Perhaps most people address wilderness survival because it is easier to identify basic needs and essential areas to cover. Suburbia is less well-defined, and there are more and different kinds of people with whom one will most likely have to deal. Suburban survival covers a lot of territory. There are more things involved, more bits of trivia needed, and more interaction with neighbors and strangers than in a wilderness survival scenario or an end of the world as we know it scenario enacted in some remote bug out property.
In the city and suburbs, we rely a lot on the work of other people to get through each day. It’s such an invisible network that many of us seem unaware of it as we go about our lives. There’s an entire structure of business and people who provide our electricity to us, our natural gas, our cable TV, our cell phones, our internet, our radio stations, our traffic lights, our trash pick-up, our grocery store and restaurant delivery trucks, our department store delivery trucks, and so very much more.
Wealth in the city is defined by how deeply connected we are to these invisible networks. On the surface, we may only have a few select people we consider friends. We may not even know our neighbors or even the co-workers who work on a different floor or in a different building than we do. Yet, we are supported in our daily lives by this huge network of people doing things that make our lives flow smoothly. The richer we are, the more integrated we are into this network, and the less likely we are to notice it – until it’s gone.
Suburban survival encompasses all of wilderness survival’s needs and then some. In the cities and suburbs, we will already have shelter – cities and suburbs abound with shelters, from the places we’re renting to places we own to abandoned structures we can co-opt. We still need reliable sources of water, food, first aid, and protection and we also need to add to this list alternative power sources that will pass zoning codes and inspections, communication with neighbors and co-workers, alternative methods of travel, skills to deal with large groups of people, skills to deal with strangers, and a different set of tracking skills. Many of us will want to continue our lives as closely as possible to our current or pre-disaster lives. That takes planning, preparation, and organizational skills that are equivalent to yet different from the skills needed for wilderness and bug out survival.
The whole purpose of this blog is find all the ways in which we suburbanites will need to prepare for assorted disasters that will come our way – from the hours-long storm-induced power outages to flooding, earthquakes, a plane crashing into our house, a car crashing into our house, drive-by shootings, an auto accident, an ice storm locking us in place, tornadoes, bridge collapses, all the way up to apocalyptic the end of the world as we know it scenarios.
There will be side notes, too, on averting these disasters through sustainable and thriving practices, ways to change zoning laws to be less focused on profits and more focused on use and survival, and collecting skills for independence, from financial independence to safety and as many areas in between as I can discover and cover. I talk about growing food in suburban settings from windowsill containers to child-sized wading pool containers. I talk about guerrilla gardening with seed bombs and daylight assaults on vacant lots. I offer alternate energy sources, including rocket stoves that use very little fuel. I explore mini orchards and urban homesteading with mini cows, chickens, rabbits, and pigeons. I share information on urban wildcrafting and locavorism. I talk of geocaching and stashes. And I talk of barter and employment and entertainment. The range of skills needed for suburban survival is wide – and with a collection of friends, co-workers, and neighbors, it’s possible for all of us to have access to each of these skills, either by our own acts or in concert with others.
Community survival is the easiest survival because we can share around our intangible assets like skills and knowledge as well as our tangible assets like gardens, protection, and transportation. Consider, as a first step in surburban survival, who your survival group, your survival buddies, will be. Talk to them about survival – not the “we’re all gonna die!” scenarios, but the plausible ones, like power outages, flooding, fires, earthquakes, and so on. Talk about surviving a recession together. Make plans for various potential problems. And consider shifting alliances and friendships and what you’ll do for those. Divorces happen, so does death. Children grow up and move away. Bosses relocate employees. Economics or family elsewhere can also separate you from people in your survival group, so keep tabs on everyone and be prepared to expand your group and add new people over time. Plan what you will do if a crucial member can’t make it to the group in the event of a disaster and make sure everyone knows at least something about everyone’s skills and abilities. You don’t have to run it like some paramilitary organization, but some kind of loose club organization can help keep all of you connected and working together.
Meet for a monthly cookout, for example. You can practice your culinary skills and have drills for other skills. You can update one another on your inventories of skills and supplies, and you can support one another in personal survival crises while you plan for larger disasters. You can make it fun with games designed for survival for the children. Have prizes (why not? survival doesn’t have to be grim and hard) and play music. If you can play instruments yourselves, so much the better. Have skits and talent shows, too. Make it fun and survival becomes that much easier.
Since we’re talking cookouts, and the weather is still nice grilling weather and the local harvest are lusciously abundant right now, why not grill pizzas? Practically everyone likes pizzas. Or you can grill piadinas – kind of like thick Italian tortillas that you fill like soft tacos with a variety of grilled meats and veggies.
To grill pizza or piadina, you’ll need very thinly rolled out pizza dough. You can use store bougt pizza dough or make your own – no thicker than 1/4 inch and not thinner than 1/8 inch. Dust a pizza peel or a sideless cookie sheet with fine cornmeal and put the rolled out dough on that. For pizza, roll out 8 – 12 inch circles or rectangles. For piadina, make the circles about 6 – 8 inches.
Chop the ingredients for the pizza or piadina, and make the sauces (you can use red or white sauces). Some of the ingredients need to be pre-cooked – anything that takes longer than 8 minutes to cook should be pre-cooked, and meats should be pre-cooked for pizzas. For piadinas, everything should be pre-cooked that needs to be cooked..
Heat the grill. A gas grill needs to be heated to 400ºF and a charcoal grill should have a nice bed of coals to a medium heat – you can hold your hand 6 inches above the coals for 5 seconds.
When the grill is ready, lift up one end of the dough and slide it from the peel onto the grill. On a gas grill, close the lid and let the dough cook about 2 – 3 minutes.. For the charcoal grill, let the dough cook on the grill without the lid covering it for 2 – 3 minutes. The bottom of the crust should be brown with grill marks. A little dark charring adds to the flavor but don’t let it burn to black.
Slide the pizza crust onto a peel and take it where you can flip the crust so the raw side is now the bottom on top a layer of fine cornmeal on a pizza peel, and add your sauce and toppings to the cooked side.
If you’re making piadina, simply flip the dough on the grill and let the other side brown for 2- 3 minutes. Stack the piadinas on a heated plate and keep covered util done, or let people take the fresh hot piadina and fill it themselves.
For gas grills, turn off one or two burners when you remove the crust so you have an indirect cooking surface. For charcoal grills, lift the grate and rake the coals to one side for your indirect heat surface.
Place the topped pizza on the indirect heat side of your grill, close the lid, and let the pizza cook for 5 – 10 minutes. Check it occasionally and rotate it once or twice so it cooks evenly.
Remove the pizza from the heat, slice and serve immediately.
You can top the pizza with anything you like. Right now, things like tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, basil, caramelized onions, bell peppers, celery, eggplants, snow peas, and radishes are ready to harvest and plop on your pizza. Yes, radishes. On pizza. Radishes add a zesy crunch to the pizza along with hte other vegetables. I prefer radishes on veggie pizzas, but radishes also go well with chicken on a pizza.
I like making Indian Taco pizzas – topping the pizza with chili and beans and cheese, then when I remove it from the grill, topping the hot pizza with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and more cheese.
