Surviving in the City                                                          (28)

Introduction

While we all want to do our best to prepare for a coming crisis, and many Saints realize the city is perhaps the worst place to live,

very few of us are really prepared to pack up the old Winnebago and head for the hills. Most American Saints,

whether they’re aware or not, are going to stay in the cities. This is not a hasty decision for most Saints.

Most of us depend on the city for our livelihood, and we can be better prepared by continuing to live in the city,

earn a good income, and make preparations for exiting the city at the appropriate time – or by staying in the city and living off existing supplies.

This special report explains some of the most critical dangers of living in a city and presents some solutions to surviving them.

 If you are one of the Saints who has decided to stay in the city, you’ll benefit greatly from this information.

Cities are artificial

Every city is an artificial construct. Cities formed as people came together to conduct business,

 participate in social interaction, and benefit from efficiencies in public services

(such as schools, sewers, water, etc.) and a common defense. Yet cities cannot survive alone.

They need resources from the country; most notably, food, water and electricity.

While electricity and water can sometimes be created or found within city limits,

 the acreage requirements of food dictate that no city could possibly feed its own people.

Read that last phrase carefully: “No city can feed its own people.” Not one. Cities are,

by their very nature, dependent on the importation of food.

The advent of just-in-time delivery systems to our grocery stores means that most cities would

run out of food within a week if supplies were for some reason disrupted.  Remember, cities are not self-sufficient.

Although they may seem to be in 2005, they have for a longtime been entirely

 dependent on the American farmer for their support – something almost all Americans take for granted (except the farmer, of course…)

Risks in the City

The city presents some serious risks during a crisis. The four most serious ones are

1. the collapse of social order (riots),

2. the failure of the water treatment and delivery systems,

 3. the depletion of food sup-plies

 4. the failure of the power grid and

 5. you maybe quarantined. While not every situation will appear in every city, every situation will most certainly appear in some cities.

Will that include yours? We’ll tackle these one at a time:

1. The Collapse of Social Order

“Social order” is a delicate thing, and it exists as a psychological barrier that could easily collapse under the right conditions.

We all saw this during the L.A. Riots following the Rodney King trial verdict as citizens of L.A. set fire to their own town,

yanked people from vehicles and beat them literally to death, and even fired guns at firemen attempting to save their buildings!

More recently we were all witness to the looting, violence and total breakdown of society following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

What allowed this to happen? Simple: the simultaneous melting away of the psychological barrier of “order.”

Once people realized 911 couldn’t handle the load, or was offline, that the local police were help-less

 or had simply abandoned their posts, “Law and Order” ceased to exist in their minds.

They then con-ducted their lives in the way they always wanted to, but couldn’t because of the police.

That is, they ran out to the local stores and just took whatever they wanted (looting).

Surviving in the City                                                         

   They took our their racial frustration on innocent victims who happened to be driving through the area,

 and they let loose on a path of destruction that only stopped when men with rifles

(the National Guard) were called in to settle things down. In other words,

only the threat of immediate death stopped the looting and violence

. Rifles work wonders. Imagine store owners lying prone on the roofs of their stores with AK-47’s,

firing at anyone who approached. This is exactly what happened in Los Angeles.

But worse, imagine the lawless horde firing at the rescue copters trying to bring in supplies to the desperate masses in New Orleans.

Even if the food somehow gets into the cities, lack of money

(due to the government not sending out checks) could cause the same thing.

 Eventually, lack of money results in looting and mass theft.

As the stealing bal-loons, it also results in a collapse of social order.

Water; the same thing (but faster).

The collapse of social order is also very dangerous because it doesn’t require any “actual”

collapse of the power grid, telecommunications, transportation or banking. Social order is a psychological artifact.

It is a frame of mind, and any global panic can quickly re-move the mental barrier that right now keeps people basically “lawful.”

2. The Failure of Water Treatment and Delivery Systems

Will the water treatment facilities fail during a crisis? Many will. Some won’t.

