Letter Re: Suburban Survival

Hi Jim and Family,
I truly enjoy reading your survival blog and learn from it daily and weekly. However I believe you are skipping over a topic that would benefit your readers….most of your readers.
I would think that most of your readers who check out and read your site on a daily basis do not have a remote retreat in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, or Wyoming. Most of your readers I’m sure live like me in American Suburbs, trapped and looking for a way to get out but in the mean time prepping for what we all know is coming.
My question to you and others, what are we to do? We can keep logging on to your web site everyday and read about what to do with 50 acres and security measures, and how to build barricades, but the average joe like me does not live where you do. Lets face it, all those hits on your web site are not only coming from folks high up in their retreats in Idaho.
So can you and other readers who know share some ideas for folks like me who live in the burbs? Fellas like me exist that have over a year’s worth of food stored up, lots of ammo and good combat quality arms, radiation detection, water filtration systems, nearby water sources, gold and silver reserves, cash reserves, yearly seed purchases, rainwater collection systems, some solar assets, and at least 6 able bodied males some with spouse who all have a deep love for our Lord.
What are we to do? We are where we are and we have what we have and we are going to try and make it out of what is coming so any advice would be helpful.
The simple fact is that most of us reading your site are probably in the situation I’m in. We’re all going to do our best but when it comes down to it, we’re going to have to do it from the ‘burbs.- Jeff (in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri)

JWR Replies: You point is well taken. I strongly believe that everyone that actively prepares will have a better chance of survival, regardless of their locale. Yes, your chances will be best out in the lightly populated hinterboonies, but that is not to say that the suburbs will be untenable. By actively preparing you will be way ahead of your suburban neighbors, and far, far more likely to survival a disaster–either a natural disaster or a man-made calamity.

It is noteworthy that most of the tactics, techniques, and technologies that you see described in SurvivalBlog can also apply to suburban settings. A good example of this was Fanderal’s recent article on raising rabbits and square foot gardening. In the coming weeks I’ll try to concentrate on urban and suburban survival topics.