When you must live in a disadvantaged location and "bug in"...

This has been bugging me for a few years now - not because I expect a total collapse but want to prepare for two/three weeks of WROL due to natural disaster or extended riots. OK, so here is the basic situation:

- Heavily populated apartment living with a elementary school aged child
- Need to be very close to a work site location 24/7
- Child has disabilities that can be managed for weeks on end but gear can't be moved readily

So it's a situation where you're bolted down in a place I'd rather not be. So what can I do to better prepare over and above the regular "stock up" advise.

Here have been my general thoughts so far and I'd love feedback and more tips. My child is obviously precious to me and I'll never feel prepared enough for her.

- Reinforce doors with Door Devils
- Consider ballistic panels to put in place behind doors and windows, can't afford something for all of them so just enough to "harden" one room from outside shot?
- Gorilla tape and garbage bags to block "in" light sources
- Dehumidifier for closed environment and some sort of basic ventilation system through discreet window-side tube?
- If I expect the complex to be mostly empty, have something to create hallway noise (intentionally litter foam debris in hallway?)
- Is it better to have more barter available for would-be aggressors? I'd think not but someone said it's worth a try. I'd think if they're going to be aggressors - it won't matter much to them.

- Apartment dog would seem like a bad idea for concealment but do the protection benefits outweigh that?

Other general thoughts? Obviously all the regular comms, medicine, etc. rules apply. I'm thinking anything more unique to the bad starting position and bug-in requirement. Thanks, -Mags

Do you have enough room to store food & water to live for a few weeks without leaving the apartment?

If so...then maybe you'd be ok if you kept your head down & got lucky...provided your apartment is a little out of the way from the entry of the complex.

It's possible that some groups would do door to door searches for resources but probably not if it was only going to be a couple weeks...

One factor is that the danger potential of door to door is high & the rewards would not be as good as hitting the well-to-do neighborhoods or businesses so it's not likely to be a primary target area for roving gangs & looters.

I would definitely think on how to harden windows without making it obvious - even if you just had to drill in some OSB & 2x4s

An escape plan would be wise also...ie. what happens if someone does kick the door in?

I've followed this guy for a while & he's probably going to be a decent resource for you - he lives in a small apartment/housing unit in Flint, MI:

Something often overlooked and not really discussed as it applies to "survival" is the element of community and social cooperation.

Not everyone has large families to run to, or a network of gun toting hardened and prepped ex-military types to hang out with, nor even a place to run to.

In situations where all you've got is what you've got, and you're incapable of of moving, or moving would be difficult, it's best to think forward and foster community relationships that could be of value should some big event come to occur.

You're in an apartment building?
Do you have access to the roof (if it's a flat roof)?
If you have a flat roof and it's relatively easy to access, with landlord permission, you, and other community members in your block could set up rooftop gardens.
Having these already established and underway would be much to your and your community's advantage should anything dire occur. Tending a garden is also a great way to pass the time, and can be sold to the landlord as a feature perk that could increase the perceived (non-monetary, but worthwhile atmospheric) value for future renters.
I wouldn't recommend mentioning anything about the apocalypse to the landlord. A simple "Hey, I'd like to grow a garden and I think it'd be a nice project that could even increase atmospheric value to future renters as a community space", would be enough.

If, however, you don't have that option, there are other ways to build up community ties in sponsoring activities like group "yard sales" you could organize with people in your building in a courtyard area, cookoffs, and other such.

Going it alone in a survival situation is cool and nice and all, but, when it comes to the end of civilization, keeping as much civilization in culturing ties to a community could result in a group of folks with a variety of skills that could compliment each other and work well together in helping the whole group out to greater success than the stereotypical cliche lone-survivor type.

If you can't move, work on community as those who don't leave, that stay, you can depend on while they depend on you.

reply to post by Insurrection


What exactly are you preparing for? Relax and enjoyable life and if you have a child with disabilities then please don't burden her life further with senseless worry.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Alice, is there a situation brewing in the cities that is requiring thoughts about fortifying at the moment? I'm wondering. I've been staying away from them recently.

