Urban Prepping for City Dwellers

[Harvey Danger]

There is no urban survival. There is only urban escape. If your plan for SHTF involves staying in the city, you are 100% LARPing.

Of course there's different levels of SHTF. The mildest is a multi-day power outage, escalating to things like blizzard shutdowns, hurricane/earthquake destruction, riots, infrastructure collapse, terrorist incident and martial law, all the way up to pandemic level zombie apocalypse at most extreme. But the simple truth is, when living in an urban environment, even the mildest form turns your neighborhood into a life-threatening, un-defendable deathtrap.

If you're truly worried enough to start prepping, step 1 is GET OUT OF THE CITIES. There is no Step 2 until you do that.

 

[Lake Cresva Diver]

There is no urban survival. There is only urban escape. If your plan for SHTF involves staying in the city, you are 100% LARPing.

Of course there's different levels of SHTF. The mildest is a multi-day power outage, escalating to things like blizzard shutdowns, hurricane/earthquake destruction, riots, infrastructure collapse, terrorist incident and martial law, all the way up to pandemic level zombie apocalypse at most extreme. But the simple truth is, when living in an urban environment, even the mildest form turns your neighborhood into a life-threatening, un-defendable deathtrap.

If you're truly worried enough to start prepping, step 1 is GET OUT OF THE CITIES. There is no Step 2 until you do that.

I agree with the getting out of the city. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, millions of people will stay in cities and suffer/die because the government(the media) told them everything is going to be OK/help is on the way and to stay put.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Some people don't have the option of going innawoods. As a hypothetical, totally non-power-level example, they may have family members who are older or in poor health and aren't in a position to go play Boy Scouts.

Actual useful info: You can store a surprising number of Water Bricks behind a couch in a fairly inconspicuous way.

 

[AncientPhosphur]

Some people don't have the option of going innawoods

You're not going to do innawoods. I doubt vast majorities of people will have the capacity to really survive innawoods. I hunt, camp, and fish and I'm less than convinced I'll be able to do more than a week alone much less survive months. I feel like a lot of people take prepping to these weird extreme as loner scenarios. Not going to happen. Build a community of like minded people instead, humans are social creatures. Alone you are a single stick but together you'll form an unbreakable faggot.

 

[Topsoil]

Start learning to grow crops now. If you have a balcony with any amount of sun, there's at least some kind of crop you can grow. Potatoes in a grow bag are your best option but they require full sun. You can attempt to grow sunchokes in a similar way in partial shade, or you can set up a normal pot and try beets, broccoli, garlic, or lettuce. You likely won't be growing enough food to sustain yourself, but you'll be learning valuable skills for gardening (soil pH, avoiding powdery mildew, diagnosing issues based on leaf color, seed saving) that will transfer once you bug out to somewhere other than the city. If you end up cultivating your own line of heritage crops that do well in your area, you can bring the seeds with you once you bugout.

Basket weaving. This can be done with (pictured above) willow, pinestraw, reeds, and vines of all sorts. Depending on your location, even in suburban to urban areas you can forage for the necessary materials required to get started making baskets. The link above also has places where you can buy materials if you can't forage them. Foraging the sticks in the first place is the only part of this which must be done outside. Think about how often in your life you use baskets, buckets, cups, etc. Plastic disintegrates in the sun, and people will always need baskets. After SHTF, this is going to be an extremely important skill.

(Image source)

Learn to make your own basic clothing. At the very least, learn to mend the clothing you have. For an urban prepper, you're likely not going to have access to new textiles. So you'll want to focus on creating clothing by combining, repairing, taking in, and letting out existing clothes. You can technically start this with nothing more than a needle & thread, a threadripper, and some clothing you bought from the thrift store.

Brewing & fermenting. Whether it be beer (pictured above), mead, kvass, wine, kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles, or sourdough, fermenting is an extremely important skill for food preservation. Most of the tools to get started fermenting your own foods are easy to do in an apartment kitchen.

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While all of these are great skills to learn, none of them matter if you can't find food to eat in the first place. Urban cities are WAY above the natural carrying capacity of the land they're located on. You simply cannot grow enough food in an urban environment to survive long-term. Should supply lines be disrupted and food stops getting shipped into the cities, you must leave. You must go to where the food is. These are skills to learn while you are actively living in a bughive, but they're all pointless if you don't have plans for how to leave the city and where to go when SHTF. There's a couple auction sites online that sell incredibly shitty land for cheap, but it's better than nothing. Ideally, you should get a plot of land outside the city you're currently in, and start working on turning it into your bugout shelter.

