Apartment Survival: People

As important as food, water, shelter, and security are, I’ve been discussing them largely in the absence of what is likely the very most important factor in apartment survival. That factor is the presence of the other people in your apartment complex. Depending on the circumstances, those other people may be a help, hindrance, or outright danger to you. The other people in your complex will determine the longer term viability of bugging in to an apartment.

First, let’s look at some broad classifications of people that you’re going to have at your apartment building. The first type will be those that believe everything will be better tomorrow morning. They will wait for the water and power to be restored, and are sure that the bus service will resume tomorrow so that they can go to the grocery store. They may also be extremely frightened and agitated, and could be dangerous if armed. I would expect this group to have the lowest overall survival rate.

The second type will be the G.O.O.D. type, whether they are preppers or not. As a crisis looms and deepens, they will pack up and head off to find safer, better situations somewhere else. They may or may not take all of their resources, and if you have exposed possessions, they may or may not take some of yours. What is more, they might not stay gone. It is entirely possible that a proportion of them will find nothing better out there and survive long enough to make it back ‘home.’

The third group are the ones that while perhaps not prepped, are proactive and coping as best they can. They will be among the first to start pilfering empty apartments for food, water and resources. They may be jerry-rigging solutions to things like heat and water purification, and they might even be a bit territorial, and perhaps somewhat aggressive in some circumstances. I would expect this group to do better than either of the others.

Finally, there are you and hopefully one or two more people like you. But there are no guarantees of that.
So for you, the first question is to find out who stayed and who left. When you know who is left, you can assess them as to whether they are threats or possible comrades. Remember, threats need not be limited to actions directly against you. It might well be that the neighbours are being a threat because they will not make proper sanitary arrangements, or making too much noise or light which may attract unwelcome attention.

It is imperative that you find like minded people in your building as soon as possible. Everything I’ve discussed can be done more easily by a small to medium sized group than can be done alone. This may require you to make the first overture, and will likely necessitate you taking a leadership role. Depending on the depth of the crisis, you may need to make decisions (or guide your group into making the decisions) for everything from defense and rationing to water and sanitation. This doesn’t give you license to become a feudal baron, but you will find that in a crisis, people will rally behind someone that is willing to step up to make those decisions, as long as the decisions are sound.

A small group working together will greatly increase your chances of survival, and group pressure will likely bring the ‘unwilling’ into line and into your group. The flip side is that a building full of uncooperative individuals makes it almost certain that all will fail. Despite everything you try, you may fail to weld the remaining people in your apartment into a cohesive group.

I see no easy answer to this, short of relocation. If you cannot get everyone in your building on side very quickly, the viability of staying at your apartment is severely diminished. Whether it is an empty building or storefront, an abandoned house, or a multiple unit such as a four-plex from which all have fled, you and whoever is like-minded need to go. You may even be able to find a building that is working together to join, but I believe strangers will have a difficult time getting in to a functioning group unless you possess goods or skills that are needed.

In the final analysis, the determining factor as to whether or not apartment survival is a viable option will come down to who is left in your apartment, and whether a community can be created from a collection of what were likely strangers before the crisis.

It is on this that all of your other efforts rest.

Originally posted May 08, 2011 @ MPN.

Apartment Survival: Security

In deciding to ‘bug-in’ in a city, and especially if you are bugging in to an apartment, there are a lot of challenges. Food, water, and heat will all be difficult to manage, but next to the monumental task of your physical security, they are easy. Getting the essentials for survival might be less difficult than keeping them. And by deciding to try to survive in your apartment, you’ve made the task that much harder, but not impossible.

First, let’s look at your own apartment. How secure is it? Hopefully, you are in a poured concrete or metal and cinderblock building rather than a wood frame type. Obviously, the more robust the construction of your building, the better, but the unfortunate trend in modern construction of two and three story apartments is to lighter and shoddier construction. Hopefully, you are relatively secure as far as walls go, but windows and doors will remain a problem.

Starting with your front door, you need to make sure that this access point is hardened. If your landlord will allow it, replace a hollow core or wooden door with a steel one. Sometimes this will be allowed if the original apartment door is replaced when you leave. If you can’t get this concession, consider hardening an interior room’s door instead. Make sure that you have locking hardware that consists of a minimum of a deadbolt on your doors, exterior and interior.

Windows are also a concern. Again, aftermarket hardware is available to make entry more difficult, but by their very nature, windows are always vulnerable. Still, there are things you can do, such as having metal grills made that you can bolt over the windows once a crisis arrives.

Being on the second or third floor may be desirable. The elevation gives you a small measure of added security, especially if you are able to chain, lock, or otherwise block stairwells to your floor. Remember that this has consequences with regards to escaping fire or other circumstances, but may be preferable to unfriendly folks having easy access to your floor.

If there are vacant apartments above, beside or below you, consider, mouse-holing into adjacent spaces to provide alternate escape routes, better fields of fire, or just to enable tactical movement. Be aware that you will need to secure these alternate routes as well, or they become a liability instead of an advantage.

