Survive! (or, Managing Risks During Catastrophic Events)

One of my classmates recently inspired a bit of fun on Facebook, and it's inspired this blog post. He posted the following:

Saw this and thought of you - you probably have lots of this already!

What You’ll Need to Escape New York

In fact, that pictorial was an illustration for an article, The Preppers Next Door, about folks in New York who prepare to survive "Doomsday" - perhaps the collapse of civilization, or a natural disaster, or a foreign invasion. Anyway, my jocular response went something like this:

The guy who put this kit together is an amateur. There's some good stuff in there, obviously, but there's a LOT of redundant kit that's going to weigh him down without adding any extra value, which means that I would escape, and he'd be caught by the marauding hordes. For example, two utility axes, a hacksaw, and an E-tool? Amateur. Really, all you need is the E-tool, but you MIGHT carry that first axe just to be sure, and maybe a wiresaw instead of a hacksaw; not all four. Tool kit? Try one Leatherman multitool. The guy also has two massive cooking sets and three different water storage options, which is so overkill it's not even funny. Full set of eating utensils? Try a titanium spork. Bam. Nailed it.

Now this guy, on the other hand has the right idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXguo4Zluro

Of course, the best way to escape a collapse of civilization in New York is to just stay away from New York in the first place, which is why I'm the thirty year reigning champion of the Escape from New York contest. I've had a couple of close calls when I had to fly into the Newark airport that I don't like to think about!

Now, if you're only interested in the conclusion and want to skip some of the talk about actual survival packing, click here. YouTube user PackRat556 has a lot of good videos covering a variety of topics, including basic land navigation, field survival techniques, and good equipment to use in the outdoors. One of PackRat556's survival kits is outlined in the following video series.




As you can tell, PackRat556 does a better job of prioritizing and packing realistically than Aton Edwards, whose pack is the one featured in that New York Times article. In fact, a survival situation like the ones these "preppers" are gearing up for is almost entirely unlikely to ever happen in the first place. Even if it did, folks like Aton Edwards appear to have prioritized high speed gear like fire escape hoods and respirators over more practical items - like a change of clothes. The truth is that most people aren't in good enough shape to just walk (and don't forget swim) out of New York City, or anywhere else; and if you happen to be in good enough shape to do it, you'll soon wish that you'd swapped one or two of your walkie-talkies for a couple of extra pairs of wool socks.

The real experts in this kind of thing are the military, and specifically the light infantry and special operations communities. A few years ago, a series about the British Special Air Service had a great segment on this. It runs from 5:46 to 8:54, and I've posted it below.


Now, most folks who are trying to survive a disaster aren't going to be carrying 120 to 130 pounds of gear, and they won't be worrying about claymore anti-personnel mines or four hundred rounds of ammunition. That said, it gives an indication of what a person would really need to do. Ask yourself: are you actually in good enough shape to walk thirty miles in two or three days? If you're part of the small cross section of the population who could, could you do it with sixty pounds of gear on your back? Fifty? Forty? It's actually pretty physically taxing, even for someone in good shape. Let's face it, most folks have enough trouble with a fifty or sixty pound suitcase or rucksack in the airport.

A few years ago, I was working a job that could have put me into a desert survival situation. I carried a fairly lightweight day pack that was loaded with field gear for my job, along with water, food, and a handful of other items. By contrast, one of my co-workers got the CamelBak Motherlode - apparently the largest pack that CamelBak made. Every time he went out to the desert, he loaded his bag with a full bladder of water, two side-strapped canteens, a propane stove, propane bottles, eggs, bacon, a coffee pot, coffee grounds, maps, GPS, compass, map case, map pens, map compass and protractors, shortwave radio, entrenching tool, plus job-specific field gear and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. I once watched as he literally dropped the tailgate on one of our field trucks to get his bag out of the truck bed, because he couldn't lift it over the side wall of the truck bed. If necessary, I could have hiked back to camp with my gear, while he would have been forced to either wait it out, or abandon most of what he'd brought.

The bottom line is that when you're actually in a mobile survival situation, lighter is better. Some of that high speed gear may sound cool, but when every ounce is at a premium, you'll find yourself wishing that you'd left that soldering iron and one of your advanced water filters behind. Of course, the risk of society collapsing overnight in a manner that requires a survival pack is practically non-existent. What's much more likely - in fact, what we've seen on the news with disasters like Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and Snowmageddon - is a disaster requiring emergency preparedness in one's own home. While deployed to the Middle East, I was involved in planning for a potential Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) as a reaction to the Arab Spring, and the idea is the same. In these "more likely" cases, one's objective should be securing and occupying their home until emergency services arrive, or until basic services like electricity and water are restored.

Thus, in the most likely survival situation that most of us should expect to face, the governing factor should be longevity. There are some great resources at Ready.gov to help you get started. Also relevant, particularly if you're living overseas, are some of the military and other U.S. Government resources on NEOs, such as these from the Navy. There have been several NEOs conducted by Western governments in recent years, as well as precautionary NEO preparations. Being prepared to sustain oneself and one's family for up to two weeks, and possibly to defend one's home, are key elements of personal risk management.