it put 75,000 more on it then sold it still running like new for almost what I paid for it originally.

 

The wet leg allows LPG in gas form to force LPG in liquid form up a pipe from the bottom of the tank to a filling valve...no motors or PTO involved.

 

Ah, I understand. What we called a dip tube. The feed tube inside the tank dips into the liquid

 

Yup, just like an aerosol can except the contents are their own propellant.

 

I keep in my urban bag some must have tools.
Bolt cutters
St@nley Fubar (combo demo/pry bar)
2 screw drivers
Combo hammer/Hatchet
Plyers

 

Was upstate a couple of Peninsula's over and about an hour and a half out.

On the way I stopped by a gun store I like in that area and stocked up on bullets for reloading.

. 410 Bullets HP in 210 grain ...for my .41 Magnum..in 100 count box.

.357 bullets in 158 grain HP...for .38 Special or .357 Magnum...100 count Have also reloaded this bullet into .35 Remington cases.

And finally a box of 100 count .308 Spire point bullets in 150 grain weight.


When I got to the cabin ...and settled in...I used a fishing pole to string up a nylon line into a tree about 75 feet up. With this nylon line I hoisted up a G5RV antenna with the intent of getting ahold of my friend about 400 miles west in Tennessee.

The other end of this G5RV antenna I tied off close to the ground about four feet in height. This arrangement is called a sloper antenna.

I chose this configuration because under examination of the terrain.....and trees...powerlines...etc...a sloper made sense rather than the usual inverted vee or straight up dipole I often use.

I consider this an exercise in operating out in the field and hooked this antenna to my radio in my truck. This turned out to be much more efficient than my mobile bumper mount with the 75 meter resonator.

I was able to speak with my friend for about 30 minutes.

A quick set up and quick take down arrangement. Just what one needs out in the field.

I have extra 13.8 volt 20 amp power supplies and tuners for making a base station out in the field but decided to go this route of operating out of my truck and just use a more efficient antenna.


Thanks and 73 to all,
Watcherchris

 

I just realized something that I needed to add to the thing about hooking up a generator. You MUST flip the main breaker or your generator is going to back feed and try to power the world. Also just because the power is down now doesn't mean that it may not come back up and fail again several times before it is totally done. Any one of these flickers could cause disastrous damage to your generator or system.

For the short term it would be nice to have a big bottle of welding CO2 with a dip tube. This is how you make dry ice. A hose feeding liquid CO2 into a wooden box makes a block in a couple of minutes. In the summer t his will stretch out how long you can keep meat without it going bad.

I also have several propane tanks and an adapter that lets me refill the little bottles for use on the small propane camping stoves. I have one jug that is about 5' tall and a foot and a half in diameter. That will fuel a lot of cook stoves.

If you are going to stay in an urban area you need to learn to do covert gardening. That means that you don't plant in rows and in general you want to grow mostly root products. Most people don't know what potato, sweet potato, yam, and peanut plants look like. Everyone will recognise and steal corn, mellons, tomatoes beans and peas. A lot of squash vines will not look like food to a lot of people. Plant these in the margins and flower beds of your property or even in local fields and parks then harvest at night so nobody sees and figures out what you have.

 

When hooking up a genny to ones house it must be isolated from the grid first or you will need a freaking huge genny as you will be attempting to power the entire grid!

The urban environment is 3D unlike most rural areas so a rope and harness will be handy.
One can loose a tracking dog by repelling of an overpass/bridge/high building etc

unless the dog can repel of course.

 

Even in rural areas rope, chain, winches and come alongs are extremely handy. That is one of the things about that is nice about either bugging in or having a good place to bug out too. You don't have to be limited to what you can carry or move in a single trip in your car or truck. I also have a big roll of barbed wire and some aircraft cable.