AutumnWitch657
reply to post by Insurrection

 

What exactly are you preparing for? Relax and enjoyable life and if you have a child with disabilities then please don't burden her life further with senseless worry.

Having been in two unrest situations as a single man and covered them - as a father I'm not willing to take that chance.

coldkidc

An escape plan would be wise also...ie. what happens if someone does kick the door in?

The basics were all done but this is causing me trouble. I do have a backpack I made just to take her with me on long hikes. I can use that to move her quickly if needed but from there I'm not sure what we'd do.

I might just have to invest in a SUV that I can fit everything in with a alternator setup that can support it. So we can evac properly instead of hunkering down. I do now know. Hrmm.

AliceBleachWhite

In situations where all you've got is what you've got, and you're incapable of of moving, or moving would be difficult, it's best to think forward and foster community relationships that could be of value should some big event come to occur.

Agreed - even though I'm a grumpy fsck. Working on it.

Thanks so far all! -Mags

darkbake
reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

 

Alice, is there a situation brewing in the cities that is requiring thoughts about fortifying at the moment? I'm wondering. I've been staying away from them recently.

I've no foresight, awareness, or inkling about any sort of anything that could affect anyone anywhere on the scale of SHTF.
There's Yellowstone, sure, but, that's Yellowstone and it's anyone's guess when that will go, or not.

As far as urban concentrations go, it's counter-intuitive, but, barring something like a terrorist attack that targets urban concentrations, or some other event that makes the city uninhabitable, a large city is probably a much better place to shelter and set up shop than anywhere else since as a matter of course most people will go running for the "hills", all the places that panicked people will run to like lemmings will become the stuffs of nightmare filled with starvation, person on person predation for supplies, exploitation, murder, overcompetition for the sparse resources available in the "hills" and other such.

Meanwhile, back in the big cities that have been so recently depopulated, there's a lower concentration of human threats and competition for resources, as well as one's pick of now empty, unused and easily fortified and defendable buildings. As well, every city typically has a warehouse district which serves as point of distribution to all the innumerable business chains.

Find the warehouse district and one will have supplies enough to last decades.

On top of that, in most cities, there's solar powered road signs where the solar panels can be scavenged along with all the batteries, alternators, and even fuel from abandoned vehicles.
Tall buildings offer wonderful positions for setting up wind power, as well as roof-top gardens that can be defended.

Also, where hardware stores in small communities and towns will get picked clean by people passing through and locals, tools and material supplies in cities will be much easier to come by.

All in all, urban environments, especially so with a moderate community group together could do quite very well in exploiting the resources of a city, much more so than risking all the competition with those on the run.

Additionally, if it's home ground, there's home ground familiarity advantage; something one loses immediately upon going on the run anywhere.

There's certainly arguments against staying in a city, but, when one considers the overwhelming mass of an entire population fleeing FROM cities, and not only having to deal with the logistics of living on the run, but also dealing with other people on the run that have been stripped of the polite trappings of civilization, the risks in running compared to staking out familiar ground that can be defended with the help of others can speak toward certain advantage.

reply to post by Insurrection

Instead of foam debris, use broken glass.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


You think everyone will leave town right away, but it will only be those that are prepared. Everyone else is thinking along the lines of what you put here.

Insurrection



- Apartment dog would seem like a bad idea for concealment but do the protection benefits outweigh that?

I think any kind of pet can serve as a good alarm system. I live in an apartment building and my next-door neighbors have a lot of comings and goings. Although my cats would offer no bodily protection, they can tell far better than I do who is a regular visitor to the building and who is a stranger/potential intruder.

reply to post by Insurrection


Do the opposite of what the corporate political puppets are telling you. Build community not a barricade. Foster friendship not fear. Learn from human history and evolve. United the human species survives and thrives ... divided we fall into extinction.

It depends on the nature and duration of the emergency.