The problem lies in figuring out whether yours will. Certainly, they depend on electricity,

 and if the power goes down, so will the water. The most important question here,

though, is about what will happen when the water stops flowing (or if it is flowing, but it’s not drinkable).

As you are probably aware, while people can live without food for long periods of time (2-3 weeks),

water is needed on a daily basis. You can go 2-3 days with-out it, at most, but beyond that, you’ll quickly turn to dust.

That means people will do anything to get water, because to not have it means death

. And guess where it’s going to be the most difficult to actually get water? You guessed it: in the cities.

 During the first day of the water crisis, many people still won’t figure out what’s going on.

They’ll figure it’s a temporary breakage of a water main and the government will get it fixed within hours.

As those hours stretch into the next day, these people will get very worried. By the second day,

more and more people will realize the water isn’t coming.

At that point, you could easily see a breakdown of social order, as de-scribed in the previous section

(as you can see, these things all tend to cause each other…).People will begin their “search for water,”

and the first place they’re likely to go is where they always go for liquids: the grocery store,

 the local Walmart, the 7-11. The shelves will be cleaned out rather quickly.

 

As a result of all this, if water stops flowing, here are the events you can expect to see in some of the worse-off cities:

Looting of all the grocery stores by the second or third day (remember New Orleans?)

Minor outbreaks of violence during the looting. Shop owners, for example, may attempt to defend their shops with fire-arms (ala L.A. Riots)

Mass exodus of residents from the city in search of water                                                    

Ransacking of any houses or farms within a gas-tank radius of the city, presumably by desperate people with guns

Mass traffic jams on the outbound high-ways as people run out of gas and abandon their vehicles

(if bad enough, this could actually block the highways and trap people in the cities) (Remember Hurricane Rita?)

Mass outbreak of water-borne diseases as people use streams and rivers as both a water fountain and a bathroom.

 People crapping upstream are going to infect the people drinking downstream.

Very few have any kind of water filtration device.

That last point is really critical. Once the water flow stops, disease is going to strike

.

3. The Depletion of Food Supplies

The food supplies will likely dwindle quickly as we approach a possible crisis due to people stocking up just in case.

 Once the crisis actually hits, expect to see breakdowns in the transportation sector that will result in major delays in food delivery.

This means food may arrive in sporadic fashion in some cities (if at all).

Once this happens, food suddenly becomes really valuable to people

(even though they take it for granted today).

And that means any small shipment of food that arrives will be quickly grabbed and eaten or stored.

 It only takes one week without food to remind people how much they actually need it,

so expect the atmosphere to be that of a “near panic” if food is delayed by as little as three days.

The level of panic will vary from city to city. Some cities or towns may experience very

 little difficulty receiving food. Others may face near-starvation circum-stances.

Remember, the cities depend entirely on food shipped in from the farms and food processing companies.

Also, note that if there’s a water problem as mentioned in the previous section, and the mass exodus begins,

 the highways may be jammed up at critical locations, causing gridlock for the trucking industry.

If we’re lucky, some trucks will continue to roll. If we’re not, assume that nothing gets through.

A shortage of food ultimately results in the same behavior as a shortage of water.

First, people eat what’ sin the pantry, then they loot the grocery stores.

After that, with all local supplies depleted and no hope on the horizon, they leave the city

and start ransacking nearby homes. Some will hunt in nearby forests, but most city-dwellers

 don’t know how to hunt. In any case, anyone with the means to leave the city will likely do so soon after their food shortage begins.

4. The Failure of the Power Grid

Nothing is as suddenly obvious – nor has such a gigantic psychological impact – as the failure of the power grid.

When the electricity stops, almost every-body knows it at the same instant (unless it happens at night).

Naturally, during the first few hours of the power failure, if it occurs, people will assume it’s a temporary situation.

Maybe a tree fell on some power lines, or perhaps a transformer blew up somewhere nearby.

They’ll foolishly sit tight and wait for the power to come back on.  Even in a storm situation it could take days.

A nuclear melt-down or terrorist attack could cause months without power.