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There is an essay that's been around for a few years now that gets mentioned a lot by 'urban' preppers when they offer their arguments either for why urban prepping is better. Or if not specifically advocating it is better, at least they offer the essay up with the intent of knocking remote (country) living down a peg or two, and pointing out some of its pitfalls.
It purports to be the real life experience of somebody from Argentina, regarding a lot of strife they had there. It's pretty long. Have not finished reading it in detail yet, so I reserve judgment until then. I've only heard offhanded reference to this essay as relayed by various urban preppers on forums and YouTube. I stumbled onto this essay the other day, and I think this is the one they are usually referring to.
This guys English seems uncharacteristically (suspiciously) good for a foreigner (even though he relays in his bio that he lived in the U.S. for three years)...... but that aside, read it for whatever merit you find in the case he presents.
When making a case for rural vs urban survival situations, personal preference inevitably will find its way into the argument. Let's face it, most folks aren't going to go out of their way to make an argument in favor of something they are not in favor of to begin with. I'll admit, personally, that my preference for a rural setting (SHTF situation) is heavily influenced by the fact that I absolutely despise huge population centers in the first place. Also, I'm simply not equipped for urban warfare. It's not part of my "being."
A good rhetorician can make a case for anything. In the end, it's going to boil down to where each person's abilities are going to be best utilized and where they are more comfortable whether there is an emergency or not. For instance, a person with solid skills in farming or foraging or hunting is not going to be in his/her best environment in a metropolis. On the other hand, a mercenary type or someone who has never been outside a city limit is not going to be in his best environment alone out in the middle of rural America.
If there is a certain base chance of survival in a SHTF situation, I think each person needs to honestly assess where they would best be able to increase those odds. I know where I would have best chances--I tend to improvise far better in the absence of people than in the company of a lot of people--thus a rural or very small town setting is best for me. But the thing is, I think it is going to vary for each individual. Some would probably be better off in the middle of NYC or LA. Just not me. I’d doubt if I could survive a week there right now… even without a SHTF. Fish don’t live very long out of the water.
Ferfal is fairly well known in prepper circles. To break it down fairly accurately, he says: In the event of collapse crime will skyrocket. In the city be prepared to bunker in place with security bars, alarms etc. on your home. Be prepared to defend yourself with deadly force both at home and when out. Be prepared to limit and be smart about your movements for safety. Be prepared for rolling shortages of every kind.
In the remote countryside, stand alone farms, homes, retreats unless well enforced with weapons/ammo and ready manpower to use them were sitting duck targets for mobile criminals that did terrible things to get at what those people had.
He basically said that a smallish town where people knew each other, had access to and means of food and other necessity production and that could practice mutual watch and defense fared the best after the Argentine collapse. If I omitted something important to the bottom line, someone will correct the record I'm sure.
Ferfal is fairly well known in prepper circles. To break it down fairly accurately, he says: In the event of collapse crime will skyrocket. In the city be prepared to bunker in place with security bars, alarms etc. on your home. Be prepared to defend yourself with deadly force both at home and when out. Be prepared to limit and be smart about your movements for safety. Be prepared for rolling shortages of every kind.
In the remote countryside, stand alone farms, homes, retreats unless well enforced with weapons/ammo and ready manpower to use them were sitting duck targets for mobile criminals that did terrible things to get at what those people had.
He basically said that a smallish town where people knew each other, had access to and means of food and other necessity production and that could practice mutual watch and defense fared the best after the Argentine collapse. If I omitted something important to the bottom line, someone will correct the record I'm sure.
You have captured the basic premis Which imho is that in the event of a teotwawki ALONE is a bad thing to be! There is security in numbers, be those numbers in a highraise apt building or be they 10 or 15 friends/faimly members bunkered up at the farm or a rural community with a strong local leader that said community will support. The trick is to develop the group before it happens! There are those that could do well reverting back to the teepee but I think for the most part those trying to go it alone if shtf will eventually wish they were not.....
Well, ferFal seems to be basically channeling Mel Tappan.
The problem is that Urban Survivalists read about relocation to rural settings and think "isolation". I don't think that anyone (with perhaps the exception of Chris ) who relocates rurally is trying to be an isolationist.
Mel and ferFal (who seems to) support the same ideal, a community in a rural location. Where that community can supply support for equipment, goods and services, so that the individual need not be a combination of John Matrix, MacGuyver, and a combat medic to survive.
That community will also assist in providing security, since everyone needs to sleep at some time, even setting up a watch needs more than two people to be effective, unless you're entirely spending all of your time on watch (which is not a successful survival strategy).
Even out in the bush in Alaska you'll likely have some neighbors, and it's a good idea to be on good terms with them should a collapse happen. It's not necessarily true a person in an isolated, rural area is entirely on their own. But they'll be further away from hordes of perhaps millions of desperate, angry, violence-prone people who lack the ability to live without modern conveniences.
