Urban Survival

[Psychlonic]

Here's a quick guide I wrote on urban survival and some important comments made afterwards. Posted this on Totse, Zoklet, and R26X, thought I posted this here, but apparently not. It's kinda dumb and probably not useful, but like most survival info, it's good to have and not need than to need and not have.


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Urban Survival


You're walking slowly, low to the ground next to a house just trying to make it into the next yard without being detected. Without warning, a car approaches the house. Strobe lights turn on and a spotlight hits you! You've been seen.
You quickly dash out of sight then begin to quietly maneuver yourself as far from the incident as possible but now you've got a problem: you're miles away from base/parking and there's a search going on. You may not be able to safely return for awhile, you have to stick it out in the streets.

Enter urban survival. You know how to make a debris hut, you know how to catch fish in streams, set snares, and make elaborate camping equipment from willow. But this isn't the wild, this is the city, and half those techniques won't apply here. This is a completely different animal.

This is by no means a complete guide, but rather a compilation of ideas off the top of my head.

Your priorities are still the same though as they are in any escape and evasion scenario. While you are technically capable of sitting out the night just fine, you may for whatever reason be forced to stay in the streets for some time, or you may just want to make your night more comfortable. If you know what you are doing, this isn't a risky proposition.

Your necessities of survival:
Food
Water
Shelter/Adequate Clothing
Defense

Also, you may be injured. Perhaps an owner has shot you in a non-vital location. In this case medical treatment will also be a priority.
In the end, staying alive is more important than being caught, so if you are seriously wounded, by all means turn yourself in. However, in many cases you should be able to treat yourself.

In the midst of all this, you should also keep mobility in mind, in case the search spans to your current bug out location.

Your biggest skill here is going to be dumpster diving, so keep your gear on. You don't want to be seen digging through trash and besides, maybe you'll find some info of value while you're at it. Be an opportunist.
All of your survival needs can potentially be found from dumpster diving. Restaurants, delis, apartment complexes, and certain other buildings are hot spots for thrown out food. You may have to settle for a stale donut or burrito, but the food should still be good if it's wrapped or only day-old. Stay away from spoiled raw meats, breads too moldy to salvage, or rotting fruits and ensure any food items you intend to eat have not been contaminated with chemicals - be it intentional or by leaking chem containers in the same dumpster.

Another food source, as in the wild, are plants. Depending on your region, you might have dandelions, cat tails, barrel cactus, or even fruit trees and bushes that've been planted for decoration. If you're in the suburbs, don't forget about gardens. This of course depends on the season.

Failing that, you can always flat out raid a car or house for some food if you absolutely must eat. You might find a few things as you walk by a car, or you might find a fridge inside of a shed with some meat in it.

If you have money, you can hit vending machines or even 24/7 stores if you feel they are safe. If you lack money, carshop and op for it, then get yourself whatever semi-nutritional candy bars you can. Always remember that when you are geared, you can take what you need.


Water, thankfully enough, should be an easier commodity to come across. Parks with drinking fountains, public bathrooms, water spouts near housing and certain buildings, all are ready-to-drink sources. If you lack a container, you can find them in dumpsters, near buildings, littered pretty much everywhere. You'll likely want to sterilize at LEAST the lid and opening, if not the whole thing. This is especially true if the container was used for something like milk. Obviously you should go for fairly recently discarded items, rather than old, sun-bleached, falling apart ones. But do what you have to do.

If for whatever reason you do not have access to purified water, you can purify whatever is available through boiling. You'll need a heat source and a boiling pan. A cleaned hub cap would work wonders for the latter and be readily available. For heat, you're going to be either building a fire or using a stove.

Which brings me to the next area: fire. Maybe you want to cook your food just to be safe, or boil your water, or boil a container in boiling water for awhile to purify it as best as possible. To do this you need a heat source.

First and foremost, you need a firestarter. On the streets this should be easy - find a match, lighter, use a battery to cause an arc, smash a couple steel objects together, whatever.
Now you've got two easy options: start a wood fire, or start a gas fire. Wood fires will only require wood, obviously. This can come from dead trees, buildings, furniture, anywhere there's some wood. Flake off tinder, build a clandestine pit, and start your fire.

You can also get a little more fancy and build a gasoline stove. To do this find yourself a couple identical aluminum cans and cut them in half with your knife or multitool. If you do not have a cutting tool, find an expedient one - be it a broken glass shard, ripped metal, a sharp rock, use what's available and at least bring a multitool next time chief.

