Welcome To Hurricane Season

In August 2004 a Category 4 hurricane named Charley scored a direct hit on Punta Gorda, Florida. It attained sustained winds of around 150 MPH, caused a little shy of $20 Billion in damage and killed 15 people. Almost a quarter million people were evacuated many of whom returned to find their homes and businesses destroyed. This was far from the worst hurricane in US, or even in Florida history. Four months after, in December 2004, I visited and took these photos of the clean up efforts and remaining damage. When the storm him the whole country was paying attention and images of the destruction were all over the news, but a week later another story was in the headlines and most people forgot about this one. As you can see from my photos, for the people who lived there, even months afterwards life was anything but back to normal. A year later, almost to the day, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, a much, much larger city. We all know what happened there.

I bring this up because for many parts of the US, hurricane seasons begins next week. If you live in one of those areas, are you prepared? The National Hurricane Center has a page on their site with some suggestions if you need them but they echo much of what we’ve talked about here already for earthquakes. Have a plan, and have a kit ready before you need it. I grew up in hurricane country, but I’d love to hear from anyone who still lives there. What are you doing right now, before there is a storm being tracked?

Give us some feedback

This site is still new and we’re trying to get a handle on what we want to accomplish as well as what you are coming here looking for. We’ve whipped up a very short survey about it and if you could take a moment to fill it out we’d be your best friend. Each and every one of you. Thanks!

Click Here to take survey

Review: Fenix L0D

At each of the past two Christmases, I’ve received a Fenix L0D as an every-day-carry flashlight.  Unfortunately, the first one was stolen by a valet.  Thankfully, I now have my second one that hasn’t left my keyring (and my keyring isn’t given to valets anymore.)  The Fenix L0D is the most durable and dependable EDC flashlight I’ve come across. Read more…

Betting Against

We’re a little less than a month into running this site and for me at least still less than a year into talking rather publicly about my interest in these kinds of topics. The most interesting thing to me is that the reactions from people tend to land firmly in one of two categories – either they get very excited because they have also been considering this kind of stuff for a while and perhaps actually doing something in their own right, or they laugh and ask something along the lines of why we would ever consider stuff like this. Sure there are some middle ground people but for the most part that’s true. “Either you are really paranoid or I’m really naive” is a sentiment I’ve gotten more than once. And maybe that’s a fact, because the truth of the matter is as much as I want the future to be sunny and awesome with nothing ever going wrong, I just don’t believe things are going that way,and mostly I just hope things don’t go as badly as I expect them to. Some might say I’m betting against a happy ending.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it, but from my perspective I’m taking steps to ensure a happy ending. In the 34 years I’ve been here the list of things that didn’t work out the way they were supposed to, or the way everyone thought they would, or the way everyone hoped they would… well it’s a little on the long side. In fact even the things that have worked out well were often set into motion by something else not working out so well. And that’s certainly some of the driving force behind my approach to survival/preparedness – if something falls apart, I want to make sure I know how to take those pieces and build something with them. I think most people wait until something happens and then try to figure out what to do, I’m hoping to be a few steps ahead. Read more…

Book Review: Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

There are many survival books out there that talk about the techniques and how-tos of survival.  Being well equipped and knowing how to survive is what Urban Journal is all about.  However, even being well prepared doesn’t guarantee ones survival.  There is quite a bit of chance involved, but more importantly, there is the physiological aspect of survival.

The book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales explores the question of who lives and dies in survival situations and why.  Through the exploration of accident reports and first hand accounts, the author builds a case for survival being about mental preparation and a hunger to live. Read more…

Lock pick Friday!

There’s a holiday weekend on the horizon here in the U.S. and everyone is going to be chomping at the bit to GTFOOD and hit the swimming pools and BBQ’s so I’m keeping it light today because I’m one of those people. Below are a bunch of videos on some of the basics on locks you can get into with regular household items. I couldn’t believe how easy some of these are to do. If you’ve never seen anything like this before your illusion of security is about to be shattered. I learned some of these techniques and had them pretty well down inside of an hour and so can you. These are all found on YouTube but we’ll be posting some original videos of more advanced lock picking in the near future.

How to open a Combination Masterlock

Read more…

What is under your bed?

If you think about how many hours a day you are asleep and look at the odds there’s a pretty good chance that spur of the moment disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes and planes crashing into your house might just happen while you are in bed. In this case it’s important to have a few things within arms reach because who knows what shape your room or house will be in and it might not be as easy to get to your family, your emergency bag, or just out of your house as it was pre-chaos. The above photo includes a few of the things I generally have next to or just under my bed at any given point. A breakout of the stuff I have and the stuff I should have but don’t can be found after the jump. Read more…

Mailing List

We know visiting the site every day isn’t always possible and sometimes you’d just like to get an e-mail with the new stuff. Well this is our attempt to do that. Over on the Track page we have a sign up form for our mailing list which will send out a once daily e-mail with all the new posts from the last 24 hours. It’s a great way to stay on top of what we’re up to without having to constantly remember to check in for yourself.

Note: This won’t include anything from the forums so if you are hanging out there a lot this might not be the best option for you.

Half-full is all empty

One of the better habits to get into if you drive much is to start treating the half-empty mark on your gas gauge as the empty line. People who live in colder climates will be used to doing this one. When I lived in Chicago I remember the yearly ritual of always keeping at least a quarter tank in the car at all times because otherwise it could completely freeze up overnight. Nowadays though I keep my car at least half full at all times in case there is an emergency and I need to travel fast and not stop for a fill-er-up. This is an easy one to get in the habit of and can really save you some serious headaches if you need to put the miles on in a rush.

Tip: if you have an analog gas gauge try putting a piece of black electrical tape over the last half of the tank as a point of reference while you’re getting used to it.

Photo credit: chego101

Urban Escape and Evasion

Earlier this year a few of us had the good fortune to take the ‘Urban Escape and Evasion’ class here in LA offered by OnPoint Tactical. It was a fantastic class, my only regret is that I felt like I had an unfair advantage given that I know LA inside and out so I’m actually considering taking it again in a city I’m not so familiar with to put some of what I’ve learned to the test. I wrote up a bit about the class after I took it and published it on Los Angeles Metblogs but some folks have asked about it so thought I’d post it here as well. That write up is after the jump. Read more…