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Vika
06-03-2008, 03:50 PM
Level Two Preparedness – A Lot More Commitment

As I wrote before, the main problems with Level One Preparedness are three.
1. It doesn’t account for your need for water, beyond what you can store on the shelf.
2. It doesn’t account for a need for shelter (even if that only means heat in the winter).
3. It doesn’t account for your possible need for security.

There are other non-life threatening problems, such as a absence of fresh fruits and vegetables, or lack of a perfectly balanced diet, but for now, let’s not quibble about the small stuff.

Level One Preparedness is a legitimate form, even if it isn’t perfect. It is well suited for allowing you to deal with short-term natural disasters, or a financial crisis, either personal or wide spread. There were folks living on the fringe of hurricane Katrina who didn’t have electricity for several weeks. Your Level One stockpile of staples will allow you to be a big help to your neighbors in such case. In the event of a countrywide depression, where people just go hungry for lack of money to buy food, your stores might mean sleeping well on a full stomach. Or, in the event of a personal financial crisis, where you lose your job for a long period of time, your stores might allow your children to sleep well on a full stomach.

Level Two Preparedness addresses the first two of the problems listed above, water and shelter. Security is what will distinguish Level Three.

It is my contention here that if you live in the city, or a town, excepting for the most mild disaster scenarios, such as economic depression, or localized natural disaster (hurricane), you are going to be hurting (unless your situation is something quite unique for a city dweller). You will be hurting mainly for lack of long term water supply, and soon after that for lack of security. You might have a wood stove, or a fireplace in your house in the city, so shelter is potentially solvable, but the other two problems well might kill your plans.

If you’re serous about long-term preparedness, you must move out of the city. Even if you live in a town, you have to move out. Living in a city or town almost always means you are closely coupled to the municipal infrastructure. It normally means that you are heavily dependent upon on that infrastructure, whether it is electricity, municipal water, or local security services. On a typical city lot, or in a city apartment, you just don’t have the space or flexibility to provide for self-sufficiency infrastructure. You might find an unusually good opportunity in town, such as a home site with a shallow well, or you might even have one drilled, but that will be very a-typical, and still leaves you facing other associated problems.

To get beyond Level One, you really need to move to a place in the country with either a reliable year-round surface water source, or with huge fresh water storage, or with a well and some means to draw water from it when the electricity is out. If you’re lucky, you can find a place with a twenty-foot deep well and install a pitcher pump. Less lucky will be a 100 foot or 200 foot deep well that you can fit with a special deep-well manual piston pump. Most lucky would a be fresh water spring bubbling up on your own property, a few hundred feet up the hill from the house, or a clear-flowing mountain steam nearby. Otherwise, you can install a rainwater collection tank, as is commonly done when people live in the “bush” in Australia. There, it is common to install a 10,000-gallon above-ground cistern next to the house, usually a cylindrical gunnite formed concrete tank, to get through the summer when the typical marginal well runs dry during the summer months. Or you can rely on a deep well pump powered by a small diesel generator. The generator and pump can run for one hour a day and charge multiple pressure tanks in parallel, or pump into a hold tank. Remember to provide for spares of every critical item or part.

Another question to ask is about family. How many people are depending on you? How many children and grandchildren might be drawn to you for support in a time of crisis? If you have an extended family that you need or want to plan for, you aren’t going to accomplish much unless you live outside of town. You will need a lot of space to store provisions. To provide for extended family, you need many more stores than is practical with the Level One Easy Approach, and for that you need space.

To provide for extended family, your approach to food storage must also be different. There is no way that two of you (for example) can rotate through enough of the food you regularly eat, in order to prevent spoilage. You will need to be storing whole grains, powdered milk, sugar, salt, more dried beans, more rice, plus dried and freeze dried foods. You will need to be concentrating heavily on food items with a long shelf life as the core of your food storage plan. These you can supplement with a wide variety of canned fish, canned meat, canned vegetables, and canned fruit. More problematic are those important-to-have items with shelf life of less than two years, such as cooking oil and peanut butter.

