Urban Survival Kits

Preparing for Natural Disasters and Major Incidents

5th May 2021

25 years ago survivalism was a niche area - the preserve of the military and dedicated bushcrafters - but the growth of global travel to more remote areas, a greater number of independent travellers, increased urbanisation in and around areas with a high probability of natural disasters and a heightened terrorism threat post 9/11 have triggered a renaissance in survivalism in the form of 'Preparedness' for major incidents in urban environments, at home and abroad.

In the same way that the contents of your First Aid Kit should reflect your needs and situation, the equipment you might consider when preparing for major incidents in urban environments should similarly reflect your:

• Geographical location

  • Areas of political / civil / military unrest

  • Terrorist targets - typically western city centres, especially business districts.

• Your occupation

  • Diplomatic service, NGO's, Financial sector, a frequent traveller

• Proximity to definitive safety

  • Urban versus remote

  • Home nation versus travelling abroad

Survival Kits

We will apply two concepts here which are shared with our views on Remote Survival Kits

Further Reading: Remote Survival Kits

1. It is not a Survival Kit - but it is rather useful.
Carrying the equipment below will not guarantee any chance of survival in a worst-case scenario but a few well-chosen items which can be carried discreetly, without drawing attention to oneself or changing the way you live your life can be…rather useful.

2. We apply the same PLAN-MC approach in an Urban setting as we do in a Remote setting.

P – Protection – From the environment and dangers.  Identifying and utilising shelter, concealment and methods of entry and escape, for example.

L – Location – Means of being seen and able to identify your location.

A – Acquisition – Sourcing food, water and transport and commodities.

N – Navigation – The ability to identify your current location, plan a route to a chosen location and navigate along that route.

M – Medical – Being able to deal with injuries and illnesses with limited resources.

C – Communication – Methods of communicating your situation, location and needs.

Every Day Carry

The ideal survival kit would be small enough to not be an inhibitor to always having it with you and would expedite your exit or increase your chances of finding safety or rescue.

The key to it being an 'everyday' list is that it needs to be a small list and items that you would reasonably carry with you all day, every day.   It is very easy to let this list grow.  Before you know it you have a belt full of pouches and your bulging key ring is full of whistles, torches, compasses, knives and so on, which becomes an inhibitor to carrying it daily.

Your Survival Kit should be small, unobtrusive and be able to fit in your pockets comfortably.

Protection

Avoidance

The best form of Proactive protection from a threat is avoidance.   Before travelling to an area do your research and identify threats and consider what threats can be mitigated.  

UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Travel Advice is an excellent example of open-source intelligence for travel security.   For up-to-date information utilise a reliable news agency such as Reuters and save the county, region or city in your feed preferences for automatic daily updates.  Less authoritative and reliable but sometimes more responsive is a saved Twitter search using the same hashtags.

Understanding and recognising predictable human behaviours is also key to avoidance. Yousef Badou, founder of Emergence, is an expert in situational awareness and regularly shares information on Social Media.

Personal Fitness

If a problem were to develop the best Reactive Protection is usually running away. As fast as you can. You don’t even have to be the fastest, you just don’t want to be the slowest.

You don’t need to be an Olympic triathlete but, as a basic level of functional fitness, could you:

• Climb a flight of stairs with a loaded rucksack without getting out of breath?

• Climb over a 2 meter wall – no matter how undignified - to seek safety on the other side?

• Carry an adult, of a similar build to you, 10 meters to get them out of immediate danger?

• Lift your own bodyweight – to pull yourself out of the water and into a boat, for example?

• Push start a car?

• Perform effective CPR for 20 minutes whilst you wait for assistance.

None of the above cost or weigh anything.   As our previous article on Remote Survival Kits states – it’s not about the Kit.

Location

1. Mobile Phone

Your Mobile Phone is probably the greatest asset you carry with you every day without appreciating its significance….until you lose it.

There is real merit in carrying a cheaper, older phone than a brand new, current model. A smart phone will be able to make use of the many Apps which, in tandem with most smart phone's GPS, will be able to give you an accurate location which is important when trying to establish help, be it in a foreign country or a nondescript British B road in the middle of night. 

