Essential System #10 – Shelter


Counting down on the ten essential systems we keep in our grab and go bags at number ten we have shelter. Note that this list is not in order of importance, in fact if it were shelter would be number one. It’s possible to survive for at least three days without water and there are documented cases of people surviving for forty days without food. But your ass could be either fried or frozen damn quick without shelter even in temperate Los Angeles. The handy rule to remember is three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. In addition to having a place in our grab and go bag the concept of shelter figures into our policy of having a back-up system for every necessity at our urban homestead.

We like things lightweight for our grab and go bags, so we purchased a three pound backpacking tent, the two person MSR “Missing Link”. This tent is spacious for its low weight and uses either hiking polls or trees to stake it out. On the down side, we’re not sure how this thing would hold up in high winds and it requires a lot of room to stake out. The “Missing Link” was also very expensive and, as a cheap alternative, it’s possible to improvise shelter with a large garbage bag or the ubiquitous blue tarp material found at any hardware store. There are also commercially manufactured Bivvy Sacks and even cheaper thermal reflective survival bags which, combined with warm clothing, will function as shelter in a pinch.

Improvised shelters can also be constructed by gathering materials in whatever environment you happen to find yourself in. SurviveLA participated in a wilderness shelter workshop run by noted Los Angeles survivalist and wild food salad chef Christopher Nyerges a few years ago. While it’s possible to construct decent shelters out of sticks and branches you must act quickly especially if the weather is turning ugly. In places where it snows you can construct a snow cave.

Whatever you decide on it must shelter you from the wind and sun and keep you dry. Our tent is for backpacking, but it’s also in the grab and go bag in the event that an earthquake takes out the poorly constructed dump that we live in and we need to sleep out in the yard for a while. We also have an old shed in the backyard that we have turned into an art studio, but it could easily double as a comfortable bedroom.

We don’t know about you, but when that earthquake comes we’d rather not end up in the LA equivalent of the Louisiana Superdome.