 

[Obeah Mon]

A very good point everyone misses. Like anything else your age will determine your plans. Personally I would rather die in my own home than the with the company of anyone. So many assume its going to be some medieval fair with people bartering the shit they have too much of, usually eggs or some ag product exchanged for silver. Then you got the faggots who say their prep is being a "marauder". impervious to bullets. Its all so much & I can't bear anything out the mouths of "wolverines", sheepdogs etc. and would probably shoot them for being ignert.

 

[isalaide]

So, bunker rooms.
My husband stated he was worried about my mental health when I last brought this up, but, well, this is the mental health farms.
We have a fully subterranean basement with a couple of storage rooms, about 1000 sq ft all in. I keep the food and water stocks in one of them. I think it should be possible to have contractors fit those two rooms out for a medium-term stay. I have no intention of getting them fitted for nuclear shelter purposes. We live near enough Faslane that a proper nuclear engagement will render us dead as fuck, and honestly, if shit hits the fan that badly, it might be better to go out quick and early.
But, if there was a significant civil disturbance, I would rather be reasonably confident that when people come to loot our house and murder us all, that we had somewhere to go that was significantly defensible for a few weeks until civil order was restored.
Has anyone actually done a domestic shelter kind of project? Am I as mad as my husband claims? How did your project go? What should I be thinking about if this is something I want to look into more seriously?

 

[MrB]

What's the best way to take a shit/piss in an apartment if plumbing hypothetically goes out? Without PL'ing too much, bugging out of a city is completely 100% unviable for me right now and I have zero delusions about surviving any sort of permanent societal collapse since I live in a large city in the middle of a desert. Planning on moving out in a few years but right now I'm stuck here. I have an acceptable setup for a few weeks of water and food (which is about the longest I can probably realistically manage in a WROL scenario), but should I just be filling 5 gallon buckets with kitty litter or something and leaving them on my balcony? Just go out and dig a hole to shit?

 

[LovisXVI]

What's the best way to take a shit/piss in an apartment if plumbing hypothetically goes out?

Retvrn to tradishun: Chamber pot. It is gross, but if plumbing is not and option, using a container and pouring it somewhere else is your best option. If you want to engage in a little urban farming, you can also compost it (to prevent E. Coli breakout) and use it as fertilizer.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Crossposting and modifying something I posted in the gun thread a while back.

Secure doors are a severely neglected aspect of home security. While nothing is absolute, doors can be made MUCH more secure relatively cheaply. Here are a few things you can add.

Hardened Screws
Hardened Strike Plate
Security Hinges - If the hinges are on the outside, this keeps someone from taking the door off by removing the pins. Not needed if hinges are inside.
Anti-Kick Plate - Note that there are some known ways to open these from the outside, but the attacker has to know it's there.
Pick-Resistant, Easy Rekey Lock - if you live in an apartment, anyone can easily rekey this to use their apartment key IF it's the right key type. This is more likely than you might think. Many apartments use Smartkey already, and if so you can probably just do it. If the key you got with your apartment is NOT a KW1, or uses a master key system, you may have to ask permission from your landlord. Not everything that says Smartkey on it is created equal. The models you want to look for are Uptown, Downtown, Halifax, and Milan. According to what I've read, these use the newer gen 3 style cylinder. Older models may be less secure.

Total cost: Under $150. I'm basically retarded and I installed it with a power drill and a couple of chisels and a hammer in an hour.

Can I legally do this at my apartment?

Maybe. Check your lease and your local laws. Regarding landlords, I would be inclined to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Just do it and don't talk about it. I talked to a family member who works in property management and he says it's probably fine. Keep the old stuff around just in case you need to put it back. You can usually get away with drilling holes but I would back off from anything that involves a chisel. Also, make sure they can still get in with their key. If they can't you might get in trouble. But I'm just some idiot on the internet. I am not a lawyer and cannot be held liable if your landlord takes a giant steaming shit on your doorstep.

What about the door itself?

A solid door is a good idea of you can do it, but you probably can't replace your apartment door.

But what if the burglar has power tools?

The purpose of a lock is to slow people down, and make them make a lot of noise getting in. If they use power tools, you're awake and going for your gun. You have a gun, right?

 

[glioblastoma multiforme]

We don't have guns over here unless you're a farmer or large land owner, a criminal, in a special police unit, or the army. Getting millions of people out of an urban centre to a piece of land they don't own, but likely owned by people with guns, is bad advice. You're basically saying 'go get yourself shot before there's even a chance for order to return.'

That said, my guesses are the following:
- Don't assume you'll have internet and mobile phone. Have maps, have cash (or something actually useful given cash could easily end up worthless) have important information written down/printed out, not stored on a computer.
- Ditto electricity, get charger packs, torches etc, and keep them charged. Have some paper books and board games.
- Ditto water, realistically if running water goes down for a long time, water borne disease will be impossible to avoid, but for a short time water purification tablets are good.
- Know your neighbours and cultivate good relationships with them

If some semblance of society can't be rebuilt, you're probably gonna die pretty horribly regardless of whether you have 1 day or 1 years of tinned food, so just enjoy not having to work and spend the time with loved ones, especially if they're in treatment for cancer, T1 diabetic, or the myriad other health conditions that mean they won't survive long.