Google Maps is now pre-installed on most phones as a standard.   One of the best features of WhatsApp is the ability to share your live location with an individual or within a group for a period of 15 minutes, 1 hour or 6 hours without all parties needing to install additional Apps.

2. Backup Phone

A mobile phone is so valuable it is worth having a backup phone at home and / or at work in case your primary phone is lost, damaged or stolen.  

The backup phone should have your credit card payment of your Emergency Credit Card details saved so that you can still make purchases if your Credit Card is lost or stolen and subsequently cancelled.   Your backup should NOT have any Social Media installed:  If the phone is unused for 12 months, as soon as it connects to any WiFi or Data, it will attempt to push 12 months of notifications through to your phone taking up time and bandwidth. Many phones will struggle - or sometimes completely fail - to be operational while updating or downgliding a large number of notifications. If you need to contact the emergency services you do not want to wait for 43,000 Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Email, Linkedin, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Ebay and Pinterest notifications to work their way through.

Further Reading: Mobile Phones

3. Power Supply

Always have a charging cable and a USB plug with you. On standby, a phone can last several days without charge but during an incident, with repeated calls, messages, internet access, and navigation software running in the background, the battery can be drained in hours.

Torch - Mobile Phone

When I had a Nokia 5510, I used to regularly carry a small LED ‘pinch’ light or AAA torch on my key ring. The torch output of common mobile phones these days is similar to any keyring torch of approximately 50 lumens.

Acquisition

4. Credit Card & Money

Cash is king, everywhere, but only carry as much as you would be willing to lose.

It is a good insurance policy to have an additional Emergency Credit Card, separate to your regular credit card, with as much limit as you can negotiate which you never use.  In most urban areas, anywhere in the world, having a Visa or MasterCard with £2,000 can get you food, accommodation or even a plane flight home.

5. Dummy wallet

In the same way that we recommend you carry a backup phone, consider carrying a backup wallet.  

This age-old travellers tip is very simple; the most likely criminal incidence that one will encounter is a mugging and the perpetrator’s motives are very simple – to gain as much as they can as easily as they can. 

Just hand it over. In some countries, your wallet is worth more to someone than your life.

People are killed all over the world for the sake of a mobile phone or wallet.  The perpetrator will want to leave as quickly as possible.   When we lose our phone or wallet, it is rarely the financial loss that causes us the most anguish but the loss of information stored on the phone and the tedium of having to contact our Banks, Credit Card companies and arrange a replacement driving licence.

A dummy wallet should be weathered and contain, say, £20 - enough to make it worth their while but not enough to bankrupt you. It should also contain a couple of expired credit cards which have been rendered useless by swiping them several times with a strong magnet.   Nothing looks more suspicious than a brand new wallet with nothing in it. Augment it with a few receipts, photos of your family (or better still, a stock images of a factious family) and a couple of Reward Cards to bulk it out.   Your EDC wallet should simply contain your bank cards and driving licence in a slim, unobtrusive wallet that is not easily noticeable in your pockets.

Navigation

Mobile Phone – see above

Watch

As with the phone, in many ways, cheaper is better.  An expensive watch will draw attention to yourself which is not wanted in a hostile situation and a cheap one won't hurt if it gets stolen or broken.  

Many sports watches from Garmin or Suunto will feature compasses which can be as useful in urban environments as remote;  navigating a grid-iron layout city, it can be easy to lose track of your direction of heading with no visible horizon and all streets perpendicular to one another.

Being able to communicate your position relative to features – e.g. “heading westbound along….” or “I will be at the South side of the building….”  is important for liaising with others.

It is possible to identify North with an analogue watch as long as the sun is clearly visible.   There are a couple of wrist-strap compasses such as the Suunto Clipper and Cammenga Brass Wrist Compass; the latter is significantly more expensive but having had two Suunto clippers, both were questionable in their accuracy but good enough for orienting to the four cardinal points.

Further Reading: Watches for a Remote Medic

Communication

Mobile Phone….again.

Medical

6. Trauma Shears

Scissors do not fall under UK Knife legislation and Blunt (rounded end) scissors are no longer a restricted item in hand luggage for international travel.  With decent trauma shears, you have a plentiful supply of bandages for bleeding control utilising the casualty’s clothes or improvising a tourniquet.

