Welcome sbasacco,

IMHO survival is more than just skills. Proper survival training is about giving you options and training your mind/brain to develop as many ways to solve any given problem as possible. Take fire lighting. If you can light a fire with a match, as long as you have matches you can have a fire. If you can start a fire with a magnifying glass, as along as the sun shines you can have fire. If you can make and use a fire bow you can have fire anywhere there is sticks and wood. The more ways you learn to light a fire the more options you have for gettinga fire going. This holds true for every survival skill, whether it is gathering food, fishing, hunting, shelter building, navigating, trapping or improvising. A survival mindset means you program your mind to think about solutions and alternate solutions.

Just my two cents,

Mountainman.

PS - most things on TV are designed to sell commerical time to advertisers not to inform or educate you the viewer.

that is exactly what I am saying....outdoor skills are such a lost art that I believe that they should really be learned first.

I agree that outdoor skills are important and they are also a lost art for the majority. While skills are important a survival mindset is what will mean the difference between success and failure. Everyone's situation is unique but to survive a devastating event you need shelter, water, food and security in that order. Without water and food you will never get to practice those outdoor skills. As we all currently have shelter a safe and secure water supply followed by a robust food supply should be the first priority of most preppers alone with developing your personalized plan. Once you have the basics you can move on and acquire those skills that it would be nice to have.

It all depends on the type of survival skills your talking about, wilderness or suburban. In either, one of the main ones is providing safe drinking water and providing heat for cooking or comfort. Other than that, the tactics for food gathering and shelter are different.

So first priority is food Supply? or water supply? What if the event that occurs is catastrophic and you end up with nothing?

Another question. Would these be suitable water supply? I an the asst. super. in an apt. building and we have a chiller unit for our central air as well as a huge boiler for hot water so probably a couple thousand gallons oh yea and an indoor pool but that does have chlorine and other chemicals. I believe there is but I'm not 100% sure chemicals are added to the chiller water. When there is a power outage all pumps stop so no water is available in the apts. I believe I have mentioned before I have VERY limited space but there are storage rooms all over the building I could possibly store items.

Sorry I'm at work so if something here doesn't read right I'm just trying to multi-task.

There are many different sources of water in plane sight. What you need to have is a way to make it pure enough to drink... a filter of some sort that will remove contamination both chemical and bacterial. Berky is one make... there are others. You also will need at least 2 containers...one for "dirty" and one for clean.

great posts everyone!!!...this is the type of dialogue that I feel we should be having!!....

survival skills are cheaper too. when i first started prepping i looked to mylar and said "My $15 a week will never get me a year supply of food" then i saw some bushcraft and instantly knew that would be my main prep. im 14 and i can start a bow/drill fire set snares fish(learned that when i was reaaal young), i know the edible plants in my area and the plants that i can make rope out of also plants i can use for medicines and i know some basic hunting and can shoot a gun and hit a general target if i managed to bugout and find a good location i could most likely survive especially in a pine foreste. (Eat pine, pinecones + pine needle tea would make everything alot easier)
and that was all free. i already had compasses and knives and all the gear i needed for bushcraft and i would rather have those skills than a garage full of preserved rice!

Well - Buggered if I Know Buttt!!!!
Down-Under our indigenous inhabitants done pretty good for 'em selves for something like 60,000 or 70,000 years in a continent that is classed as the driest on earth, and everything wants to kill,sting or bite you.

I have had a somewhat turn around in my preparation and am now looking back into long-lost-skills. They served early man for a couple of years, and the trouble is now - we have lost all that knowledge. I always felt that survival is 25% preparing and 75% is the mind set. How to sustain a good moral when your cold, wet, hungry and in the dark, is a high priority in many teachings, that will let you survive.

I now look at if I have to leave (for whatever reason) it will be by vehicle - this will then limit what I can take, then it will depend wether; all the bridges are still safe,the roads are still driveable and I can obtain fuel along the way and I don't have a major breakdown, ( In north Queensland - there aren't a lot of options for which road to take and an hour between towns is common place - if not a further distance between towns). This applied for SA, WA and the NT last time I looked mostly is a greater distance.
This greatly limits options - this is why I am now looking at ancient technology and older living practices.

In your case, I think I would ask myself how many people live in this apartment block? - how much water is on hand? Divide the number of people into amount of estimated water available - will give you an idea wether, if/can you could stay put in that sort of scenario. (provide you have power for long enough to implement water storage plan and has every one else done the same - sounds like it could become, a have and have not situation. sounds like you feel responsible for those in your aprt block?) In a bad situation - remember - you can't save the world.
(not knowing your situation - But I think the priority should be water, shelter(heat/cold) then food. You simply can't last long without 'good' water, no matter what the disaster or climatic conditions you are facing.

So first priority is food Supply? or water supply? What if the event that occurs is catastrophic and you end up with nothing?

Another question. Would these be suitable water supply? I an the asst. super. in an apt. building and we have a chiller unit for our central air as well as a huge boiler for hot water so probably a couple thousand gallons oh yea and an indoor pool but that does have chlorine and other chemicals. I believe there is but I'm not 100% sure chemicals are added to the chiller water. When there is a power outage all pumps stop so no water is available in the apts. I believe I have mentioned before I have VERY limited space but there are storage rooms all over the building I could possibly store items.

Sorry I'm at work so if something here doesn't read right I'm just trying to multi-task.

sspencer69,

From what I have learned over the years, I would say you could use the pool water for sanitation purposes - flushing toilets by pouring buckets of pool water into the toilet tank and then flush as normal. As long as the event did not include an earthquake. Of course, broken sewer lines may not be an issue if your toilet is on the 19th floor of your apartment building.

As for using other chemically treated water for buidling operations, I would not use any of it for drinking purposes. You may be able to filter, distill or purify it for irrigation of crops or for sanitation purposes but I would not recommend it for a drinking water source.

That said, a large buildings water storage would reduce the amount of water needed to secure to only drinking water - 1 to 2 gallons (4 to 8 litre's) per day per person. A possible short term solution for a building super would be to order every resident to clean and then fill their bath tub with clean water before the event caused the power to go down. That would give you at least 30 gallons per unit of fresh drinking water.

Does this help at all???

Mountainman.

Once again, water purification, Sand over activated charcoal.
Activated charcoal= 25% Calcium Chloride or Zinc Chloride, 75% water over pure charcoal (not pine). Look up on YouTube or Google. Coffee Can or 5 gal pail, or 45 gallon drum. All the same, just different quanities... LEARN. MAKE, PRACTICE and maybe survive.