ETA come to think of it, none of this is really specific to cities. Though I guess in general people out in the sticks are more used to and prepared for outages.

Edit 2: if you're gonna stockpile anything, I'd go with hygiene stuff, hand sanitiser and such. That is small enough to have a decent amount even if you're just in a studio flat and its importance can't be overstated.

 

[Topsoil]

Retvrn to tradishun: Chamber pot. It is gross, but if plumbing is not and option, using a container and pouring it somewhere else is your best option. If you want to engage in a little urban farming, you can also compost it (to prevent E. Coli breakout) and use it as fertilizer.

@MrB, do NOT attempt to compost your own waste unless you know what you're doing. The waste of carnivore animals (so you, your dog/cat, the bear outside, etc) is way, waaaaaaaaay more dangerous than herbivore shit. You could probably pick up a horse turd and eat it and not die of something terrible. Carnivore crap is going to give you either ecoli (as mentioned) or horrible parasites. To compost carnivore crap, you need a hot compost pile. It takes 20 days on a compost pile of a constant temp of 65°C/150°F to kill all bacteria and parasite eggs potentially in the feces. If you've never run a hot compost pile before, do not start by attempting to compost carnivore feces in a world without antibiotics. Your best bet is to shit in a pot and toss it out the window.

 

[Rungle]

Stock up on as much luxeries, like tobacco, drugs, chocolate, candy, ect.
Eventually everyone will run out and you can use this to your advantage to get favors or things in return.

 

[LovisXVI]

@MrB, do NOT attempt to compost your own waste unless you know what you're doing. The waste of carnivore animals (so you, your dog/cat, the bear outside, etc) is way, waaaaaaaaay more dangerous than herbivore shit. You could probably pick up a horse turd and eat it and not die of something terrible. Carnivore crap is going to give you either ecoli (as mentioned) or hella parasites. To compost carnivore crap, you need a hot compost pile. It takes 20 days on a compost pile of a constant temp of 65°C/150°F to kill all bacteria and parasite eggs potentially in the feces. If you've never run a hot compost pile before, do not start by attempting to compost carnivore feces in a world without antibiotics. Your best bet is to shit in a pot and toss it out the window.

Fair, I often forget that most people don't actually know stuff like that, forgot that this is self sufficiency for people who have never actually done it, not discuss between people who have. As for urine specifically, it can be processed into useful chemicals fairly easily, especially for bleaching clothing.

 

[Baraka Obama]

For some clarification, prepping here does not necessarily mean preparing for a situation where your life is uprooted for weeks/months at a time where you can expect prolonged civil unrest WROL. That's the fantasy many have and I understand why. Certainly if SHTF it would be ideal to GTFO if you live in a city, but I don't think prepping should only include serious SHTF scenarios. It is much more likely that a situation would occur where you would need to survive using only what was in your apartment for up to a week.

If you'd like to discuss making plans to GTFO, go ahead. I would also direct you to the bug-out thread for that discussion. That said, telling people to "just leave" if they want to be prepared for a situation while living in the city is entirely unhelpful. It is my fear that focusing solely on "bugging out" if you live in a city could put you in a shit situation if egress is not possible. As stated above, a situation could also arise where you really need to GTFO but simply are unable to. Since bugging out is not always possible, it is important to have some preps in your residence, even if it is otherwise limited. That's what the thread was intended to discuss.

I don't expect this thread to be nearly as popular as other threads discussing more general topics, but I figured there would be a few Kiwis stuck in a shithole city who could talk about how they get around the constraints of urban living in order to prepare for a shitty situation.

I'm not urban but when I was trying to plan out my own moderate non-SHTF level preparedness plans I decided it was best to scale up from small investments so a lot of it would be applicable.

First thing I did was consider the most likely scenarios and then start by trying to cover those.

Power going out while you are cooking dinner? Used to happen to me quite often and I don't have a gas stove. So I wanted a backup to be able to finish cooking that I could grab immediately. I bought a small butane stove to keep in a kitchen cabinet:

Over time I found it's relatively easy to fit 16 canisters of butane gas in my small kitchen which is enough to pretty easily cover a couple weeks of cooking without power -- each one lasts like 1.5 to 2 hours of cooking.

So then let's talk about that longer power outage scenario. You'd at a minimum want light and a way to charge your phone. A few portable lanterns and a pack of AAs is enough for light. I bought a large-ish Anker battery bank to start with which is enough to charge a laptop a couple times and a phone probably 10 times. That helps a ton.