You will need to consider ballistic protection. While concrete is ‘reasonably’ resistant to high velocity impacts, cinder block will disintegrate under repeated hits and anything less is little barrier at all. The easiest solution is to sandbag what you will use as your fighting positions, at the very least.

If bags are not available (and you can stock a lot of them empty), or if sand is not nearby, improvise. Hard packed (not loose!) dirt in a suitcase is better protection than nothing at all, and pillow cases, boxes, and in fact any container at all that will hold packed earth or sand will offer some protection. Multiple layers are recommended, and don’t overlook materials at hand such as books, furniture, appliances or whatever else can be pressed into service as a ballistic barrier.

Just remember that it takes a LOT of mass to protect you, and a washing machine that is mostly sheet metal and empty space may not do the job, although that might change if it is packed full of dirt or sand. As well, try to get at least one layer under you if you are on an upper floor, to protect from angled fire from below.

As for weapons: whatever you can get. If legal, consider the types of weapons police carry, who are operating in an urban environment: handguns and shotguns are most common, followed by compact assault weapons. If not possible to obtain, weapons such as crossbows are as deadly at short range as any firearm, and may have to do in a pinch.

Better yet is avoiding the need to defend your apartment. If you must shelter in place, do everything you can to avoid drawing attention to yourself. This will require you to maintain tight control in several areas.

The first of these is light. A candle can be seen at a range of a couple of miles if there is no other light source, and in a grid down crisis, a lit window in an apartment is an open invitation to ne’er-do-wells. If you must have light after dark, ensure that it is in a light proofed area of your apartment, safe from observation and accidental exposure by you or other inhabitants.

Another area is noise discipline. In a situation where the background noise of city life is absent, any sound will have the potential to betray you. Running a generator, hammering a nail, or even calling your dog may have unwanted consequences. Every activity you undertake must be assessed as to how much noise it will make.

Smell will also inform on your location. Have you ever walked through a neighborhood in the summer and had your mouth water at the smell of someone’s backyard barbeque? Your cooking smells will carry an amazing distance, and lead someone right to you. At least initially, try to stick with things that can be eaten cold, prepared using boiling water (e.g. cup of noodles), which will limit the amount of aroma given off.

Finally, try to eliminate visual clues. Smoke from a fire, laundry on a line, recent tracks and pathways, and you standing in a window are all giveaways. Try to maintain as low a profile as possible, and be aware that even though you can’t see anyone, you might be observed when you go out. Take circuitous routes back and make sure you observe your own trail when you return.

As you can see, security for the apartment survivor is a tough proposition. Not impossible, but definitely a big challenge. Next we’ll look at what you can do to make this challenge, as well as food, water and so on, a little easier to manage.

Originally posted April 25, 2011 @ MPN

Apartment Survival: Shelter and Heat

Living in your apartment, you might think you’ve got the shelter aspect of survival sewed up. Maybe you do, but maybe not. Let’s begin by looking at what ‘shelter’ means to us. Then we can see if you’re apartment is still providing this and how to provide for it if something is missing.

Prior to humans learning to reliably create and use fire, shelter would have been just a place to stay out of the wind, rain, or snow. Given that your apartment has not suffered any damage, it fits that criteria, and does it well enough. However, once we learned the secret of fire, we began to heat our shelters, and to cook in them. In a major catastrophe, it is likely that the heat will cease to function, as well as the electricity. Any modern home, especially apartments become far less functional as shelters when that happens. Still, it doesn’t mean you can’t make it work.

Here in Manitoba, there are perhaps seven months of the year that you can stay warm without a heat source of some sort. In a house, you have the option of putting in alternate heating methods such as a wood stove as a back up. In your apartment, you don’t have that luxury, at least not prior to a collapse. Please don’t even think about dragging your barbecue inside and heating your place that way. The apartment might get warm, but your body will inevitably get colder after death from carbon monoxide poisoning.

There are options such as propane space heaters which are relatively cheap and quite a bit safer, but these still have the possibility of depleting the air in a tightly sealed apartment, although the better ones have oxygen sensors that will shut the unit off in that case. Overall, though, any fuel burning heater will pose some inherent danger. And there remains the problem of storing sufficient propane. The same problem goes for running a small generator to power an electric heater.

The problem of heat in an apartment is not an easy one to resolve. Over the longer term, I believe the best option would to be to obtain or build a wood burning stove of some kind that would be vented to the outside. Wilderness stores sell small stoves meant to be used in canvas tents that might be a good option, or you can build your own (see picture). Obviously, you will need to vent it to the outside, and storing the stove and other parts may be a major problem. Fuel can be scavenged from a variety of sources, and it takes a surprisingly small amount of wood to heat a small space. The downside is that you may draw attention t yourself, and that a poorly made stove badly installed may cause a fatal fire.

