part one in a series on urban survival.

OK i decided to create a post about urban camo.
this is a topic iv seen very Lil good information about laying around here so id like to take me time here to show some basics.
as for my experience on the subject its simple. i spent over 6 months homeless, I'm a goth and i use to be a very active fone phreak. so iv spent much time with the idea of blending in in one way or another. and that's all.

urban camo

in a urban survival scenario camo is often overlooked. the basic idea is to blend in to the background, and the best way is to look like everyone else. that means this is mimicry not disruptive camo. in all societies there several groups of people . look at and study these groups to build templates that you can use when creating your camo.

generic social groups:

laborers: these are common workers in a society.some good example camo clothing for this group include jumpsuits (good for mechanics, construction workers, and utility workers.). work uniforms for specific places like stores and hotels. scrubs are good for medical workers, factory workers particularly factories that process food. khakis and polo shirts are excellent for workers in a office such as mail boys, gofors etc.
most cities and outlining areas have a uniform store that specializes in these sort of things , these stores are a gold mine for building camo and learning about uniforms in general. remember you want to mimic a worker who would be naturally in the area your going in to or who would be doing the job you want to "seem" to be doing.

suits: these are your upper level workers the guys who do the books, handle accounts, have access to information etc. this type of camo is simple but pricey. go to stores that have brand name knockoffs but don't look better then you should for the worker your mimicking.

everyday people: this is the average guy or gal you see riding the public transport or shopping in the local mall. there also the easiest to mimic. just buy some jeans and a tee shirt usually with a popular band or sports team on it .

the poor: sadly this is usually the larger part of the population at least in a population center. its a horrible fact that the homeless are ignored. but this piece of tragic human behaviour provides a urban survivalist 2 advantages. the first being invisible. people will look away from and pretend not to notice a homeless person. they will go so far as to change paths and ignore please for help just so they don't have to feel bad for having so much while others have nothing. the second advantage is that yes if you can stand being looked down on you could panhandle. remember though a homeless person with a funny sign hasn't been homeless long. pay attention to there shoes there are many of con-men who pretend to be homeless to panhandle. they usually forget to change out of expensive shoes when doing so and are easily spotted.

subculture: sometimes the best way to fit in is to stand out . there are subcultures everywhere and they are harder to mimic then the other groups. these groups require more research and extra effort not to seem as a poser. many of these groups are based around music, fashion, philosophy and common habits. if you can learn these basic things its amazingly easy to fit in and be treated ad a fellow member.

ninjutsu has a similar system for this purpose. in fuedal japan there was 7 basic classes of people on th estreet and to conceal himself a ninja woudl assume on the 7 traditional roles.

i cant remember them all but some were

artisan
monk
merchant
farmer

ummm... i forget the rest. but the principle is the same.

good post star n flag!

If you want to be invisible the homeless thing is the very best way to go. Funny, just the other day my friend and I were talking about where we would go if homeless. There is one of those little pedestrian underpasses in our city that would be a perfect place to "camp out" if homeless.

Now, are you going to give up more info or is this just about hiding in plain sight. Since I am pretty much stuck in the city, though I am on the outskirts now, I was hoping for some really great information.

Looking for some real survival stuff for us city dwellers that would be stuck should a real crisis develop.

mores coming but im now dealing with the unexpected death of my grandmother ill get to it when i can.

Great post Krill. It's true what you say, people will go out of the way to avoid a homeless person, so what better role to adopt?

Sorry to hear about your grandmother, sending my thoughts from across the pond.

CX.

thanx for the well wishes i just got back in state and will type up and edit the next few sections as soon as im able thanx for all the patience.

next poste is about skills and equipment thats easy to learn or build that will aid in a urban survival sit.

then a post on cacheing in the urban enviroment. encluding a few example caches.

then a post on self defense in urban survival and how to tweek the odds closer to your favor.

and the final posts will be about attaining your needs, shelter, water and food and resources and keeping your crash space safe with home security measures.

urban survival post 2

OK the first thing to remember about urban survival is that your standard survival skills while still helpful need to be supplemented with other skills to take your best shot at urban survival.

skill 1) fone phreaking. OK cell phones while nice are also easy to track, expensive and limited in air time. that's why learning some of the basic fone phreaking skills is so important. the first thing id suggest is brush up on basic electronics. there not hard to learn and books and web sites containing how to guides on the subject are easy to track down. learn to build and use a beige box. its the best communications tool you can have in a urban survival sit. get a scanner that has emergency bands as well as trunk tracking for when they switch channels in the middle of a call. this scanner helps keep track of what the cops and em-ts are up to. this can also be used to listen in to both land line and cell phone calls with a good enough scanner.