There are lots of other things to think about storing, such as flashlights, batteries and first aid supplies, but my intent here is not to cover all of those details that are well covered elsewhere, but to review concepts.

Living in the country, you will also have space for your non-food stores. You will need fuel, whether it is fire wood, or kerosene, or stove oil. Those things take up a lot more space than a typical town lot can accommodate.

And there are a whole lot of good posts around the topics of livestock and home gardening. No need for me to repeat those ideas here, but feel free to respond with any suggestion that comes to mind. Obviously, those things are hard to accomplish living on a city lot, and impossible for the city condo dweller.

If you can’t move to a place in the country, do you have any close relatives who do? Can you interest them in crisis preparedness? Can you contribute enough to the effort (money, improvements, supplies, labor) to make yourself an equal partner if the day ever comes when their country homestead becomes a refuge?

If you can’t move to a place in the country, can you find two or three other couples that share your interest in preparedness? If three or four couples share resources, maybe it is possible to buy or build a “vacation retreat” in the country that would be the “go to” place for all of you when a real crisis comes. Here again, your food storage plans would need to be tailored to the situation. A multi-family approach to preparedness planning is fraught with potential problems, so many that it might very rarely be workable, but it might be better than no plan at all.

This contemplation of a move to the country is a major, major commitment for most people. And this is where the rubber hits the road with regard to our disagreements about how much preparedness is going to be needed. Some subset of all of the readers of this forum think like me, that is, if you live in the city, you are probably going to die when the real crisis comes. But others think differently.

If you are single, or a couple, and are relying on that “bug out” kit you have prepared, tell me to where you are going to bugout? If it will be a localized disaster that you will bugout from, then all you will really need is some money, wheels, gas, and a head start from the crowd. If it is a generalized disaster, where will you go? Do you think that you will camp in the woods until the crisis is over? Are you planning to knock on some farmer’s door and ask to pay for lodging and food? I am interested to hear your thoughts on this, because I don’t see the bugout planners addressing this. Yes, it will be nicer to die quietly in the country than in the middle of the chaos of a city gone mad, but are you setting yourself up to settling for just a couple of weeks until you become one of the starving, wandering homeless?

Maybe I am wrong about a lot of this. I really enjoy this forum for the lack of rude and inflamatory posts. But strong disagreement can evoke strong emotons if you are feeling the need to defend your beliefs. If so, please keep in mind that these are just my ideas, and I respect your right to think differently. Your replies will be welcomed with interest.

In the next segment, I consider Level Three Preparedness, which is characterized by your plans for security. This need for security is an equally compelling reason to move away from the city. To my mind, perhaps even more compelling.

tacmedic
06-03-2008, 04:40 PM
While I agree that people that live in the cities will have a much more difficult time surviving when the real SHTF for a long period, however I don't think that everyone will die. People have always managed to survive in cities during major disasters. Look at most of Europe during WWII, yes many many people abandoned cities for the relative safety of the countryside, but many people stayed in the cities and were able to survive. So, survival in the city is not without precedent. Although, I agree that it would not be an easy task.

Rick
06-03-2008, 04:51 PM
Vika - I like the way you are going with this but I disagree with your analysis. First, your plan should include where you are going regardless of the type, extent or duration of a disaster. Pre-planning is essential whether you need to migrate out of your home because of a weather event or some man-made event. Those of you that have animals must also include some level of evacuation for your cattle or horses, who will perform that function and where they will be taken. The plan I put together addresses this specific piece.

Next, you need to include a communication plan. You are correct to extend your view to those that will depend on you but don't limit yourself to thinking they will be gathered around you when some event occurs. Such is probably NOT the case. Without a communication plan you will have little chance of tracking everyone down and determining what needs to be done to gather everyone up.

