You survive best on the land that you know. That’s why my focus here has been on “bugging in”: creating a safe and secure place right where you currently live. For me, that’s in a dense suburban area. I’ve lived in apartments, too, so I share how to do things from an apartment. I’ve never lived in a densely populated and compacted city like New York or Chicago so I can only speculate on survival in places like that.
It’s easy to create a safe and secure place for survival in a rural setting. It’s no challenge at all and almost all the survival guides are directed towards that easy way. I mean, really, even in spacious suburbs, who has room for horses, cows, pigs, chickens, a full orchard, a fenced military-style compound, a separate bomb shelter, a smoke shed, a root cellar, and cropland? No apartments and few suburban houses have even basements, let alone root cellars and smoke sheds!
Surviving disasters and emergencies in a city or suburb is challenging. There are ways to have dwarf orchards, to have a smoker grill in place of a smoke shed, to buff up a home to make it more bomb-proof, to add layers of safety and security even from the hazards of city life (drive-by shootings, anyone?), and to creatively find room for stockpiled food and water.
That said, here are some suggestions for making your home in a city or suburb more survivable. Not all of these suggestions will work in every situation. Some of them are rather extreme and I don't expect many (if any) of you to implement them, they are out there simply because I was on a roll and thought about them and researched them. Others are rather practical and I have implemented some (most) of those. Cherry pick the ones you think will work for you, add to them anything I may have left out (a lot, no doubt!), and make your home, whether it's an efficiency apartment or a McMansion in the suburbs, a place you consider a safe haven. Remember, the most important attributes of survivability are flexibility and improvisation.
Suburbs or places with sufficient ground or land (includes rooftops, balconies, patios...)
If you have the grounds for it, plant fruit trees and bushes, dwarf or standard depending on the space you have available – apples are versatile, but don’t necessarily limit yourself to apples. If you live in an apartment complex, work with management and the owners to re-landscape the property with fruit and nut trees – it’s a bonus for the residents to be able to harvest them. I have a mulberry, redbud, 4 dwarf apples, 2 dwarf apricots, 2 dwarf plums, and a fruiting hedge of Nanking cherries, elderberries, blueberries, raspberries, and lemons. You can also plant nut trees if you’ve room enough. I have a pecan tree, a hazelnut, and a burr oak, and plan to add an almond.
Plant flower beds and mingle vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers among them. Leafy lettuces, kale, cabbages, basil, rosemary, sage, carrots, radishes, daylilies, borage, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, potatoes, peanuts, cornflowers, and more. Put in “ornamental” stands of wheat or other grains. Plan on what you can grow during the winter, too, like cabbages, beets, parsnips, carrots, etc.
Consider some form of backyard barnyarding – chickens, guinea hens, ducks, rabbits, bees, goats, or mini cows, depending on your lot size and city ordinances. Even deeply urban cities like New York allow chickens, for now.
Consider installing a koi pond close to a downspout but far enough away from the foundation to avoid damaging it. This is a pretty feature that also collects rainwater and can do multiple duty – the koi are as edible as they are pretty, and if you plant edible lotuses and cattails with them, you have more food, it’s a water source, and you can add catfish for more good eating. If you’ve got the room to expand it out a bit, you could even grow rice there.
Do put in barrels to collect water at all your downspouts. If you add a pump to them, it will be easier to access. A manual hand pump is sufficient and will need fewer repairs and no excess power to use. Use this water for watering gardens when times are good and peaceful. It will save your water bill.
Install a fireplace as an alternate heat/cooking source. It should be a fireplace that burns fuel to which you will have easy access even in a disaster. Since you’ve planted fruit and nut trees, you’ll have plenty of trimmings and prunings for a woodburning fireplace. A mass rocket fireplace will burn more efficiently and is smaller so if you don’t have a lot of room or a lot of trees, that’s a good way to go.
Find out where the water table is on your land (even in the small plots of a city house, you can still find that out). In a seriously long term End of the World Scenario, you can drill a well and install a handpump. For anything else, it would be useful to know in case of flooding, drought, or digging an underground root cellar or bomb shelter.
Consider bricking up the street-facing side of your house or building a stone wall in front of it to help block gunfire. Unless you're willing to invest in steel shutters or bullet-proof glass, the windows are the least safe part of your house. If things do get rocky in your neighborhood and you can't afford steel shutters or bullet-proof glass, or even to brick up the street side walls, you could get some thick sheets of metal from a scrap yard and place them inside the house along the exterior walls. They can be painted, small holes drilled in them to hang pictures, and even have a window hole cut out that has a hinged cover.
