by Morgan
All too often I hear people tell me that they can’t practice skills because they live in an apartment or in the city. No matter where you live, there are always ways to practice your skills; we just have to get creative.
Here are 10 ways that anyone can practice preparedness and survival skills if you live in the city.
1. Go to the park – your local park provides open space and usually BBQ pits. You can practice your shelter making skills (with tarps) in the open space and fire making skills in the BBQ pit. You can also look for any wild edibles or try to identify any plants in general.
2. Practice at home – practice knot tying, inventory your food and water, dry fire your firearm, sharpen your knives, practice sutures on an orange, learn/practice sewing, cook with your food storage preps, do an audit of your home security, meditate, etc.
3. Use the BBQ pit at apartment – many apartment complexes have BBQ pits for their residents to use or you can have one yourself. Practice fire making in the BBQ pit!
4. Go for a walk/hike – physical fitness is an important part of preparedness. Walk with your BOB on. Identify plants along your path. Practice your map and compass skills.
5. People watch – reading body language and emotions can help you in any situation. Sit down in a public place and people watch for a while. Also work on your situational awareness.
6. Container/indoor garden – container gardening is great if you have a balcony or even a backyard. It takes up little space and it’s so easy to take care of. You can also grow vegetables indoors with special lights.
7. Create kits – put together all sorts of kits; fire kit, blackout kit, car kit, first aid kit, hygiene kit, etc.
8. Go camping – get away from the city for a while and go camping. This is a great time to practice skills such as water purification, fire making (if allowed), shelter making, etc.
9. Read – read books, magazines, blogs and even watch YouTube videos to increase your prepping and survival knowledge.
10. DIY – make your own fire starters, ration bars, bread, fabric pouches, hygiene products (such as bar soap, shampoo, etc.), candles, hardtack, homemade MRE’s and much more.
In addition to all these ideas, you can run mock drills such as having a blackout night, living out of your bug out bag for three days or running a mock bug out or bug in drill.
You can even go to the shooting or archery range if your city has them or you can easily access a range close to the city.
As you can see from the list above, there are a ton of ways to keep your preparedness and survival skills and knowledge up-to-date. All without needing to live in the country!
Whatever you can’t physically do now, maybe you can take a class on it or read a book to learn the basic concepts. For example, if you want to learn beekeeping, take a class and learn the basics. You could take a class on how to raise certain livestock. Take a class on how to have a vegetable garden in raised beds. And so on.
The ideas are endless. We just have to think outside the box and understand that we have access to far more sources than we realize.
About the author:
Morgan is a wife, mother and preparedness advocate. She’s the founder of Rogue Preparedness where she teaches people how to be prepared through her website, YouTube, social media and local classes. She loves to spend time outdoors and learning to be more self-reliant.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
These are all good ideas. I would add getting good reference books as well. I can also practice putting up you tent in you apartment or at the park as well. Some of the dome tents take a bit of practice setting up before you become good at it.
If you like in a firearm restricted town or state buying and shooting a good spring air pellet rifle can really develop you skills at low cost same goes for a good pellet pistol. The standard range these are shot at is 10 meters and you do not a real heavy steel back stop. You will really see if you have a flinch or jerk the trigger with these.
Hi Old guy, These are all great additions to the list of skills one can practice anywhere. Putting up a tent is not easy the first time around! Air rifles good for practicing too. Thanks for the comment!
You really need to practice making a fire in the rain using damp wood and at night with very limited amount of light. You will be surprised at just how much harder it is to build and start a fire under these conditions.
Hi Ben, That’s a good one to practice. It’s not easy to make a good fire that lasts, let alone when the wood is wet and light is low. Thanks for the comment.