As for the water portion, there is no reason to move out of an urban environment to ensure you have access to adequate water. 1. Your apartment or home has a water heater that also can serve as a water storage device. 2. You can keep additional water supplies on hand (I rotated two 5 gallon containers this morning). 3. A good quality water filter with spare filter will extend existing water supplies. Most filters will deliver in the 200 gallon range. A spare filter will double your capability.

Gardening is not impossible for an apartment/condo dweller. More difficult certainly but container gardening is still possible. None of us, short of several dozen acres, are going to grow a self sustaining food source. The most we can hope to accomplish is to augment our stores.

Being coupled to the municipal infrastructure is actually a bonus. If I have the capability to exist without utilities then anything that works is a plus.

Your assertion that if I live in the city I am probably going to die is unfounded, IMHO. I will hold Katrina up as an very real example of what life will be like if TSHTF for any reason. Such was not the case in New Orleans in the aftermath of the actual storm. Only the SuperDome and other isolated pockets spelled trouble for its citizens. That's true today without a disaster.

I would suggest that the city offers me far more in terms of resources than the wilderness. Neighbors that work together to achieve a common goal rather than by myself.

I get the feeling you think there will be roving bands of malcontents taking whatever they want to take. That's not what happened in New Orleans and I don't think it will happen in many other places either.

Still, you offer up some thought provoking material.

bulrush
06-04-2008, 11:57 AM
If you’re serous about long-term preparedness, you must move out of the city.
I agree. I live in an old suburb. In my neighborhood, lots are small (50x80 feet), as are the houses. There are 3 streams in my area, but all, I assume, are polluted due to the various industries upstream. I also live in the area with the 2 most polluted streams in the state. So I cannot expect my water filter to make that water safe for me to drink, nor will boiling remove the chemicals. Distilling the water MIGHT get most of the chemicals out, but no one has ever studied that facet of water purification. Activated carbon gets SOME chemicals out, but not all bind to the carbon.

So, for me, my lot is not big enough to make a garden to provide me with much food. I am not close to usable water that I can purify.

That's not to mention all the 4 and 2 legged animals we have around here. My immediate neighborhood is not the worst, but I'm within walking distance (about 4 miles) of the worst neighborhoods in the county.

vanguard1
06-04-2008, 05:01 PM
Excellent post vika, same for level 1.

You really hit a chord with bringing up commitment, and the comment of being homeless and hungry after two weeks. I feel it's vital that planning begin WELL in advance of anything, at least as far in advance as possible. Of course everyone has different circumstances and this will directly impact any plans, let alone the dynamics of situations where survival prep and skills may be called upon at any time under any circumstance.

One has to ask themselves if in a bug-out scenario - how committed they are to actually doing it. In my case, since I can only speak for myself, bug-in is a short term plan - as storing food and water is problematic inside a complex where space is at a premium. So if things don't improve within that time period, which is determined by the provisions stored already, then evac is the next step.

For me evac means far out of the metropolis, and this brings one to the commitment part of the plan. Once establishing shelter in an area, one has to ask themselves the hard questions of intention and abilities.

Is one ready to consume blood, boil bones, roast insects, construct traps, make soap..ect? It's one thing to have to deal with a short term situation, and short term in itself is dynamic, what defines short? TO me that's a period of time where what provisions you have augmented with some of natures bounty will pull you through. Beyond that time period then you have to look at getting all the nutrients required for your body to sustain itself...this requires consuming items not on the 'normal' menu.

While I believe I have the commitment to do it, simply because I value living, the only test is going to be doing it, for real. IN that case there is no turning back - either fallout, disease, any number of items can be barriers to a return before the time has arrived. Of course one has to consider that even upon a return - what will be there to return to? Will returning be a long term plan? or a short term plan depending on conditions?

One has to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, when you're confronted with that raccoon that's invading your camp...do you run it off...or take it for consumption? The latter for me, but that's the mindset I'm going with. People need to ask themselves those questions, give them serious weight and consider the implications of undertaking something they may find themselves faltering in - and if other depend on them...it could very easily become a death sentence for all.