This doesn't work for cars that are driven into homes. There are some neighborhoods around here where people drive cars (usually not their cars) into houses to make a point - and sometimes they get the address wrong. For that, consider thick hedges planted between the house and street. Privet hedges smell yummy in the spring and grow really fast - in fact, they're invasive and need lots of pruning and digging up of spreading saplings. Holly bushes, boxwood, eunymos, viburnum, beautyberry, mountain laurel, velvet leaf senna, kidneywood, mahonia, bamboo (also invasive, even the clumping bamboo, so you have to take precautions to keep it from taking over) and Texas barometer bush all make dense, thick hedges that are sturdy enough to stop a car and pretty enough to enhance your landscape. Keep these 3 - 4 feet high to prevent burglars from using them as a screen to enter your home, although if you have thorny hedges under your windows, that might not be so important.
To discourage break-ins, plant thorny plants under windows - rose bushes, blackberry and raspberry canes, cactus of various sorts, prickly holly, lemon trees, giant rhubarb, spiny gooseberries, blue spruce, Chinese jujube, firethorn, prickly ash, osmanthus, hawthorn, and purple berberis are thickly thorned - and some are edible (bonus!)
Any City/Suburb Location
Invest in at least one non-gasoline powered form of transportation. A bicycle is the most common, so get one that is sturdy, simple to repair, and capable of pulling a small trailer and buy the trailer when you buy the bike so you’ll have it in case of need. Use the trailer to go shopping and run local errands. Make sure you buy a repair kit and spare parts, too. You don’t have to buy these right away, but do plan on getting them in case of need. Sport bikes may be fun, but you want a workhorse of a bike.
Spend some time accumulating manual hand tools as well as power tools – drills, saws, hammers, and their accessory nails and screws and bolts and such. Practice using the manual tools in case you need to use them when the power goes out long term. Otherwise, take joy in using the power tools while you can.
Have materials ready to reinforce windows and doors in case of serious storms. Those in hurricane-prone areas know what I mean and probably already do this because it makes sense. But in case of a long term disaster, you may need to barricade your home for safety reasons against home invasions. If you already have the supplies on hand, you’re that much farther ahead.
I know a lot of survivalists swear by generators, and that may be a good idea if your area is prone to storm-created short term power outages. Solar power and solar batteries are a longer term solution if you can afford them. Using solar all year round means you save on electricity and never have to worry about power grid outages. In fact, if you do it right, the electric company may buy your surplus energy and you’ll get paid to have solar power. You could use a combination of generator and solar power.
Pay off as many bills as you can, including your house if you’re buying. It’s easier to come up with taxes than a mortgage, and the fewer bills you have, the more secure you are. No debt collectors hounding you, no one showing up at your door threatening you or repossessing your things. If you own everything you have, you are that much more secure and safe. I don’t know if it would be worth it to refinance your house, but with mortgage rates falling, it might be worth checking out – you might be able to save thousands of dollars in interest and be able to pay down the principle that much faster.
If you do have to “bug out”, have at least 3 exit routes and a bug out bag ready for you and each family member, including pets and livestock (if any). And always make bug out plans even if you expect and intend to bug in. If you don’t need a Plan B, C, or D, all the better for you, but if you do need them it’s good to have them.
Spend some time getting to know your neighbors – what skills do they have, what’s their lifestyle, would they be valuable in case of a disaster, can you share responsibilities with them, who do you have to be wary of? Survival is possible alone, but it’s much easier in a group. Your neighbors make the most logical starting place because what they do could have an impact on you and your survivability (and you on theirs).
Place children's rooms as far from the street as possible. In fact, all sleeping rooms should be as far from the street as possible, but if you have to have a street side bedroom, place the bed as far from the street as possible and re-enforce the street side wall to prevent or slow bullets from entering, especially if you live in an area where drive-by shootings have or may occur. If your neighborhood has or will see drive-by shootings (and really, how can you predict that - we've had drive-by shootings in quiet, low-crime neighborhoods recently), and you live in an apartment you can't alter, the thick sheet metal option might work for you, where you get thick sheets of metal from a salvage yard and line the exterior walls of your apartment with them. They may not stop some of the high powered guns from pushing a bullet through, but it could slow the bullet enough to be less than fatal.
Pack an emergency kit that you can carry around with you - first aid supplies, solar charger for your cell phone, spare batteries, flash light, pocket knife, duct tape, strong glue, clear nail polish, screw driver set, staple puller, scissors, sharpie pen, pen and notebook, snacks, a card with emergency numbers (in case your cell phone dies and you have to borrow someone else's or use a pay phone), cash for pay phone and/or vending machines - whatever you feel you might need in a city emergency.
And remember – survival in a city or suburban area requires a lot of flexibility and improvisation. Some of these suggestions are kind of extreme, and I, for one, am not using them. Others are just plain practical and I have some (most) of those in place. If one method or path doesn’t work for you find another one. Use what you have – and you have far more than you think you do. Being aware of what's happening in your neighborhood and city is the most important thing you can do for your survival and that of your loved ones.