skill 2) social engineering. social engineering is simply getting others to do what you want through non violent manipulation. a good example from my days as a fone phreak was that i called a operator and convinced her to give me the address of a unlisted phone number by convincing her i was a lineman trying to find the place for a service call but i couldn't read my work order cuzz i spilled coffee on it. the secret here is to convince the mark that you have a right to the info and that your in a situation where they need to help you or your gonna be in trouble. this often makes them feel like a small hero and helps grease the wheel. you need to mimic a person your pretending to be well enough to fool a suspicious mark. learn the lingo they use, don't talk down to or aggressively at the person this will cause them to be less inclined to help you.

skill 3) positive paranoia. positive paranoia is being hyper alert to your surroundings and those in it. some tips on this are wear sunglasses as they allow you to look at people or things with out drawing much attention. learn to use the reflective items such as windows, puddles, and reflective vehicles to look around you with out drawing attention. pay close attention to people around you for signs of surveillance this can seriously save your bacon. any little bit of info you observe may be important. someone wearing a coat slightly to thick for the current weather? he may be hiding a weapon. notice a homeless man with really nice shoes? that man isn't homeless and is probably surveilling you.

skill 4) learn to make weapons out of everyday materials. this one isn't hard and is very fun to learn and practice. there are many books on how to do this i have a library of such material and if you look hard enough it wont take long for you to build such a library.

skill 5) quick and dirty combat. true fighting for survival doesn't need to look pretty or impressive. learn to use weapons and fight without them. your average fight lasts only a few seconds so don't waste time talking smack or looking cool. attack, defend, and always go for kill or disabling your opponent. this is survival not some kung fu movie. the goal at the end is always the same be alive even if that means running away.

Sorry this took so long but life has a funny way of kicking you in the nuts and I have a memory like a cheese greater for anything I don’t read, large chunks go in small slivers come out. But as promised and long overdue my next installment in the urban survival thread.

Urban caching:
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When setting up caches in the urban jungle remember be prepared to lose your cache. People can accidently stumble on to a cache in a urban setting due to the larger amount of people and general nature of the environment.

When looking to cache in a urban area first thing to look for is access followed by how well hidden the cache would be and then finally how easy it is to remember where you put it.

Some of the places I have found useful as caches are planters or plant pots. lift out the plant or dig up the planter stash your cache then repair any signs that it was disturbed also take in to account that water will seep on to the cache and that these are best used as temp caches because planters due tend to dig in and replant so long term use is not suggested.

Drop ceiling in 24 hour bathrooms like at truck stops restaurants and convenience stores, bus stops, travel centers on a highway, supermarkets, Laundromats, gas stations are great. And if done at night will have low risk of being seen setting them up also restrooms don’t have security cams so no chance of being spotted that way.

Underneath an under-used garden in a public park works great and is a area easy to remember. Air ducts and vents in a building, hollowed out trees, local wooded areas. And my fave under porches and decks of abandoned, foreclosed or unattended homes. Don’t forget under postal drop boxes for small items secure well and mark the box with a small piece of meaningful but unassuming graffiti in permanent marker.

Putting together caches:

First and foremost good Ziploc bags trust me here get the higher quality the cost is worth the better protection. constructing the cache is simple you take what you need for the caches use such as general emergency, food, weapons, tech, data, currency, med kits, urban camo kits ect. Put in a plastic bag, then put that bag in another Ziploc bag, label it using a code of your own making. Hide it; mark the area in a non obvious way. Keep a small book or file in code of your caches in your go bag.

Happy caching.

I'm sorry but in my opinion your tips are not really useful. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I just think you are over dramatizing the reality of a survival situation. These are unclear and misleading bullet points to intellectually comfort someone who has no plan, no ideas, and no clue. These concepts you are describing are great if you want to theorize a very tactile story like a movie plot or a basis for a novel. But they are not very good concepts to rely on if you want to survive a real SHTF situation.

Hide in plain sight? When survival is your goal, hiding in plain sight is ridiculous. Hiding is also not very useful to long term survival in a maze box with potential thousands, to millions of other people. Urban survival is not and should not be a goal. Leaving the Urban environment should be your primary goal.

Phone freaking? Really! 90% of phone freaking doesn't even work anymore. AND if the SHTF do you really think that the digital to analog switch boards are going to be active and not flooded with machine signals from every emergency system in the nation activating at the same time or near the same time. Forget cell phones, forget telephones. Hell forget telegraph. None of that is useful. Who exactly are you going to call? Your Auntie Flo in Skogee Ohio, and ask her to mail you a sweater and an ak-47? Obviously if the phones are working then the mail is running.

Caching. Other than inside your own home, where are you going to cache in an urban environment that won't be picked over or inaccessible in a real emergency. This is wasteful busy work disguised as prudent planning.

