How to Prepare for Urban Survival
The UK is a highly populated island with most of the people living in built up areas with thousands of others very close by. This means there must be a completely different mindset when it comes to prepping for Urban Survival in the city and towns.
Of course it is fine knowing how to set up a camp and extract water from a plant leaf and catch a fish, but it is far more possible you will be caught in a situation where it’s you, thousands of others and a concrete jungle.
Not miles of wilderness with food to hunt and an abundance of natural resources at you disposal.
You cannot rely on the emergency services to even reach you in an Urban Survival situation especially a disaster scenario that takes out the whole of a city and worse still the whole country, like a full power grid shutdown or blackout.
There are generally two main types of scenarios for surviving a city type disaster – home or work –
at home you should be prepared and ready with all you need to hunker down and ride out the problems if that is your chosen Bug In or Bug Out method.
BUT – “What would you do
if a disaster scenario began to unfold whilst you were at work in a city”?
The #1 rule for surviving in a city is – get out of the city fast.
Don’t faff about, don’t hang around, just pick up as much essential survival kit as you can along the way [ food, clothing etc – see below ] but take yourself out of the danger zone as quickly as possible and as safely as you can.
It doesn’t take long for a situation to escalate putting you in real danger
What are the main considerations to surviving in a town or city.
- Full survival skills and prepping kit must still be the main concern for any UK Prepper way before any disaster strikes. – so be prepparred.!
- It goes without saying that a good EDC kit is a must. It must also be specific to the possible situations found in surviving in a city
- Personal protection like UK Legal Pepper Spray is also high on the list to ward of possible muggers and anyone trying to stop you getting out of town.
The main rules of survival – these remain the same for any survival situation
- Shelter
- Water
- Fire
- Food
Remember this chilling fact –
- Extreme weather can kill you in a matter of just 3 minutes –
- A lack of water can kill you in 3 days –
- No food will kill you in only 3 weeks –
Shelter.
In a town or city finding shelter should be quite easy – BUT, finding SAFE shelter is a bigger consideration and may take a bit more time once you have assessed the overall situation. Some buildings or whole areas may not be safe. There may be areas where fire risks are high or looters are rampaging – assess the situation and danger levels to you before considering stopping to find shelter.
Water.
Providing you have good preps in your EDC, water should not be a big problem in a city either – with most houses having storage tanks and various other water sources available.
Your primary method of ensuring you have safe drinking water is something like the DrinkSafe Water Straw designed for exactly this type of situation.
Being small, light and compact it is the number 1 item to pack in a EDC.
Fire.
The main need for a fire in the wilderness is for warmth, cooking, drying out clothes and physiological comfort – these are not necessarily the same needs in an urban environment as it’s very possible your shelter is inside a home – but a fire is still essential for cooking and warming water etc. It is, therefore, essential to have a means of starting a fire readily available in your EDC,
Food.
Food presents the most challenges when considering how to prepare for urban survival – you are not really going to be able to hunt down food as you would in the wild and the stores will be stripped of all foods in days.
As soon as possible you must assess the situation – listen to a radio and try to see what has happened – talk to people if it’s safe to do so and get information.
Never underestimate the severity of a disaster situation and remember – it can always escalate into something far worse.
If it is possible and safe to do so, try to get food that will keep and then hide it in a safe cache – do this as much as you can – make a note of where your caches are and repeat.
Pasta and all canned foods are the number one supplies to search out – any perishable foods found must be eaten straight away or stored with you to eat that day.
Other Urban Survival Tricks.
Raid the dump! Find your nearest local dump or tipping station – there will be an abundance of clothes, blankets, pots etc. that will be free available for you to take as essential supplies.
2 comments
John Smith
January 2, 2017 at 1:00 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
A very important factor in prepping is personal fitness. You can have all the gear and knowledge you want, but surviving is about being healthy enough to cope with the stresses of the extreme situations that may arise. The internet is full of UK preppers who are middle aged obese people who don’t look like they would survive a steady jog never mind a SHTF event.
Carl Jones
September 19, 2016 at 11:07 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I think this blanket advice to get out of the city (I live in Central London) is wrong. If the situation appears to warrant the leave option, then tens of thousands, maybe millions will be thinking the same thing. Dan Snow let slip on The One Show that in such an event, the authorities would shoot anyone trying to leave London. This may have changed, but I doubt it.
I was chatting to my brother in law and he seemed to think he and his family would be safe in the Oxfordshire countryside. So I said, ‘what will you do when four city thugs drives down your lane in a 4×4 late at night’? Don’t be fooled into thinking the police will come, they won’t.
Dependent on situation, I would lie low and don’t go out unless you really need to. Don’t let your neighbours know you are sorted, play the game and act desperate if you have talk to them. Here in Central London, I am sure they’d put a curfew into effect. So unless the situation is very close, I’d stay put.
The really important reason for prepping in Central London, is that if some large event kicked off and it lasted several days, possibly a week or two, the supermarkets will close and there won’t be any food deliveries, because insurance companies won’t cover them and same for fuel.
Once you leave the Central London area, say three or four miles from the center, the game changes again. There is a huge disparity in police resources. It is in these outer suburbs where you’d be at most risk and where curfew enforcement could be patchy.
My belief in that MI6 are desperate to roll out an urban false flag terror attack in London (probably) on the lines of Mumbai which lasted four days. This could be over several locations in and out of London with fluidity, like Paris. The British MSM have agreed a deal with the police/security services that cameras and choppers will keep to an agreed distance. So you can look forward to lots of vague reporting relaying on carefully scripted messages. WARNING: IF you are a witness, be very careful what you do and say. Anyone who threatens the script is in danger. Play for time, claim you are in shock and don’t go to the media, because they’ll dob you in.