Urban Survival Techniques - Protect Yourself - Avoiding Trouble (#2)

(continued from Urban Survival Techniques - Learn to Observe)

Editor's Note: This urban survival technique from GT is about how to protect yourself by avoiding trouble in the first place. Sometimes you will have to decide whether you want to be macho, fight and perhaps die, or whether you want to run away to "live to run away another day". He provides several survival tips such as making yourself inconspicuous when necessary, redirecting attention from yourself to others, etc.
DB

Here's what GT has to say about avoiding trouble:

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I last wrote about how to not make it obvious that you have protected yourself from the coming dollar devaluation with gold in hand. I would like to point out another of the urban survival techniques I have learned that you can use to protect yourself in the coming chaos. That is to not fight but let the tough guys kill each other.

Everybody has probably heard of the "Law of The Jungle". Only the toughest of the tough survive. Personally, I don't think it is necessarily true. Consider another fact about the jungle. In the worst jungles, you have very rare and very beautiful butterflies. How could such delicate and fragile beings survive in the jungle? They survive because of several reasons. First they live in the jungle but are not a part of the day to day violence. They fly above it. The lions and tigers are fighting each other. Guess what? It is not a good idea to be constantly fighting. You get so tired that eventually someone can eventually beat you. There is always someone younger, tougher or especially luckier than you who will win.

Being in a street gang, especially being leader, is a job for the young. I am not familiar with all the street gangs out there, but I doubt there's too many with too many members over the age of 25. Once you pass that age and are still getting into street fights you get a sense of your mortality. You have seen too many of your friends die and you get to doubt that sense of immortality that comes with youth. That is, if you haven't been tossed into jail yet. Or crippled in a gang fight. Or betrayed by your so-called friends. Or lots of other job related stress as a gangsta, none of them good. So who survives? Those who never got into the fights in the first place. The butterflies. They are the one who grew up in such a horror show but decided to somehow get out. They are the dreamers.

You may think these butterflies that grew up in the jungle are very rare. Being that I'm one of them, actually they are not. They are just extremely hard to catch. They learn not to get caught because there are so many out there at the bottom who want to destroy their dreams and them.

"You think you're going to be rich and famous! Get real! You were born in the ghetto and you should have the sense to know the powers that be won't allow you to get out. And if you don't have the sense, we will beat it into you."

It doesn't take much of that to learn to hide your dreams. Or yourself. Now, however, I am past 40. All the males I grew up with who used violence to survive are dead. I have met many others who grew up in situations just as bad or worse -- like a war zone. They not only survived but prospered. Many survived the way I did. Let the bad boys kill each other. Meanwhile, I can play my trumpet and write my stories and work toward the day my talents make me rich and famous.

If the dollar becomes worthless as history has done to all other paper money, there will be a lot of people who will turn to violence. My instincts tell me, they may make profits in the short term, but in the end they will kill each other off. Many gold-bugs will be tempted to turn to this violence as well as a means of protecting themselves and their gold. As part of their survival plans they bought guns to protect themselves. I have nothing against protecting yourself but I think when the rioting starts, that would be a good time to become very hard to find. Not only from the looters but from the government as well.

One of the players you will have to protect yourself from is the state (the government). The moment you try to protect yourself against the government, you've gotten yourself bigger problems -- far more than more people can handle. The state will use all its power to get you to toe the line and to give up whatever you managed to save -- whether it's gold or food. Better to avoid the state. If you do, the government will have it hands busy with the troublemakers. I doubt it will noticed you have disappeared.

How to make yourself scarce? In survivalist novels, you have small groups heading into parts unknown, stocked up to the rafters with survival essentials. These books make good reading but I think for the most part are impractical. For one thing, moving to the sticks becomes impossible if you have young children or old parents to take care of. The children won't want to go and the parents may be unable to go. The option of moving to a small town where you don't have to face the chaos may not be an option. No, you're going to have to learn what I've learned. How to survive the most dangerous part of the city without ever being seen, or even thought about.

First besides gold and guns, your crisis plan should include stocking up on food. You may be hesitant to do so but a year's supply of food actually doesn't take up that much space. Nor do you have to spend a lot. I personally prefer canned goods. Some who are in a more survivalist mode may like Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). Some, if they have a supply of water, may like dried foodstuff like beans, and jerky.

If the riots happen, the rioters will attack the supermarkets and food places first. You don't want to be in line fighting for your share. Better to buy ahead. There is only about a week's supply or less of food on the shelves. That will disappear FAST! So stock up in advance.

Speaking from experience, having known true hunger, after two weeks of not eating, you are too weak to do anything. Those who looted will find their food supply running out and in two weeks they will be looking for other places to rob. They have already cleaned out their own neighborhoods. I believe that what will happen is that instead of more local looting and burning down the poorer neighborhoods, they will march into the rich neighborhoods. In previous riots, the poor burned their own neighborhoods. They learned afterward it was a mistake because a lot of what got burned didn't get rebuilt. They learned their lessons. Next time they will march into the nearest upper-class suburb.

The next thing to survive in the jungles the cities will become is the advice I gave earlier in my last essay on how to blend in. Hide yourself in plain sight. I cannot give you specific advice since I don't know your situation. All I can say is sit down while you are calm and relaxed and think of what may work for you. Now is a good time. I have mentioned that my essays might be a little early for you to think about, but if you think about protecting yourself now, your thinking will be a lot clearer than trying to think while in the middle of chaos.

The last thing to stay invisible is to give the rioters, the government, and the opportunists another target. You are laying low. I promise there will be plenty of fools who will be showing off. You will be aware of them as will everybody else. Just try to get those who might try to hurt you to look in their direction, not yours. It may sound down and dirty but I will give you a real life example. I grew up in Boston during the 70's. The worse part was during the school busing crises. I not only had the neighborhood thugs looking to kick my butt, but also the police, the klan, the school committee (I was playing a lot of hooky from school), white, black, young, old, everybody was looking to do me a serious hurt. I got to see riots and fights every day. Yet I never got caught by any of them. If I was about to get caught, I would yell: "Look what those guys are doing!" Those chasing me would look and once they turned their attention away from me, I would be long gone! All I know is giving the attackers another target worked for me. Add this urban survival technique to your preparedness checklist and hopefully it will work for you when the time comes that you need to protect yourself from the coming urban chaos.

Thank you.
The "Golden Trumpet"

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