Making weapons and learning to fight? No. Making weapons is an ingrained human instinct. You don't have to tell people how to pick up something heavy, or pointy and attack someone else with it. Our survival for the last million years has hinged on this. Weapons are important, but to imply that the world is falling apart around you and your first plan is to run out the garden shed and start fabricating a halberd that you can use to fend off people is almost a dangerously silly concept. Anything at hand that extends your natural reach or augments the amount of force you deliver if you make contact, is a weapon. It's all the weapon you need. Because someone with a better weapon is not going to be impeded and someone without a weapon is going to be your victim if they choose to. End of story. If you plan to plan for weaponeering, then you are planning to never be ready for what your opponent may or may not have access to. So don't try to plan for an imaginary arms race.

Positive paranoia isn't useless, but it is a "movie" concept. Few people if any actively attempt to practice this paranoia you mention, and in reality the best training you can give yourself is to learn to take control over your own body, once fear and adrenaline kick in. None of this positive paranoia idea will mean much if your brain shuts down when the adrenaline hits and you revert to base instincts.


3 keys to survival. Distance, Speed, Weight.

Distance, The further you are away from groups of people the safer you are. Groups of people, even well intentioned, become aggressive, pack minded, and easily corrupted by fear, prejudice, and over reaction. People who feel that they have nothing to lose will take any advantage, real or perceived to ensure their own survival or the groups survival if the group has sheltered and provided for them. So get away from large population centers and only group up with other people if you feel very secure about it.

Speed. If you can't move, you can't get away from problems. In a short term emergency situation, what you want ideally is to be able to walk under your own power 10-15 miles a day, cutting that in half or quartered if you have to "sneek and hide" while you travel. If you can't move quickly the probability is that someone is going to notice, you are come across you. In this case, whether you want it or not, you have entered into conflict. You now have the conflict that someone, is aware of you. If you can, keep moving. Move away, be non threatening and try to present as little reason as possible for them to be interested in you.

Weight. The enemy of speed is weight. If you want to attempt to load up a car with every picture and bauble your family has collected of umpteen generations, please be my guest. I'll have a backpack with 3 days food and water, and some fire arms, and I'll be moving as quickly as I can away from the area and "things" that are about to drag you down into a situation that will probably result in your end. Water for 3 days. Food for 3 days in the form of dried beans and noodles. Carbohydrates and proteins that are light, and dry and sealed. It's easy to find water that you can boil and use to make Ramen noodles. It's easier than many survivalists make it out to be. Water really is the most abundant thing on this planet. So pack clean drinking water, and plan to use found water to cook with. Since you would be boiling everything anyway, found water will be mostly cleaned through the boiling process. Maybe a small first aid kit. Maybe a pistol and a shotgun and a decent hatchet, or machete.
You don't need much more than that. You don't need sleeping bags and skin cream, and medication and SPF-20 sunblock and bug spray.

You need 3 days of supplies, to get you 3 days ahead of the crowds, who MIGHT catch on and start moving away from urban centers after a couple days. Once you are ahead of the crowds you will have more time and space to capture, steal, or negotiate supplies as you need them, and you can keep moving until you find a place that has what you need and seems safe and you resettle and start to make a more normal hunter gatherer existence for your self like old time pioneers did.


The hardest thing of any situation that can be considered SHTF is not freaking out. Controlling your emotions. Allowing yourself to shut off the emotions you feel and look at every passing second as just a single step in a series of simple steps that you have to accomplish so that you can get to a place, both in real life and emotionally so that you can stop and evaluate what you have gone through and how that impacts you.

And to be clear, I'm not saying, abandon everyone and everything and just think of yourself. Obviously not. But you need to consider that in a true SHTF situation, not everyone will be looking to your for help, or looking to help you. Movies about this stuff are all based on our best ideals and philosophies. It' like battle planning.
No battle plan survives the firing of the first shot.
If you wanna help people then do what you can, but try to think in terms of overall best idea. Get out, get safe, get stable.


This post was full of interesting "thought experiments" in my opinion. Movie concepts based on people who are sitting comfortably in a recliner and talking about ideas of what is most important.

Reality is always much simpler, and much more direct. You don't wanna die in an urban survival scenario? Don't be in an urban survival scenario. Move to a rural survival scenario, which as hard as it is, is still slightly better in the overall probabilities category. You can eat animals and plants that are more abundant in a forest, than trying to dig through burned out supermarkets or trash houses.

If you can't leave. If the words or thoughts, "I can't get out of the city" pop for you and are real. Then hunker down and wait for the end. Maybe you will defy all the odds and come out on top. I'll wish you the very best of luck in that.