I'm no expert by any means, however it does not mean I am doomed, think of all possible scenarios and plan for the worst while hoping for the best - but not to let the good hopes blur the reality of the situation, grasp the situation and take control. Commitment indeed is required. As in the worst case scenarios, there may never be a return, never be another chance to make a call.

Thanks for the great posts, look forward to 3.

Anyone please feel free to direct me in other directions if my thinking is setting me up for failure.

Ole WV Coot
06-04-2008, 10:56 PM
I guess I've worked most floods, hurricanes, tornado jobs and just about at any scale except Katrina(was retired, for which I am thankful). We have driven where folks had no water and gave away ours plus ice. We were always furnished something to eat or drink, but gave most of it away. Folks get scared and do crazy things and I remember an old couple who politely asked if we had a glass or two of water since they ran out the day before. The big problem everywhere was looters and if you are prepared best be ready for them. They will take stuff they don't know what it is just to have something to steal.

crashdive123
06-05-2008, 07:23 AM
Very nice, well thought out plan Vika. I tend to disagree with having to move to a rural or wilderness location in order to survive though. I realize that everybody's situation as to where they are now is going to be quite different. I live in, what by all accounts is a fairly large city. There are many different environments within the city. There is the downtown area that looks no different than most other downtown areas - office buildings, gov buildings, residential high rises, shops, restaurants, etc. Being in a city that is so spread out, we also have many different residential areas that come with all of the infrastructure you would expect. A little further out we have a large farming community - livestock as well as planted stock. The nickname for the area is "River City", so as you can imagine, there are large sources of water. Maybe it's because I have more faith in human nature than others, maybe I'm being foolish and idyllic (sp?), but I like my chances where I am. I have always helped people where I can, and have seen them do the same in emergencies. Are there going to be unique problems associated with a denser population? Sure there will be, but I feel that there will also be some unique opportunities that will not be provided to those in a remote setting. Again, thankyou for your thoughtful post, I like a lot of your ideas. I look forward to your thoughts on level 3.

Dennis K.
06-06-2008, 09:28 AM
I get the feeling you think there will be roving bands of malcontents taking whatever they want to take. That's not what happened in New Orleans and I don't think it will happen in many other places either.

Still, you offer up some thought provoking material.

I think there is some precedent regarding roving bands of malcontents. This is one of the articles that really got me thinking about disaster preparedness:
http://www.frfrogspad.com/disastr.htm

Now - quick disclaimer - I generally don't believe everything I find on the internet. BUT - consider the mass looting in New Orleans and surrounding areas. Also factor in the stories of temporary relief workers - A friend from my church (a police officer) spent two weeks in NO - and he did face sniper fire. Also, he faced gangs that were VERY protective and territorial.

I think personal security will have a much bigger role in a large scale disaster. Can't say for sure if I would feel better in an urban area with a few more resources, or out in the sticks with less resources, but no help for miles.

BraggSurvivor
06-06-2008, 10:01 AM
I would suggest that the city offers me far more in terms of resources than the wilderness. Neighbors that work together to achieve a common goal rather than by myself.

So when the chaos erupts and the cities are on fire, you plan to logon to your FaceBook and MySpace chatrooms to socially network?

I hadn't considered that.
Could work I suppose.

commoguy
06-06-2008, 05:10 PM
personally i think living in the city could be both helpful and a hinderence(sp). living in the city there is obviously more structures so shelter wouldnt necessarily be an issue. resources while some may be scarce ive yet to see any store that sells food run out of dog food or ramen lol. the downside is security while it can be had it takes lots of scouting. also anything youve deemed resourceful may also be deemed so by others and you may not have the means to protect your things. i thinks its very much a catch 22 and would have to determined when the need came.

Rick
06-07-2008, 09:26 AM
Me, too, Remy. But I'm going kickin' and screamin'!:D