Surviving in a Venezuelan city is a lot different than it is in a country retreat. Each location has its own problems and benefits. I wrote before about the dangers of rural retreats and today I will write about the dangers in a city. You must not underestimate people because they are different then they deal with hunger and poverty.

I would like to dissect a little bit about the importance of a parameter that is paramount for "the retreat," or whatever you may want to call it. Location is everything when it comes to your safety, especially when you live in the city.

It is all about the location before and after a collapse.

I like to think that I am a smart buyer. After all, money is made when you buy, not exactly when you sell something. For me, buying our home was a lengthy process. Selection of the place was not just based on pricing, like most of my fellow co-workers.

We looked for a house located in an area of the city close enough to go to the supermarket on foot, and near a school, too. I used an engineering method to select the best option after we had selected five neighborhoods. It was quite an interesting exercise for the intellect.

You need to select the must-have variables, pondering each one in a debate (that is, if you and your family can do it peacefully LOL), and summarize the results to provide a final conclusion, based on an evaluation supported by a common ground that enhances the most important parameter, selected by the work team based on its relative importance.

How we selected our location in the city

The result was a house close to a supermarket, a couple of mini-malls with lots of services and shops (back then), and with an independent water supply (something that would make us very happy afterward, indeed). Independent meaning that the supply was not provided by the national (now seized, and state-owned, almost absolutely useless) water companies.

Oh, and it was a casual distance to a liquor store. Haha. I don't drink a lot, but walking 10 minutes to drink a cold beer after a hard work day, has to be healthy. Oh, and we had a local beer around that was delicious.  I hope it has survived the apocalypse.