7. Nitrile Gloves

Gloves are not only a barrier to infection, they are your thinking time.

Further Reading:  Overcoming Adrenaline

If you are dealing with a casualty in the street whilst wearing nitrile gloves, that also sends a message to everyone watching that you know what you are doing:   The benefit here is that you are less likely to be questioned/challenged by ‘that guy’ who knows everything but won’t get involved themselves.   However, if you are happy to present this image, make sure you have the skills, knowledge, understanding and humility to back it up.

Useful Extras

The 4tac5 APEK-V necklace from Oscar Delta: 

• The necklace is made of Kevlar cord which can be used as a friction saw to cut through plastic.

• The break-away clasp stores a tungsten bead which can be used to break glass for emergency access / egress.

• Their SAD tool is a basic lock pick which, in conjunction with a bobby pin can easily open cheap padlocks.

• A mini chemical lightstick is a handy addition in the event of a power cut until you find your primary means of emergency lighting.

• The Polymath Products AtomLight is a useful addition – the smallest torch I have come across – running on three Lithium batteries it provides a reasonable output for several hours.

You can also stash a couple of small items onto the strap of your watch using heat-shrink tubing.

This is, ostensibly, a little geeky. The premise of Every Day Carry (EDC) items is that they should be carried every day. Adding lots of items to your EDC becomes an inhibitor, as your wallet and pockets bulge with survivalist paraphernalia. By combining supplementary items with your everyday items is a way of ensuring you are more likely to have them on you - rather than the apparent SERE tactics of concealing items to avoid detection, which methods like this appear to portray.

Items and tactics such as this are rarely the determining factor in survivability but are…rather useful.

A reasonable ‘Survival Kit’ for urban environments would be:

• Being aware of your surroundings and being of reasonable physical condition is the best form of Protection

• Carrying enough money or credit to provide Acquisition (and carrying a disposable decoy to mitigate the threat of losing these assets)

• Carrying a mobile phone and charging cable for Location, Navigation and Communication (and carrying a backup phone to mitigate the threat of losing this asset)

• Carrying a pair of cheap trauma shears and nitrile gloves for dealing with a Medical emergency.

Carrying this will not make you crazy, will not change your life in any negative way, will not cost very much, will not draw attention to yourself, and will not make you Suspect #1 when you try an board a plane or enter a venue where you are likely to be searched.

Cache Belt

Carrying much more than the above in one’s pockets becomes an inhibitor to carrying it every day, it becomes bulky and has to be swapped in and out every time you change clothes.

A Cache belt or money belt with a hidden pocket allows you to carry more, unobtrusively, without really impacting on your daily life.

The Wazoo Survival Gear Cache belt can hold an impressive amount of items, for example:

Protection

1. Spydeco Grashoppper - or another legal knife.

2. Kevlar cord

3. Tinder card

4. Ferro rod

5. Ceramic blade

6. Junior hacksaw blade

7. 2 x 24” cable ties

8. Lick picks and rakes

9. Large banket safety pin

10. Repair kit (A small container with a large #17 sailors needle, large sewing needle, and selection of safety pins. 10m of Kevlar thread is wrapped around the outside.)

11. 2’ of duct tape

Location

12. AAA torch such as the Olight i3E

13. Firefly Jr 9v Infra-Red strobe

14. 7 x mini chemical light sticks

15. Glint tape

Acquisition

16. £100 emergency cash

17. 4’ piece of band wrapping

18. Large ziplock bag

19. Chlorine dioxide tablets

Navigation

20. Button compass

Medical

21. Emergency medication

22. Mini USB storage device containing scans of medical records.

Communication

23. Short USB charging cable

24. Prepaid SIM cards.

The above list is not a specific reuirement but an example of what can be stowed.

As a minimum I would carry £100 in emergency cash and a spare house and car key. Each or these items are completely forgotten about until they are needed.

Survival Pouch

As with the Remote Survival Kit, which forms the core of the broader Survival Pouch, the same concept of a tiered system can be applied - it would make sense to have a few more items when necessity dictates – this is not an EDC, each time you go to the shops or visit friends, rather it is considered when the Risk Assessment dictates.

