Getting the Suburban Home Ready For the Apocalypse

For preppers, the suburban home appears to be harder survive after the apocalypse. That is, because of its nearness to urban centers, it’s seen as likely to be in a bad location in most post-apocalyptic scenarios. There is also the dependence on municipal utilities and other signs of civilization; take away the services it depends on, and suburban homes will be left high and dry, an unlike place for humans to survive for long after an apocalypse hits. However, with a little bit of preparation and teamwork, suburban homes may be able to ride out the apocalypse.

Innate Advantages

From a post-apocalyptic gang’s perspective, suburbs are somewhat annoying, and that’s a good thing. Most scavengers would stick to the fringes of the suburbs; exploring further in would be a waste of effort; while there would no doubt be treasures, especially in terms of food and other supplies, it would take too much effort to properly take advantage of the situation. Basically, going after more easily reached stores would be a better expenditure of time and fuel; this means that the further into a suburb you are, the less likely you are to have to deal with scavengers and others. This provides a nifty defense for those well within a suburban development.

However, should defense be needed, should someone penetrate a suburb, armed defense is easy: Those on the street are open to attack and have to be systematic in tracking down defenders, who can easily escape just by going at the back door and into someone else’s backyard. Defenders, on the other hand, can shoot from their front rooms and duck down. If they’re able to pick up enough thick metal sections, such as from a home supply store, and cover the front of their home, they can ensure that firearms can only penetrate windows.

Most suburban also come with decent front and back yards. Given how little space it takes to create a garden that will sustain a family of four, this means that they have more than sufficient space to raise food. Throw in a chicken coop, and you have a solid source of protein. A pool can be modified for aquaculture, so that adds fish to the diet. It’s easy enough to set up solar panels, solar generators, and even windmills, so energy shouldn’t be a problem even if the grid goes down. The need for gasoline can be written out of the equation if electric vehicles, electric tools, and non-powered tools are used.

In short, the only real disadvantage will be water. Even if you could fill a rain barrel every time it rains, that’s only 55 gallons, or barely enough for a family of four for two weeks. In other words, a steady source of water needs to be found for people to do well in a suburb; those near a lake or river will do best, while those in a desert are less likely to survive.

Surveillance Is Not Just For The Paranoid

The other form of defense is simple surveillance. This should take three forms: guards, drones, and cameras. Guards are most likely adolescents on bikes with walkie-talkies posted on the fringe of the territory, with directives to report and run in case of invaders. Solar-powered drones would pass overhead, providing a backup; they would also be used on trips outside the suburb, providing extra eyes to detect scavengers and roving gangs, allowing suburbanites to avoid most problems. Cameras would be posted at discrete intervals to catch invaders that had bypassed the guards.

By combining these three types of surveillance, a suburb further insulates itself from the outside world. This would also help scavenging parties avoid issues when they are travelling outside their suburb; with a drone pilot as part of the caravan and guards on e-bikes, and you have ready-made scouting parties. The only problem would be if the same spots were used too frequently, as roving gangs would eventually figure out the scavenging pattern of the suburbanites; so the suburbanites would need to be somewhat paranoid when they left the confines of their streets, with vigilance being the best protection.

HOAs on Steroids

Those who hate homeowner associations are not going to like the apocalypse. It’s going to take a certain degree of teaming up for a group of homes to survive; a single household simply doesn’t have the resources to survive long-term. Only by organizing into a group of specialists can a neighborhood survive; different individuals will need to take different skills if the neighborhood is to survive, such as mechanics, farming, surveillance, even childcare, and someone is going to need to organize everyone so they work as a team. This even applies to setting up guards and scavenging parties. Heck, someone is going to figure out what individuals need and plan to obtain those items.

Just like current HOAs, the nature of leadership is going to be the biggest problem. There will need to be safeguards put in place to deal with power cliques or those in power will be in constant fear of losing control, and nothing is scarier than someone worried about losing control. A democratic form of government with term limits would probably work best. The other issue would be warlike neighborhoods, but they would be sorted out soon enough, either taking control of more neighborhoods or attacking a stronger neighborhood; alliances would help to prevent this. Trade between neighborhoods would help strengthen the neighborhoods involved.

Neighborhood associations are going to spring up all over the place in post-apocalyptic suburbs. These can be good or bad depending on the association, making for some interesting play as they war and ally. It would be interested to see what happens in major developments, especially when there are limited resources, such as those surrounded by deserts or hit by civil unrest. It should be really interesting to see what happens in case of plague or nuclear war; would the neighborhood pull together or tear itself apart? Hopefully, we’ll never find out.

The suburbs would fare much better than expected in most apocalyptic scenarios. It may take a few weeks or even months for them to hit their stride, but when they figure things out they should ride out the apocalypse well, The biggest problems they would have is if neighborhoods went to war or if he natives went stir crazy. Otherwise, with proper planning, even planned randomness for scouting parties, a suburban community should do well in all but the worst of futures.