Practical Advice for Escaping a War-Torn City Tom Marlowe Urban Survival
You don’t need to look very far back in history to find horrifying examples of the carnage inflicted upon civilian populations when cities are overtaken by war.
When war physically reaches the doorsteps of civilians, it is typically the civilian populations that suffer more than anybody.
Since cities are the very worst environments on Earth to fight in, it is definitely in your best interest most of the time (if you are living in a city ravaged by conflict) to get out while the getting is good.
Unfortunately it is not a simple thing. War is complex and the motivations of those persecuting it are equally complex.
Allegiances shift, rules and codes of conduct get bent or broken and tragedies happen due to fear, hatred, exhaustion and good, old- fashioned human error.
Learning to read and understand these variables will be essential if you want to get out of a city under threat of war in one piece.
If your plan is to simply grab your backpack, hop in the car and take off for the border you will probably be rudely surprised, if you live that long.
Survival is always a thinking man’s game, and at no time is this truer than when it is time to get out of dodge while the getting is good.
If you are playing checkers while everyone else is playing chess, you will likely be facing a negative outcome.
In today’s article, we will offer you some insightful and hard- earned advice for making it out of a war-torn city alive.
War at Home
Aleppo, Syria. Novi Sad, Serbia. Chongqing, China. In recent years and decades past, these are just a few of the many cities who saw their civilians suffer unutterably when war reached out and swallowed them.
It is easy when conflict is far away to think that war is just a grand scale game of maneuver at one level or another for militaries, and that civilians predominately just putter away behind the lines trying to live their lives as they always have or contribute to the war effort in some productive capacity.
Unfortunately that is just not true. Throughout time and history, civilians will see the devil come to collect his due when war quite literally comes home.
Cities are, after all, strategic targets: they are typically situated along major routes of transit be they overland or water. They host major airports, and large industrial installations.
And, of course, they contain within their warrens of streets and buildings enormous masses of people who can contribute in various ways to the prosecution of war.
Sometimes, the people may even be, sadly, the target of the military action, often witnessed in civil wars and wars of ideological difference.
But no matter why a city is finding itself smack in the middle of armed conflict on a major scale, civilians that are able to get out and get away are generally advised to do so. In all but the most low intensity conflicts things will progressively get worse for people inside a city.
First swarms of troops and armored vehicles will lock down the city and set up checkpoints. Rolling firefights will see bullets and explosive munitions used profligately.
As things grind on larger vehicles and contingents of troops will be brought to bear, and in support of the combatants on the ground airstrikes and artillery will level buildings and devastate entire neighborhoods.
It is also far from out of the question that, in the gravest extreme, strategic weapons will be deployed, among them chemical, biological and nuclear doomsday weapons.
Aside from direct threats to life and limb resulting from bullets and bombs, civilians will have much else to fear, including a lack of essential resources like medical care, food and clean water.
Disease and sickness always accompany war wherever it goes, and hot on its heels will come starvation. Cities are entirely dependent on shockingly fragile mechanisms of commerce to supply them.
Vast armies of workers and intricate utility infrastructures must be in perfect order, and manned for things like electricity, clean water and sewage service to function.
Remove one or any of them, and cities can quickly turn into charnel repositories of carnage.
Get Out Alive
Getting out of a war-torn city alive is dependent upon many factors. There are so many variables, so many permutations and ways that you might find a war on the near horizon that collating all possible scenarios would be nothing short of a doorstopper book.
A better approach, especially for those who don’t have all the time in the world to dedicate to the subject, is to focus on principles.
No matter where you live, no matter what kind of war you are facing and why it is being fought and by whom, there are certain factors that are universally applicable.
Determining, evaluating and then acting upon those factors at the instance is what will likely make the difference between success and life, or failure and death when the time comes to get the heck out of there.
And very likely you should get out if at all possible. Civilians tend to die in droves if they stay inside a war-torn city, especially as the war drags on and the conflict grows nastier and nastier.
Civilians could be shot in a case of mistaken identity, blown up as collateral damage, deliberately targeted for reprisal or as an outlet for vented rage by belligerents.
They will be preyed upon by organized crime, starved, beaten, burned or even subjected to deliberate persecution or pogroms.
The idea is to get out and get away. Get away and then keep going. The more distance you can put between yourself and the actual fighting the better. The longer you remain or delay the greater the chance of injury or death.
