Guest Post: Some considerations if you must live in a City By Northern Raider

© 2011 Northern Raider

Choose a place that does NOT have public footpaths or alleyways to the side or rear of the property. You don’t need a path that raiders can use as a path to your home from whatever neighbourhood they crawled out of.

Don’t buy a house close to the local shops, AFTER TSHTF and the scum have finished looting the shops they are going to notice the nearby houses. Don’t buy near petrol stations either as they will constantly attract scavengers and the fire / explosion risk is just too great.

Don’t buy a house on main roads or on streets that refugees will travel along to escape the city, nor should you choose a house than can be overlooked from roads or paths passing by at a higher elevation.

Ensure house has large water tank in loft, if not you need space and containers to cache water in cool, dark space.  You would also be wise by installing a diverter trap to your rainwater guttering to catch and store rain water in a garden butt.

You need a garage that is totally secure and big enough to keep your BOV and its extra kit in.

You will need a spot in the garden AWAY from the house to store petrol and propane containers, it will need to be well ventilated but under cover away from the elements.

You need at least a 2 meter fence around the sides and rear of your property to keep prying eyes out.

Ideally you need garden space to grow supplementary foods such as tomatoes, rabbits, chickens etc.

Also if you are considering growing your own food and / or using solar panels the houses needs a south to south west facing aspect.

If possible you would benefit from a pond to keep edible species of fish in. Fruit trees are another plus point in most gardens.

You REALLY also need garden space to COMPOST waste food, Space to BURY HUMAN WASTE safely and space to INCINERATE other rubbish ideally at the furthest  point in the garden away from the house.

You NEED and independent source of heat for your home that is not reliant on piped gas or electricity, wood / coal burning stoves being the best option, obviously you will need a suitable approved type of chimney to suit. Only cook / heat with dry wood (less than 20% moisture) and preferably cook/heat after dark so scavengers don’t simply home in on the smoke from the chimney.

Don’t forget you will also need covered but ventilated space to store your firewood in.

You NEED a well concealed place to cache extra food and medical supplies that neither raiders nor officials will easily find.

You need suitable drapes / shutters / window coverings to “” BLACKOUT”” your house after dark so as not advertise your presence to scavengers who will soon notice one illuminated house among dozens of unlit ones.

You have got to be upwind in the predominant wind direction for your area so that places like waste tips, hospitals, shopping malls, sewage works, nuclear power plants etc don’t blow pathogens downwind to your home after TSHTF.

Don’t buy a house on a flood plain especially the type found in some areas of the UK that require electrically operated pumps to keep the area dry, Parts of the Somerset levels, Norfolk Broads, East Anglia and London for example.

In many places City suburb communities were built in the early 20^th century UK that are downstream of Victorian and Edwardian water reservoirs, You don’t want to be living in the shadow of such a structure that will fail sooner rather than later because man is no longer maintaining it.

If you live in an apartment block you need to find a way to access the roof to grow supplementary foods and to tap into the communal water tank, providing its got a flat roof of course. You also need to ensure that at all time you have multiple fire escape routes.

(The commonest reason for fires in apartment blocks comes during power outages when people try to improvise cooking / heating devices and set fire to the building)