The Pouch

There are so many pouches and bags on the market – some are specifically oriented to EDC and military audiences, some are much more subtle.  I use the 5.11 2 Banger shoulder bag.   It looks a little Tacticool but not as bad as some. Grey is a fairly safe colour compared to the other Olive Green, Camo or Tan options.

This bag is small enough to not be obtrusive yet it can carry everything listed below.   It is sometimes carried as a shoulder bag on its own or it slots into a day-bag if one needs to carry more.   This saves having to pack and repack the contents into different bags for different situations.

Contents

Protection

Running is still your best option. If that is not an option, putting something between you and the threat. Anything at all. As long as it is not your Ego.

Location

1. IR Beacon

In some rare cases, such as a hostage or active-shooter situation, you want some people (The Goodies) to see you but not everyone (The Baddies).

The Phoenix Jr.™ Infrared Beacon IR-14 (NSN: 5855-01-438-4588) 9-volt Infra-Red beacon can be visible at some distance by military, law enforcement or Search and Rescue who have night-vision or thermal imaging capabilities but its strobe signal is not visible to the naked eye.   This could alert those looking for you to which room you are in by placing it in the window, or simply which building.   Any friendly forces who identify a flashing signal through night vision or thermal imaging, while not orthodox, will probably identify it as an SOS.

2. Flare

Sometimes you REALLY want to be seen.  The Day & Night distress flare from Ikaros is a dual orange smoke flare and red signal flare that burns for 15 seconds each.   At 135mm x 45mm it is smaller than the Paines Wessex version which measures 190mm x 30mm but does burn for a few seconds longer.

It is not illegal in the UK for an adult (over 18 years) to possess a firework or flare in a public area but it is illegal to set one off in a public area.  Do not have this on you if you have any intention of boarding a plane or entering certain premises.

3. Chemical Light Sticks

Chemical light sticks are cheap, safe, non-flammable, and convenient disposable items for marking locations and positions. I have used these for marking vehicles in the road at night during a breakdown and will often give them to my children to hold (or tie them to their hoods or bags) when out in a crowded area at night for easily locating them.

4. Torch

The torch on your mobile phone is perfectly useful as an emergency light source but with room in the Survival Pouch it makes sense to carry a dedicated torch.

Small, 500 lumen torches are cheaper and more available than ever. Typically these torches run on either two expensive CR123 lithium ion batteries or one expensive, and harder to procure, 18650 lithium ion batteries.

Increasingly, rechargeable versions offering over 1000 are becoming more available such as the Olight M2R or Streamlight Protac HL USB.

Acquisition

5. Power Sources

Your mobile phone is one of your greatest assets in terms of acquisition- being able to identify and communicate your location, order a delivery at short notice or book a hotel or flight with your card details stored on your phone.

Always have means of powering your phone with a USB charging cable, portable USB plug and a powerbank.

6. Lock Picking Tools

Lock picking is not an illegal activity. Lock picking someone else’s lock without their consent is illegal. With limited skills it is possible to bypass a cheap padlock or door lock to seek a safe place of refuge or access a casualty with non-destructive means. And there are benefits:

You could kick down your neighbour’s door if you were worried about them but:

1. If they are fine and it is a false alarm, are you paying for the repair?

2. If they are not fine and transported to the hospital, they are now worried about the security of their house with its front door off the hinges while they are incapacitated in hospital.

This set comes from Pat Watson Uncensored Tactical. His podcast is worth a listen and his recent book might also be of interest.

Navigation & Communication

7. Satellite Communicator

Both are taken care of with the Garmin InReach Mini satellite communicator.  It can be used a stand-alone GPS system or, when paired to your mobile phone, as a satellite messenger for simple text and email messages using the Iridium system.   When mobile networks go down, it is likely satellite systems will still be operational, especially if it is a local mobile network issue.

Its capabilities are increased when paired to a Garmin Fenix or Tactix smart watch; as long as the watch and device are within 30 meters and both are turned on, a pre-programmed SOS signal can be sent to a pre-chosen number from your watch using the device, without needed to have the device in your hand.

Further Reading: Communication Planning for Remote Environments

Medical

8. Ouch Pouch

A detailed description and rationale behind the Ouch Poch can be found here.