You want to use both can bottoms, so discard the tops unless you want to use them for cooking apparatus or weak cutting tools. Slit one half-can down the sides in 4 locations, leaving the bottom completely intact. The idea is to get this one to fit over the other bottom half. Now you need to poke holes in the half-can you slit. Poke as small of holes as possible along the edge (outside of the rim which touches whatever surface you place the can on), then poke a pattern of five holes in the middle. You can poke the holes with a knife tip if it's small enough, a thumbtack, tough wire, etc. This is the top of your stove.

What you've got now is an alcohol stove used by ultralight backpackers on a budget. It's light, efficient, and expendable. You fill it through the top of the stove so the fuel runs down into the non-slit portion of the stove where it will not spill. You then ignite the fuel and the holes will control the burn allowing you enough time to cook or purify.

However, chances are you won't come across a high quality fuel. High proof liquor, lab grade alcohol, rubbing alcohol all work great, but chances are you're going to be using plain old petroleum -gasoline - or diesel even. This means more dirty work - you'll need to siphon the gas from a vehicle or snatch a jerry can out of someone's garage. Remember that for your purposes, anything will work - chainsaws, motorcycles, ATVs, anything that uses a flammable fuel here is OK. I'd advise against Methane based fuels though unless no alternatives are available.

This brings us to yet another essential skill of the urban survivalist: siphoning. You may have even driven to a distant city only to find yourself lacking the fuel to return home. Now you need more.
You're going to need a few obvious things: a fuel container of sorts and possibly a hose. Locate a vehicle with your choice of fuel and find the gas tank. You can either attempt to siphon through the fill tube, or you can unscrew the bolt on the tank itself if applicable. OR, if you're really desperate, you can attempt to punch through the tank itself and collect the leaking fuel.

The fuel container can be anything - milk jugs, your alcohol stove, a hub cap (just don't cook with it later), pie tin, anything. Pans and such will be ideal if you're going under the car to get your gas, whereas large containers are more efficient for siphoning. Keep in mind that you'll need to get away, so don't weigh yourself down too much. This will be an operation in itself.
For hose, your best bet will be garden hose of some sort. construction sites may also have hose you can use.

On newer vehicles, attempting to go through the fill tube will be a pain in the ass. It'll likely curve some and is almost guaranteed to have a screen inside to stop you. If you have nothing to punch through the screen with, forget it.
But if you do get through, now you need to get the fuel running. Open your container and make sure your hose is dipped into the fuel, then suck on the other end of the hose to get the flow going. Ideally, you'll want to suck hard on the hose, then as the gas draws near you place the hose into your container as it begins to spill out. More likely though, you're going to get some gas in your mouth and/or all over the ground around you first. When you're topped off, remove the hose, return everything as you found it, and punch out of the neighborhood.

The other method is to open up the tank from the bottom. You'll need some sort of wrench or plyers (multitool). Also, be prepared to make a huge mess.
Get on your back and crawl under the vehicle, locate the gas tank, then find a bolt which should be screwed into the tank. Removing this bolt will cause gasoline to gush out of the hole, and you'll have to collect the gas with pans. You can surely see the tediousness of this.
Do so and ditch with the gas, forget putting the bolt back in unless you just want to get messier. The rest of the gas is going to dump all over the place, but it's a necessary evil. Just get out of the area as quick as possible.

So you've got food, water, heat source, and fuel if needed. What if you need a shelter? This is where you get to be creative. You can use plastic pieces to make shelters, cardboard, or even spend the night inside of a construction site or empty house if need be. Just remember to get out before 6AM or so. If you're going to build, build in an inconspicuous location.
If you're on the go, make sure you've got enough clothing to stay warm. People leave clothes everywhere, if there's a donation drop off spot - look there. Stuff newspapers in your clothing if you're cold, or blankets, anything else you can find. You can also rip insulation off from construction sites, just remember they're irritable on your skin so make sure you've got a barrier between it and you.

You may need defense. Again, this is all up to you. You can use the cutting tool you used to make your alcohol stove, any weapon you might be carrying, a heavy pipe you find, baseball bat, anything.

Finally, you may need load bearing equipment to carry necessary items on the go. At the ass end of the "hierarchy" are trash bags, pillow cases, blankets, basically your hobostick get-up. Finding a backpack shouldn't be too troublesome in certain locations, and you can always use wire/string to fashion yourself a make-shift backpack.

Just remember that your priorities are to stay alive and return to base, and you probably going to have to commit a crime or two to do that.

