City Survival

Nyerges "Urban survival guide" advocates living simply to be resilient against adversity

- By Steven Paul Barlow

Did you ever feel as if you were on life's cruel treadmill? You work long and hard to pay for the possessions you accumulate only to find you have little time to use those things because you're too busy working to pay for them.

There is an alternative. Christopher Nyerges details a different approach in his book, "Urban Survival Guide, How City Dwellers Can Live Well, and Frugally, Even in Dire Times."

While this book is likely to be of interest to those seeking to be secure in the possible event of a natural disaster or economic collapse, it's actually a guide for living a simple lifestyle unchained from the constraints associated with the pursuit of material wealth.

Nyerges lays out a plan that entails growing your own food, repurposing everything you can instead of throwing things away, improvising things you need, and doing without those things you really don't need.

BREAKING IT DOWN

Too often, we sum up urban survival tactics with one idea: Flee the city. Yes, bugging out might be necessary when faced with rising flood waters or an approaching wildfire. But escaping to unfamiliar wild places with the intent of "living off the land" isn't always the best plan when you'd have to leave behind most of the resources you have at home. And realistically, surviving in the wilds in most cases becomes a matter of slow starvation.