What Ferfal considers rural and remote, though, pales in comparison to some areas of this country (i.e., the bush of Alaska, the more isolated parts of Northern Maine, vast areas of many Western states, etc.). His country's population is considerably denser than many areas of this country, and is a much smaller country making the rural areas closer to major cities. Give me a rural area a good days drive or more (or unreachable by car) from any city, over being in a city. Hurricane Katrina showed us in this country what can happen in cities--I know well enough the rural areas far from cities affected by Katrina fared significantly better as far as crime issues went (though aid was slower in coming than to the cities, but self-reliant people don't often need government bailouts).
My ex was a psychopath, and to get away from him I rented an isolated ranch in NM. Turn off the two lane onto the dirt road, go thru the cattle gate, drive 3 miles, turn right over the hill, and there was the "ranch". No running water, no phones, no electricity; two wells (one alkaline and no good) a wood cookstove (no trees, the wood I got I prospected for in washes from the nearby mountains), an outdoor privy. I heated water for baths for me and my two sons on the cookstove, had chickens and eggs, was working on a garden. When the windmill failed, I had to climb up to see what was the matter... and I was not mechanically inclined, plus I have a fear of falling that makes me cling like a sandburr to any surface. One dark and stormy night, there was a knock at the door. A neighboring cattle rancher was out hunting his calves when he saw the light in my window and smelled the smoke from my fire. I invited him in, fed him, and we talked for several hours while the storm raged outside and his clothes dried off. (He'd put his horse in the ramshackle single stall barn.) When the storm cleared, he left. That was the only neighbor I saw for months.
My parents freaked and insisted that I bring myself and my two boys back to SC. I didn't understand why they were so worried. But hey, I was 22 and very independent! Liming an outhouse, cutting firewood, cooking on a woodstove, even going down to Mexico for a week, in a '47 panel van with a friend and her kids, was no big deal to me back then.
Nowadays, though, I know what I don't know. Living that way today would be very different - no way I'd answer a knock at the door by myself at night, or even sleep, without a gun at my side. People are crazy and are bound to get crazier; my ex isn't the only psychopath still out there. No way I'd live that rurally again, trying to fix things I didn't know or didn't understand. No way I wouldn't have access to my own food, my own water, and my own waste disposal - as well as people around me whom I could trust to help me defend it, as well as they could trust me to help defend theirs.
My son lives in the middle of Las Vegas. He and his friends are preparing for TEOTWAWKI, storing up, fully armed (and legged) planning for their own enclave in the middle of urbia. More power to him; he is a tough independent guy, hard and cold as he would need to be. He knows this is a good fallback, bug-out place, IF he needs it and IF he can get here at all - but he is determined to make his stand there.
I guess that - having been an EMT, and having lived through Hurricane Hugo, and seeing the massive destruction, hearing the police chief say, "There's no more room in the jails, if you see looters, BEAT THEM until they drop the stuff and run off!" - I know how quickly urban situations can deteriorate. It isn't just the immediate natural or man-made disaster - it's what happens afterwards; the lack of waste management, the overflowing sewers and trash bins, the bodies rotting, the diseases proliferating, the rats, the roaches, feral and abandoned animals, all carrying diseases, the humanimals carrying destruction and perpetrating it on anyone who has anything at all.
Will it happen? Who knows? But if it does, we can each be prepared in our own ways. I won't say that all of the urbanites will be killed any more than I'll say that all of the hermits will survive; I know all too well what can happen in both instances. But to me it just makes sense to be in a place that is usually overlooked or disparaged, yet where there are others around with whom you can be independent yet interdependent, without fearing that late-night knock on the door.
Last edited by SCGranny; 07-06-2011 at 10:48 PM..
Reason: speling ;->
I've watched documentaries on eco-friendly communities that thrive in urban community settings but that doesn't compare much to SHTF lifestyles. City-living should be more defined as well, there are very dense cities like NYC where I could never see a positive about living there, and there are cities where the urban environment stops at the city-line.
I am too much the hermit type to deal with a lot of people at once. A full blown party to me these days is my wife, and maybe another couple of people.
I probably live to remote to be bothered with. It would take too much wasted engergy to just bother to get here, and then either find nothing of any value, or die looking.
Most locals have no idea there is a place out here, and those that do, recall the fair ground that went under in 1930. That age group isn't going to be a part of the problem anyway.
The other problem I have right now is the LL had a friend come, and the friend is less than totally useless. I have no idea how to deal with this, since I really haven't encountered anyone in my life this useless. My current tactic is to ignor her, as in does not exist.
I probably live to remote to be bothered with. It would take too much wasted engergy to just bother to get here, and then either find nothing of any value, or die looking.
Mac, you made me laugh out loud -- bless you!
That is EXACTLY the sort of place I'm looking for, as well!
I don't care what Ferfal or whoever says about cities vs rural areas. I would just feel more comfortable being squirreled away somewhere in the backwoods. I don't like crowds much, and I don't like cities any better.
Give me some wide open spaces, with good hiding places!
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Which imho is that in the event of a teotwawki ALONE is a bad thing to be! There is security in numbers, be those numbers in a highraise apt building or be they 10 or 15 friends/faimly members bunkered up at the farm or a rural community with a strong local leader that said community will support. The trick is to develop the group before it happens! There are those that could do well reverting back to the teepee but I think for the most part those trying to go it alone if shtf will eventually wish they were not.....
) who relocates rurally is trying to be an isolationist. 