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I was also planning to write out a big section on expedient first aid and wound treatment, using materials you can either find or steal easily.
Here's a post I made immediately after, having spoke to Biohazard on MSN and he commented on the work:

"Double posting solely to keep my first post purely the information.

Biohazard pointed out to me that none of the vehicles he's looked at have not had drain plugs in the gas tanks, whereas almost all I've seen have had them. So I guess it's a coin flip as to whether or not the vehicle is going to have one.
He also correctly stated that arcing wires and steel sparks won't readily ignite materials. They WILL ignite tinder with some effort, and light amounts of gasoline should also ignite. Remember these methods ARE spark throwers and should be treated as you would treat any flint and tinder fire making method. Normally you'd make yourself some char cloth to catch sparks, but if you've got something to make the fire you'd need for that, then you probably don't need the char cloth. Unless of course you plan on spending a long ass time away from home. Theoretically certain lints might make a great spark catcher. Chances are though you might just be making fine tinder."


Finally, for those wondering I HAVE done most of these techniques, though never in an urban survival situation. I commonly make fuel stoves out of cans, and I shamefully admit dumpster diving for food in my youth haha. So while the info is by no means "complete", what IS here I know will work. If you've got anything to add or want to one-up me, by all means.

[Ghost]

On the topic of starting a fire, there's a very easy method i learned from a friend a couple years ago. all you need is some thin wire (steel wool works best, can often be found where people have been cleaning their BBQ grills or in garages, and a cellphone battery. (easily carshopped.)

Just carefully touch a few pieces of the steel wool to the battery's terminals, and they'll ignite immediately. I didn't really believe it at first, but just touching a cellphone battery into a clump of steel wool makes firestarting in emergencies incredibly easy.

[Psychlonic]

Good tip, I hadn't even thought of that. Ideally a single strand of the steel wool will glow red hot if there's enough juice. That's a fairly common trick for homemade ignitors. Figures that I wouldn't apply that to survival haha. Which reminds me, thin nichrome wire works as well, as found in toasters and hair dryers, should you come across junked appliances. Technically any metal will glow and light things on fire if you have enough electricity flowing through it.

[Ghost]

Heh, you'd think i'd know a little bit more about surviving in an urban environment since i spent a few months living on the streets in boise. On the topic of first aid - there hasn't been a single night i've car shopped where i haven't found at least one first aid kit in a car. Sort of obvious, but that's the sort of stuff that often gets overlooked in the heat of the moment.

[Psychlonic]

Eh, share what you've got. Some stories might be fun, I've never been in a serious survival situation I haven't purposely put myself in.

[stealththief]

I dive for food regularly because I'd rather that than buy it, so I'm out often. You can find decent amounts of medicine behind pharmacies and drugstores, this has helped out a few times even the same day at times. Some naturals you can use when you're not well are citris fruits and salt.
Another way to heat your food up is to strip down to just a shirt and pants walk into the 7-11 or gas station and use their microwave, a bit riskier if you're trying to stay super discreet but I still feel the guy behind the counter isn't going to know you're on the run or even care.
A good sleeping spot is on top of buildings, especially fast foods spots, they often have their logo mounted on the roof on some sort of solid barrier thing and often the entire outside edge ofthe roof is more elevated than the center making invisible sleeping no problem. Check the back, there should be food in the dumpster and a ladder to the top. Don't let ladder covers stop you, just grab them and brace the wall until you can reach the rungs.
For fire you really need to make sure you're out of sight, fire is the easiest way to get the cops (or whoever) back on your ass after you lost them and moved because people aren't used to fire in cities, they'll ask you what's up if you're lucky, but they're just as likely if not moreso to call the police to get it checked out.

[Xanatos]

* Rooftops are a great place to spend the night, the higher the better.
* The leaves of the Ribwort Plantain can be used as bandages for minor cuts; just hold or tie the leaf directly onto the wound. Dandelion juice (found in the stems) can also be used as glue to patch up minor wounds, can also be used for other things as well.
* For more serious wounds have a look through houses, garages, construction sites, etc for some superglue. Apparently superglue was originally used to "patch up broken soldiers".
* Clovers are high in protein and are abundant. Difficult to digest when eaten raw, but this can be solved by boiling the leaves. The clover flowers can also be dried, crushed and made into a healthy, refreshing tea. Dandelions are another comonly found food source; high in vitamins and calcium and are abundant. For a further list of edible/useful plants have a look through FM 21-76, Appendix B.

That's all I can think of for now, in a bit of a rush.