If you consider from there what are some essentials to cover during a power outage for me it was having a working fridge, hot water to take a shower, and working internet. For that I ended up buying a EcoFlow power station and a couple solar panels, but there are a bunch of companies that make these now. The one I bought will run my fridge just fine for about a day, and if I get some good sunshine (if you've got a south facing balcony) the 200W of solar input can recharge it through the day. It's not perfect but that plus charging in a car or at another location (work, friend's place) can be enough that your food won't spoil for moderate length outages. As a bonus I was able to run my internet modem during an outage and run my gas water heater when I wanted to take a shower.

I ended up enhancing the above in some ways as well but I'm assuming running a generator on an apartment balcony is not going to happen.

Water service outages is another area where you can really start with some basics and work your way up. If you at least have some bottled water in a closet you can cover a couple days of a watermain break or something similar. I don't know how you can go too far in an apartment but you should consider having some alternative to using a toilet, like for example a bucket with bags and some cat litter can work ok in a pinch.

 

[glad vlad]

Some people don't have the option of going innawoods. As a hypothetical, totally non-power-level example, they may have family members who are older or in poor health and aren't in a position to go play Boy Scouts.

Actual useful info: You can store a surprising number of Water Bricks behind a couch in a fairly inconspicuous way.

I've looked at Water Bricks and wondered how they are for real world use. Have you/anyone in this thread used them? How often do you rotate the water? Do you treat the water before you fill them?

Water is my big weakness as far as being prepared goes. I'm not even trying to outlast the zombie hordes, just be ready in case of extended power outage etc.

What's the best way to take a shit/piss in an apartment if plumbing hypothetically goes out? Without PL'ing too much, bugging out of a city is completely 100% unviable for me right now and I have zero delusions about surviving any sort of permanent societal collapse since I live in a large city in the middle of a desert. Planning on moving out in a few years but right now I'm stuck here. I have an acceptable setup for a few weeks of water and food (which is about the longest I can probably realistically manage in a WROL scenario), but should I just be filling 5 gallon buckets with kitty litter or something and leaving them on my balcony? Just go out and dig a hole to shit?

When I lived in an apartment, I had a 5 gallon bucket with lid that held various emergency supplies, including a roll of contractor grade trash bags. You can buy little plastic seats that snap on to buckets, or tape on a pool noodle. That plus a bag of kitty litter is a pretty good solution. To be grossly specific, I think you shouldn't waste your kitty litter on pee. Urine is not that offensive or dangerous. I'd just pee in a container and dump it next to a tree outside, and save the bags and kitty litter for pooping. It would make the kitty litter go much further. If you don't have more kitty litter, I'd double up on trash bags.

Store a bottle or two of hand sanitizer, too.

 

[Baraka Obama]

Water is my big weakness as far as being prepared goes. I'm not even trying to outlast the zombie hordes, just be ready in case of extended power outage etc.

What do you do now for water? Personally I'm sitting at having 20 or so of those 1ish gallon jugs you can buy at grocery stores sitting under one of my sinks, plus a couple rain barrels which aren't suitable for drinking but can be used to flush toilets and of course keep plants alive. I've thought about finding a solution to treat river water which seems a bit extreme... half the year I can melt snow in a pinch.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

It's really a function of how melanated you area is and how fast you realize everything is fucked before the average people. The more of both, it's better to stay put and hope things get better before you starve to death, Shaun of the Dead style. The risk of going outside in traffic jams and riots is way more dangerous in the starting hours.

 

[glad vlad]

What do you do now for water? Personally I'm sitting at having 20 or so of those 1ish gallon jugs you can buy at grocery stores sitting under one of my sinks, plus a couple rain barrels which aren't suitable for drinking but can be used to flush toilets and of course keep plants alive. I've thought about finding a solution to treat river water which seems a bit extreme... half the year I can melt snow in a pinch.

I'm really baffled. I have enough bottled water for a few days, but I don't have a good storage solution for more than that. I've thought about getting a 55-gallon water drum, but the only place I have to store it (the garage) has significant temperature fluctuations, so I'm nervous about the integrity of the plastic.

I've wondered about a rain barrel. Do you think in a pinch you could treat that water? Some people say that you shouldn't drink water (even if treated) that came off a shingle roof, only a metal one... which I don't have.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I've wondered about a rain barrel. Do you think in a pinch you could treat that water? Some people say that you shouldn't drink water (even if treated) that came off a shingle roof, only a metal one... which I don't have.

Yeah no way.

You'd be really surprised at how much dirt and pollen and bird crap accumulates on your roof. I could take a photo of the inside of my rain barrel later but yeah it's nasty. Even if you found a way to clear that up nothing on the route down is really food grade and many building materials are produced with nasty chemicals and lead which can leach into water.