Looking in abandoned vehicles, at military fuel dumps, at old tank farms, and at construction sites have all been mentioned. But what about gathering combustibles such as boards, pieces of plastic, and charcoal scavenged from abandoned buildings? Perhaps a wooden warehouse lies near your retreat, or trees from the park, or tires from vehicles. I burned tires in my shop stove for years. It was a pain to keep cleaning the stove, and everybody for miles could see the dense smoke, but this was the only downside. The upside was that the tires and their heat were absolutely free. Do the best you can to vent the fumes from burning tires or plastic, which can be toxic. Ever wonder why the Germans in the old East Berlin revered their old linden trees? They were the only older trees that survived. For some reason every other tree in the entire city—both east and west—had ended up as fuel in somebody’s stove.
If there are parks and tree-bearing green strips that may yield burnable fuel near at hand in your city, laying in an ax, handsaw, or even small chain saw may be extremely wise. These tools are also useful when scrounging wood out of damaged buildings. As trading stock they would be hard to beat.
Khartoum, Sudan, is a city that has been in perpetual collapse for at least 15 years. No fuel is available from government or private vendors. But this has not slowed entrepreneurs working in the black market. One sees them on street corners and pedaling around on their bicycles selling gasoline, diesel, and kerosene in old liter-size Coke bottles. A few sell fuel measured out of 5-gallon containers into your container. Wholesalers, no doubt. There were also dozens of women with small bundles of split wood branches, bags of charcoal, and animal dung. This brings two more concepts of importance to city survivors into view.
Planning Ahead
The first is perhaps obvious to the point of being trite, but should not be overlooked. City survivors might be able to purchase fuel containers after the start of a crisis, but I wouldn’t recommend planning to try it. Purchase now when they are cheap and available. Store three or four 5-gallon containers to transport diesel and as many for gasoline as seems appropriate. You may delay filling these till you hear the guns, but these containers are mostly for transport and scrounging or for transport from stored supplies. Major quantities of gasoline and diesel should be stored in 55-gallon barrels or in 250-gallon steel tanks, not in little land 5-gallon containers.
The second is that more than any other class of survivor, city survivors have the opportunity to purchase or trade for needed supplies of everything. Unlike survivors out in the open country where few people live and there are even fewer accumulated survival goods and tools, there will be an abundance in cities. An incentive such as cash or trade goods will bring these items out.
This leads to another basic rule of survival—whether you’re in the city or country doesn’t make a difference. Survival for everyone is possible. Random events produce some real surprises. Yet, down through history, those who have their financial houses in order will generally survive best.
What is also being implied is that cash and trade goods might be one of the better sources of energy for city survival. Trading goods is a complex subject. See Chapter 10 for more ideas.
Some of these scrounged sources for fuel will require the use of small, portable pumps, probably like the $4.95 plastic one currently on my electric drill. It regularly pumps diesel oil up to 6 feet out of an underground tank. A minuscule amount of electricity is required. Currently I get this from a wall socket, but a 12- to 110-volt vehicle inverter designed to plug into my car’s cigarette lighter socket would also work.
There is also the possibility of finding coal in an old electricity generating plant storage area or along railroad tracks where steamer coal was once hauled. This was one of several sources of energy for my dad’s family during their stay in World War I era Germany. Fortunately, they lived close to a rail switching yard. But this could have been deadly had the Allies ever started bombing the way they did in World War II.
Been there, done that folk mention mountains of coal at factories in larger cities quickly overtaken by collapse. These mountains of coal quickly walked off, they claimed. So be one of the first to discover this largesse.
Bunker-C, a very thick grade of almost crude oil, is used by many power generation plants. Bunker-C has one of the highest energy-to-volume ratios of any fuel. It is so viscous that it must be heated to 40 degrees before it will run through a pipe. City survivors who scrounge this stuff should mix it with sawdust, leaves, or wood chips to produce a humble, homemade sort of fuel bar. Burn these in the open as a sort of supercharged campfire log.
Burning asphalt from the street was the most exotic energy source I could discover. People in some eastern Russian cities have torn up the blacktop layered on their streets and burned it to cook food and keep warm. Certainly a low-intensity, smoky, sooty deal, but if it’s the only game in town, it’s the only game in town.
In conclusion of this very important chapter, please recall again that it is dramatically easier to start a cooking/heating fire with matches. Keep a huge supply on hand in your emergency supplies. Also, keep several dozen small throwaway butane lighters as well as a few scratch-type flint sparkers.
Matches aren’t glamorous or high-tech, but they’re so handy when every second counts in the fight to stay alive.
Chapter 6
Food
Average Americans, even those who are somewhat self-sufficient, firmly believe that survival in the city is impossible.
I encountered such a couple recently from Spokane, Washington, who flat-out told me, “If there are serious disruptions, we are all going to die.” Spokane is only a modestly sized city, but she couldn’t make up her mind whether to nod her head (“yes, we are all going to die”) or shake it from side to side (“we don’t have a. prayer”).
Maybe yes and maybe no, I always respond. My father survived World War I in a very big city in Germany. Abdullah, an exchange student, made it right through the worst of Beirut, and Martin Fischer’s grandmother lived through the entire Soviet occupation when she was a younger woman and wouldn’t dare leave the house.
“But what did these people eat?” is always the response.
“Same thing survivors out in the country eat,” I tell them.
Survivors—city or country—have a Rule of Threes with which they must operate. This means that, for every one of life’s absolute needs, they must make advance provision by three separate and distinct methods. City or country, renewable food is provided through storing supplies, gardening, raising livestock, hunting and gathering, scrounging, purchasing, or bartering.
Pick any three. They all have worked in the past and will work again for those willing to make them work.