FEMA estimates that the average American city has 3-5 days' worth of food within it. If the disaster is potent enough to stop the trucks from bringing food in, what will a government have to provide, to get civilization fed again?

The average adult eats around 5 lb of food. A tractor trailer rig can carry 40,000 - 45,000 lbs. of food. So imagine that each truck can bring in enough food to feed 9000 people for a day.

Thus. you will need 112 trucks per day to bring in food for 1 million people for that day. This means you'll also need fuel for the trucks, a crew to unload and distribute the food.... and a chain of factories in another region, filling up that many trucks with that much food.

So in DFW, that is 650 trucks per day of food. Plus workers to unload the food, cooks to cook the food, and workers to distribute it. And probably armed guards to maintain order while people eat.


Once they eat the food, they'll need to poop the next day.

Then there's the health threat when the sewer system goes down. As pipes back up and overflow, you'll get poo floating in the streets. As toilets back up, people will start going in alleys and yards and in parking lots. That is the perfect environment for scarlet fever an dysentery. And once it rains, it all gets washed into local creeks ponds and lakes.

Were you planning on using local water for drinking? Most people in an emergency will walk down to the water's edge to fill their buckets. They won't wash the outsides of the buckets, so whatever was on the floor where they had the bucket is now in the lakes and rivers. And the stuff from the shoes is in the mud of the lakeshore, from where they squated when they pooped.

Yes, the cities will depopulate fairly quickly

3 things.

First, stop the water in your hot water heater from being sucked back out into the system when and if the water goes off. If you have a decent sized hot water heater this is a large backup water supply. You will need to maintain the water heater correctly by draining the sediment once a year for this to work.

Second, you can use alcohol for bathing. A cloth and alcohol can be used very much like a shower. However you aren't going to wash your hair with it. When it comes down to it though are you going to care about your hair? I would just shave my head.

Third, have a bug out plan that is solid. If it really comes to rioting and looting I would be more concerned about rioting if I lived in an apartment complex. What if they set fire to your building? You're inside. You will have to exit the building at that time or be burned alive.

Just a few things you might think about.

superman2012
reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

 

You think everyone will leave town right away, but it will only be those that are prepared. Everyone else is thinking along the lines of what you put here.

I beg to differ.
I was in Houston, TX when the Threat of Hurricane Rita was bearing down.
Around 100 people died as a result of sitting in their cars TRAPPED in 3 whole days of absolute gridlock in attempts to evacuate, fleeing the city.

Meanwhile, I was snug, happy, relaxed, and enjoying myself quite thoroughly in a city largely depopulated. It was quite fun driving around in what was suddenly a ghost town.
I had all the usual reserves in store, so, I wasn't really in want for anything, though I do recall being a bit frowny faced at discovering even all the Starbucks were closed.
Pretty much EVERYTHING was closed.
Grocery Stores were locked, and boarded up with police cars in the lots, where the same also was true for sporting goods stores, and other likely targets looters might be tempted to hit.
Even petrol stations were completely out of gas and locked up.

It was all quite fun and very SHTFish.

My only real concern was other people. Once the storm hit, I was concerned looter types might attempt taking advantage of the chaos and spill over into all the now abandoned neighborhood houses.

I was, however, ready, though I wasn't particularly relishing the idea of being forced to defend home and body. Still, sticking home beat joining the lemmings, and I had much more resource, security, and facility at home than I could ever fit into or have with my car.

Thus, from personal experience, I can quite readily testify to the benefits of sticking home as opposed to joining the lemmings.
Did I mention around 100 people died, sitting in traffic, before the storm even hit?
Many people with supplies loaded up in their vehicles felt forced, or were forced due engine/mechanical failure to abandon their vehicles, thus reducing down to what they could carry.

From such real world actual experience and observation, I'm quite comfortable in asserting the benefit of staying home over the fantastic risks involved with getting stuck in traffic and competing with a real force of MILLIONS of other people all trying to run.