From Cybertek Electric: Issue #2  1/2/96
Urban Survival, Part II
by Douglas P. Bell

Now that we have housing, guns, hygiene, and other good stuff out of the way,
what next? Well how about food production/procuring! OK so we talked about a
garden that didn't look like a garden, and wasn't in "normal" garden plants,
but just what plants are these? What would be a good book on the subject?

One of the best books for this is "The Edible Ornamental Garden" by John E.
Bryan and Coralie Castle (101 Productions, 1974, 192 pages, 8 1/2" x 8 1/4").
The nice thing about this book is it covers the usual garden plants as well as
the less usual ones.

The chapters in the book include general culture of plants, cooking with
flowers, leaves and herbs, plants, their culture, history and recipes, and
mail order nurseries.

This book is a must have for the urban home owner who has a small plot of land
and wants a garden that most people wouldn't bother because they wouldn't even
know it was there. The book will also provide you with food ideas that you may
have been missing out on right under your own nose, right in your own yard or
flower garden.

Well, so much for your outdoor garden, what about an indoor garden? That's
right, set up a small "flower box" garden in a window sill or even a terrarium
garden. For the terrarium, you might try to find "Gardening With Terrariums",
although this booklet has almost nothing on food growing indoors as it is
actually a book about ornamental plants.

if a window box of terrarium garden isn't big enough for you, there are other
ways of doing this, such as setting up a greenhouse. Books on greenhouses run
from how to build your own "window box" greenhouse to commercial production
set-ups. Go down to your library or used book store and look over the books
they have. There should be something that will be of interest if you are
serious about plant production and propagation.

Well, if gardening isn't your cup of tea, and you can't put in a greenhouse or
"indoor garden", but still want plant food in your diet, what is left?
Sprouting!

Sprouting is very easy to learn and requires almost no room or equipment to
do, and so is perfect for the urban survivor. Sprouting not only increases the
amount of food over just eating the grains or seeds you might have stored
(such as mung, pinto, or wheat), but provides much more nutrition as well. A
booklet on the subject you might like to find is "Seeds and Sprouts For Life"
by B. Jensen.

Now that you have all that garden produce, what are you going to do with it
all? Yet another booklet for the continually short of space urban survivor is
"Rodale's Gardening Harvest Book" which covers freezing, canning, jams,
jellies and drying.  well so much for plants, what else is there? What about
meat? Well how about traps!

In one "survival" magazine there are ads for leg hold traps, "you may not want
the fur, but you will want to eat" or something like that is how the ad runs.
Well OK, leg hold traps are a good way to get food and furs, but I don't
recommend them for the urban survivor.

The reason is simple, if my best rat catcher or favorite hunting hound comes
back with a messed-up leg or worse yet, doesn't come home at all, I'll know
there is someone else out there and start looking for them and their traps!

Another reason I don't like leg hold traps for the urban survivor, especially
now with the current anti-gun/anti-trapping scum about, is if you don't check
your traps every day (any decent trapper checks his traps AT LEAST once a
day!), someone else might find your traps with an animal caught in it and turn
you in to the local power structure which will be more than happy to harass an
honest survivalist rather than fight crimes such as murder, rape, etc.!  After
all they might get hurt doing that!

Now I'm not against trapping mind you, it's just that you have to be a little
tricky about it. If you live in an area with a lot of raccoons (and who
doesn't?), you might try the "egg-trap", so called because the commercial
version is egg shaped. This is a very safe and very good trap. It doesn't grab
the leg like the leg hold traps and it is safe around dogs, cats and children.

The way this works is, you take off the back of the egg trap, put the bait in,
and close it up. The trap is then put in an area where raccoons are likely to
see it. The raccoon can see and smell the food, but can't get at it. So the
raccoon reaches in, grabs the bait and pulls. Now the trap is so designed that
the leg is held as long as the bait is pulled. Let go of the bait and the leg
is released. In almost all cases the raccoon will hold on to the bait and you
have him trapped!

Another good way to trap animals without hurting them (and getting the
neighbors pissed at you) is to use a box trap. A box trap is just what it
sounds like, a trap in the form of a box. Normally the animal walks into the
trap to get some sort of bait and trips a level closing the trap door;
trapping the animal with no harm. These traps are available commercially and
can be easily built out of wire mesh and scrap lumber to fit just about any
size or area you want to put one.

These traps can be built to trap birds, squirrels, and most any animal to
about a small to medium sized dog or good sized coon. After that, the size and
strength needed limit the practical usefulness of the trap as far as most
urban survivalists are concerned, as it would be hard to explain away a German
Shepherd sized trap in the back yard; while a "raccoon" or "groundhog" trap
will not raise too many questions. I know one person who built one of these
traps for squirrels and normally catches about ten to twelve a week! About the
only problem they have encountered is the trap needs rebuilding/repairing
every week or so, as the squirrels really tear the hell out of trap!

The next set of traps are the so-called "kill traps", as they kill their prey
by breaking the animal's neck or back when the trap is tripped. Needless to
say, you don't want to use this trap where children or pets can get at it, as
most people would get a little upset by this! As these traps are normally in
the mink/martin size, they are not good "meat" traps, although for protecting
your food supply from rats and mice they would work fairly well.

For more information about traps and trapping, you should get "Survival
Poaching" by Ragnar Benson (Paladin Press), "Animal Traps and Trapping" by
Bateman (Stackpole Books), and go to your local magazine rack and and get a
subscription to "Fur/Fish/Game - A Harding Magazine" (Fur-Fish-Game, 2878 E.
Main St., Columbis, OH 43209), $12/year, $21/two years), as well as buying all
the Harding Press books.


                                     /////