9. Trauma Shears

Another pair in addition to the Every Day Carry.  They are so cheap there is no reason to have a pair in each of your jackets, each of your bags and in your car.   Pictured are the Leatherman Raptor.    They are slightly better than new pair of cheap disposable shears  (cheap shears do wear loose at the joint before too long so consider them as disposable and replace regularly) but they have a handy cutting hook for clothes and seatbelts, a ring cutter and a glass breaker. Which is nice. But is entirely up to you if you want to spend the extra on a pair of shears that will get stolen at the earliest opportunity. Probably by your colleague.

10. Trauma Dressings

Steriplast Trauma Dressings are a fraction of the cost of many competitors but far superior. Its Velcro closure allows the dressing to be applied fast and easily, compared to the more familiar Israeli or Olaes dressings.

11. Celox Rapid

There is inconclusive evidence to suggest that haemostatic agents promote clotting significantly faster than ordinary gauze. Wound packing is a mechanical process that stops bleeding by

a) applying pressure to a damaged organ or vessel

b) filling voids to remove available space to bleed into

Celox Rapid, however, has been proven to develop a more stable clot – which is important if your casualty is to be moved – and works better on hypothermic casualties.  This is not just an environmental issue; all exsanguinating casualties become hypothermic unless aggressively treated.

Further Reading: Haemostatics 

12. Tourniquets

Orange is the new Black.   Black tourniquets are de rigour in the military but if there are multiple casualties, everyone needs to know who has a tourniquet applied quickly and easily as these casualties are a priority in a triage system.

Further Reading: Tourniquets

13. Chest Seals

Everyone loves a tourniquet for a SHTF situation but….if we examine the evidence of injury patterns following hostile and terror events, tourniquets take a second place to chest seals which are more likely to be deployed in these situations and on casualties with more survivable injuries.

• Gunshot wounds, stabbings and vehicular injuries do not yield survivable injuries to limbs; they yield non-survivable head injuries.

• Limb injuries from these events tend to be superficial which do not necessarily require tourniquets.

• Gunshot wounds, stabbings and vehicular injuries yield potentially survivable chest and abdominal injuries. Yet we routinely carry tourniquets over chest seals?

• Blast injuries are more likely to yield amputations and catastrophic limb haemorrhage but are statistically less likely than either knife attacks, firearm injuries or vehicular incidents.

  Further Reading: Statistics - Terror & Hostile Events

Useful Extras

14. Lighter

The basics premises of survival are heat, food, signaling and shelter. A windproof lighter helps take care of the first three and can be utilised to fabricate simple tools.

15. Permanent Pen

The twin-tip sharpy is ideal for making large, easy to read signs and messages or equally completing forms or recording detailed notes.

16. Multi-tool

A multi-tool is undoubtedly a useful tool for every day and emergency running repairs however the UK laws on knives are very clear:

It is illegal to carry a knife in public without good reason unless it has a folding blade with a cutting edge 3 inches long or less.  Examples of good reasons to carry a knife or weapon in public can include:

• taking knives you use at work to and from that place of work

• taking it to a gallery or museum to be exhibited

• if it’ll be used for theatre, film, television, historical re-enactment or religious purposes, for example, the kirpan some Sikhs carry

• if it’ll be used in a demonstration or to teach someone how to use it

A court will decide if you’ve got a good reason to carry a knife or a weapon - the responsibility is on you to demonstrate you were carrying it legally not for the court to prove you were carrying it illegally.

The maximum penalty for an adult carrying a knife is 4 years in prison and an unlimited fine. You will get a prison sentence if you’re convicted of carrying a knife more than once.

Current legislation means carrying most swiss army knives or multi-tools illegal due to either the length of the largest blade and / or the locking mechanism.   Even if your blade is not locking and less than 3 inches, good reason is still required to carry it and, for better or worse, “it is handy” is not a legitimate defense.

Conclusions

Discretion is the better part of valour so when opportunities to avoid high-hazard or high-risk environments present themselves, these should be taken. Being aware of your surroundings by both public-domain intelligence which is freely available and observation around you can help mitigate these risks.

But avoidance is not always possible. In some cases where it is reasonably foreseeable that one may find oneself in a challenging situation, despite the best of intentions, it is reasonable to prepare to a level commensurate with those risks.