Avoiding Trouble -- Urban Survival Techniques

This is the second in a series of Urban Survival Techniques essays about Protecting Yourself in case of economic or monetary collapse. This one is based on GT's observations about how to protect yourself by avoiding trouble in the first place. At some time you may have to decide whether you want to be a “hero” and fight and perhaps get severely injured or killed, or whether you want to run away to "live to run away another day". GT provides several survival tips to avoid trouble including how to make yourself inconspicuous when necessary and how to redirect attention from yourself to others.

The first in the series is Learn to Observe for Urban Survival.

You don't want to make it apparent that you have tried to protected yourself from the coming dollar collapse, economic chaos, and rioting by having gold, silver, and other survival supplies stored. Another way to protect yourself in the coming chaos is to not to fight but to let the bad-asses fight and kill each other off.

It is not a good idea to be constantly fighting. You can get so tired that someone eventually can beat you. There is always someone younger, tougher, or even luckier than you who will beat you.

Being in a street gang, especially being leader, is a job for the young. There are probably not too many gangs with a lot of members over the age of 25 to 30 or so. Probably the sense of immortality wanes, or they get crippled, or they get thrown into jail.

So who survives? Those who never get into fights in the first place. There are some who grew up in such ghetto horror shows but decided to get out somehow.. They are the dreamers. They are extremely hard to catch. They learn to avoid all those at the bottom who want to destroy them and their dreams. It doesn't take much to learn to hide your dreams. Avoid the bad guys and let them kill each other.

If the dollar becomes worthless as has happened historically to all other fiat paper money, there will be a lot of people who will turn to violence. They may profit in the short term, but in the end many will kill each other off. Many gold-bugs will be tempted to turn to violence as well to protect themselves and their gold. As part of their survival plans they bought guns to protect themselves. Be that as it may, when the rioting starts that would be a good time to become very hard to find. Not only from looters but from the government as well.

You will likely have to attempt to protect yourself from the government (the “state”). The moment you try to protect yourself against the government, you've got big problems -- far more than most people can handle. The state will use all its power to get you to toe the line and to turn over whatever you have managed to save -- whether it's gold, food, or toilet paper. Evil Hoarder! It is better to avoid the state if at all possible. The government will have it hands busy with troublemakers. Hopefully it will not notice that you have disappeared.

How can you make yourself scarce? In survivalist novels, you have small groups heading out to retreats in the country that are stocked to the rafters with survival supplies. Such books make good reading but are impractical for most. For one thing, moving to the rural countryside becomes impossible if you have young children or old parents to take care of. The children won't want to go and the parents may be unable to go. The option of moving to a small town where you don't have to face the chaos may not be an option. Chances are, they won't want you if you just show up. And, even if you have established a prior presence, you may not be able to get there WTSHTF. No, you're going to have to learn how to survive in the most dangerous parts of a city without ever being seen, or even thought about.

Besides guns and gold, your crisis plan should include stocking up on food. You may be hesitant to do so, but a year's supply of food actually doesn't take up that much space. Canned goods are fine. Some may like the survivalist type Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). Others, if they have a supply of water, may like the freeze-dried food supplies. Divide your stash up, and store parts of it in different locations,, if possible.

If the riots happen, rioters will attack small grocery stores, liquor stores, the supermarkets and warehouse stores to loot food and other items. You don't want to be fighting for a share. Better to buy ahead. There is only about a week's supply or less of food on supermarket shelves. That will disappear FAST! Stock up in advance.

After two weeks of not eating, most people are too weak to do anything. The looters will find their food supply running out and in a couple of weeks they will be looking for other places to loot. They will have already cleaned out their own neighborhoods. Where else to go than into the richer neighborhoods? In previous riots, the poor burned their own neighborhoods. Next time they will march into the nearest upper-class neighborhood or suburb.

One of the most important things to enable you to survive in the chaos of the cities is to blend in. Hide in plain sight. Make it look like you are starving and desperate, too. Sit down now while you are calm and relaxed and think of what may work for you. If you think about protecting yourself now, your thinking will be a lot clearer than trying to think while in the middle of chaos.

The last urban survival technique in this essay is to give the opportunists, the rioters, and the government another target. Lay low. There will be plenty of fools who will be calling attention to themselves. You will be aware of them as will everybody else. Just try to get those who might try to hurt you to look in their direction, not yours. But if they do notice you, just a simple “Look there what those guys are doing”, might work. Giving the attackers another target may work for you.

Add these urban survival ideas to your preparedness checklist and hopefully they will work for you when the time comes to protect yourself from the coming urban meltdown.

For the next in the series, see The Black Market for Urban Survival.