Urban life presents many opportunities to test, adjust and improve our prepping strategies. Grid failures and near-SHTF situations can benefit us if used as training for a future SHTF. In this article, I return to my concepts, philosophies, and practices of urban survival training as proposed in my book.

I stress the importance of building situational awareness, being flexible, and capable of blending in. Area recon and constant neighborhood watch are good exercises – and not only in preparation for a big SHTF, as I'll show. These strategies are the core of my street survival training program. Despite addressing the subject thoroughly in my books, people consistently ask for examples of how this works in practice. 

Here I present two real stories to illustrate and explain how things happen so others can relate and apply them to their contexts. Be forewarned that these are not full-SHTF tales. Just examples showing out-of-ordinary situations can happen anytime, anywhere, even before it hits the fan – and how we can build our preparedness and quiver of solutions.