Otherwise, there are measures you can take to make your situation somewhat better. Make the area you live in as small as possible by sealing off as much of the apartment as you can with plastic sheeting and duct tape or other materials. Seal a layer of plastic over the windows as well, and seal openings such as bathroom and kitchen fan vents if not in use. Make use of passive solar if you can, especially in a south facing apartment. Get as much sun as possible during the day, but make sure drapes and blinds are closed at night to slow heat loss. Restrict your trips in and out of the apartment to as few as possible to avoid losing warm air.

If you own a tent, you might consider pitching it inside your apartment and sleeping in it to conserve even more warmth. If you don’t own a tent, hark back to your childhood and make a blanket fort. If you are able to boil water, a small hot water bottle taken to bed with you can make the difference between a miserable night and a comfortable one. And of course, there is always cuddling in with a friend. It may seem silly, but you and your significant other, or even the whole family sharing a nest of blankets will make it warmer for all.

There is no easy answer to staying warm in an apartment, but if the polar explorers of the last two centuries were able to stay alive without the modern materials we enjoy, there is no reason you can’t. Some pre-buying of appropriate bedding, equipment and clothing may be necessary, but if you are serious about making it in your apartment, it can be done.

While heating may be difficult, cooking is a little easier to arrange. Many apartment dwellers have a barbecue on their balcony, which will do in a pinch but I feel that the average gas barbeque is a poor choice for emergency cooking, due to its inefficiency. A far better use of the 20 pound propane tank on your barbecue would be to obtain a camp stove that is designed for one pound propane bottles. Not only can you use the one pound bottles which are small and easy to store, but by using an inexpensive hose and adaptor, you can use the 20 pound tank as well. The bigger tank should let you cook for many, many days.

Of course, if you’ve installed a wood stove, cooking will take place on that, but if not, there are other options. The best of these is the twig stove made from a coffee can. There are plans for various types of these ‘hobo’ stoves on the net, but remember that you need to be careful. Ventilation due to smoke and carbon monoxide make this a design best used on the balcony, and as always, an open flame demands respect. Still, you get much heat from very little fuel, so it may be the cooker of choice once other fuels are gone. As always, remember that cooking on your balcony will likely give you away to outsiders.

A last but limited option is a solar cooker. While it is using a free, unlimited heat source, it may not be effectie at all in colder weather. As with all things preparedness, you'll need to try it to see if it is a viable option, at least part of the time.

Overall, I believe that staying warm and cooking are the biggest challenges for the apartment survivalist. You need to give this area more thought than almost any other aspect of apartment survival, with the possible exception of security. If at all possible, try out whatever strategies you come up with before you need them. Find an abandoned building, a shack, anything without heat and power, and try to stay warm and cook using what you’ve come up with.

You need to know now what will work then.

Originally posted April 17, 2011 @ MPN

Apartment Survival: Intro

Most survival experts will tell you that trying to survive a major catastrophe in an apartment is a bad idea. For the most part, I agree with them. You are far better off out in the country, or at least a small town. The problem is that many people in today’s housing market can barely afford the rent of an apartment, let alone a house, and a well equipped remote retreat is something that is the stuff of dreams. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean you can’t prepare, it just means you have to work harder to overcome the difficulties.

Over the next few articles, we’ll look at some of the options the average apartment dweller has for being more prepared, and some basic supplies and equipment. These aren’t intended to be definitive articles and the last word on any subject, but should get you started in the right direction, if only that you think about the consequences of where you live and what can happen in a major crisis.

Remember that unlike the Japanese Tsunami, most crises rarely have everything coming down around your ears at once. It might be just a power outage, or it might be the water stops running, spring flooding, or a dozen other things, singly or in combination. The trick is to look at what you have in your apartment, and imagine that you have it no longer. You need to plan now for the what-ifs later.

Look first at your building. How big is it? If you live on the forty- first story of a fifty story apartment tower, is it even practical? Imagine hauling water, food, or just yourself up forty flights of stairs. Now imagine doing it in the dark, as those battery powered emergency lamps won’t last long. Even the buildings resources won’t be what you think they are. There might be a fifty thousand gallon pool in the basement, but it’s no good to you in Apartment 4101.

For the purposes of our discussion, I will assume you live in a two, three or four story apartment building, which is a pretty common sized building in Manitoba. You might live in something as small as a fourplex, or a building a little larger than described, but most of the lessons will still apply.

You will need to look at every aspect of your life in the apartment: food, water, sanitation, safety from natural disasters, safety from humans, easily reached resources and so on. You’ll need to make a plan for dealing with the loss of any and all services you presently enjoy, from the easily reached grocery store to electrical power.

There is one other factor that the apartment dweller needs to deal with, and that is the other inhabitants. While you might be dealing with your waste responsibly, the guy right above you might be peeing off of his balcony. You might be doing your cooking in a safe manner on your barbecue, but the moron next door might light your building on fire trying to figure out his alcohol stove he bought at the camping store.

Your preparations and forethought can disappear or be rendered ineffective because of others. This is what makes the apartment survival scenario so challenging. In addition to all the other preparations you may need to make preparations to get others organized and working together.

But that’s for a later article. First we’ll look at the more material aspects of apartment prepping.

Originally posted march 23, 2011 @ MPN