The Conservative Cave
Interests => Living Off of the Grid & Survivalism => Topic started by: Mr Mannn on August 22, 2011, 07:55:34 PM
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I'm been thinking of stocking up for a while now, and I've been putting it off.
One factor is I live in an apartment...I'm not married, so when I go to work there is no one there.
If people are hungry, my manager could easily access my place. That and I have a glass wall.
With that in mind, how secure would a storage locker be? Would it be a safer place to store a few bulk items?
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I guess it depends on what you consider 'secure'.
I don't think storage lockers are very secure. Most I've seen are concrete block/rebar construction with a sheetmetal door. My angle grinder and bolt cutters would cut through that in about five minutes.
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True but people don't tend to store food in them either. Compared to my apartment?
Apart from digging a hole, I don't know where else to store food or ammo.
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Gun Safe?
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I guess that goes back to my question, how secure do you need it? Post-apocalypse mobs of starved maniacs with guns? Not secure. Natural disaster with little to no violent crime afterward? Probably good enough.
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Thing is, an apartment setting would be a temporary solution at best. No way to get power, and without that, no fresh water, etc.
A storage locker would leave you in the same boat. No power = no water = no sanitation system = disease and dead.
If I were living in an urban area or in an apartment, have just enough supplies for a couple of days for wherever you're going to strike out for. MRE's are not bulky, and pretty good as far as calories go. I have a couple of cases of them, and keep a couple in the car in case I get stuck in the winter.
The whole issue with living in an urban or even suburban area is having someplace to go when TSHTF, assuming you can make it out or hold out long enough before you HAVE to make a break for it.
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I'm in Iowa. Des Moines is a city about 500K population. This is a farming state. State-wise this sounds like a good place. If I have to bug out, I'm headed for Texas. My apartment is in an upscale area by the city limits.
--and nowhere near downtown.
Please understand, I am a total newbie when it comes to preparedness. But with power plants shutting down, food and gas on the rise...I'm beginning to take things seriously. Disasters demand a basic stock for anyone...and I don't even have that.
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A storage locker would be acceptable as a storage pickup point if it's on the outskirts of town and on or very close to your route of egress, and in a place as removed from residential areas as possible.
They're not generally very "secure" so it's something that you want to be able to visit , load up and keep rolling outta town. If you plan to travel between your place of residence and a storage locker frequently it's a recipe for disaster.
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So much depends on the scope of emergency you are planning for.
If it's the collapse of civilization kind of thing (Power grid gone and not to be restored, breakdown of the monetary and food distribution systems) then an apartment or even the 'burbs would more or less be a deathtrap (Of course, you could personally safeguard anything in it, since you wouldn't be going to work yourself with no gas and no functioning economy, but that would mean you'd better have about three years worth of MREs in there with you, a nearby water source, and the will and ability to forcefully defend your stuff.
If it's a voluntary evacuation situation and civil order hasn't broken down, and so probably temporary, and you'd have the time, mobility, and freedom of movement to retrieve your gear, a storage area would work fine, not so good if the authorities go into a mandatory evacuation or lockdown approach though.
These are the two ends of a spectrum, but as you can see, only under the sunniest scenarios would it work to have stuff you would really need be more than walking distance from your living space.