Practical Advice for Escaping a War-Torn City
The following factors in various categories for your consideration are not presented in any kind of hard order.
Depending on your timetable, where you live, the environment, the participants in the war and all kinds of other variables, they may take on greater or lesser significance to your efforts at escaping.
There is definitely a bit of art that goes along with the science, if you want to call it that.
You’ll need to gather information about the situation, and accurate information at that, in order to inform your decisions will be very great when the time comes to escape from the city.
Acting on bad information, or information that has since grown stale and is no longer accurate, could see you and your loved ones killed out of hand.
But, as is always the case in attempting to gather or ascertain that information, you may expose yourself to more risk.
The trick is in balancing what information you can gather safely enough that is the most relevant to informing your decision.
This is far easier said than done, since most people will, thankfully, not have very much call to practice these sorts of activities for real.
Now, on to the list.
Is City Under, Nominally Under or Out of Control?
This factor more than many will determine how much information you can get, its veracity and how quickly you can get it in order to make a good decision on when and where to go when the time comes to flee.
If the country’s national and local government are still more or less under control of the city and attempting to take care of the civilians, you are more than likely able to rely on what information they are telling you concerning safe places and safe routes, though not always.
But as governments start to lose their grip, either from panic, abdication or casualties this will give way towards the rumor mill filling in more and more of your perception.
Things could be a lot worse than they seem, or they could be better. It will be hard to say without clapping eyes on something yourself.
Lastly, when things go completely out of control, either through prolonged fighting or mounting damage, with the government packing it in and heading for the hills this will mean that the citizens are left to their fate. This is when chaos will likely reign.
But you may be dealing with a new “government” in the form of occupiers who quickly brought the city to heel as they chased out the existing government.
That will certainly be a change of pace for you, but depending on who is lording over the city it might not necessarily affect your plans for escape.
It will, though, definitely mean you are dealing with people who are “the others”: they might not be anything like you and yours, including your previous government, at all and you’ll have to plan accordingly.
Avoid Conflict Sites
In many wars combatants will oftentimes get locked in the battle over a particular area: a certain area of the city, a particular district, major thoroughfares suitable for moving massive amounts of men and material, etc.
The conflict might settle into a sort of tempo, with fights happening only during the daytime, predominately at night, round- the-clock or even seemingly randomly.
It is imperative you avoid moving and traveling during times when battle is at its sharpest, and always steer clear of areas or routes that are sharply contested.
Even during lulls or down time, when neither side is interested in fighting, you could be mistaken for a combatant of one side or the other, and targeted out of hand just for being there.
Similarly, you definitely want to get as far away from serious strategic targets like armories, police stations and other installations of importance and do so as fast as you can.
The chances that these places will be targeted either for destruction or for capture are disproportionately high compared to other buildings.
The entire situation will be dangerous enough without you wandering through a place that is likely to center you in someone’s crosshairs.
Leaving Earlier is Better
This is another general rule of thumb that will rarely let you down. When conflict is in the region and especially when it draws close to the city you want to leave as soon as humanly possible.
Ideally, if you are able, you want to get out and head in the opposite direction of approaching belligerents well before the first shots are even fired in defense of the city.
But even after the conflict has kicked off properly “in your backyard” you’re almost always better off getting away earlier before things progress.
Plainly stated as the war drags on you will have less options and anyone who gains control of the city will cement that control even further; that means more checkpoints, fewer routes that are not watched or otherwise monitored and tempers that grow increasingly short.
All of the above will decrease your chances of successfully escaping and getting away alive.
It is hard to calculate, but you might be better off taking a greater short-term risk to get out quick and get away clean versus waiting for better opportunities that might never arrive, trapping you in a city being bombed to rubble or systemically purged.
NGOs? (Non-Government Organizations)
One of the best options for civilians who are about to become refugees may be helpful NGOs operating in and around the city.
NGO, an acronym meaning non-government organizations, can be established in conflict zones for all kinds of reasons, and found performing tasks from assessment to reporting, rendering civilian aid and assistance, or even providing security and everything in between.
Generally speaking, and exempting NGOs who are there specifically in support of offensive or defensive objectives for either side, the reliable presence of NGOs often indicate that belligerents are more or less playing by the rules, and with a certain amount of respect for the rules of warfare, since these organizations are often loathe to put their people directly in harm’s way otherwise.
If you’re able to make contact with any NGOs that are there specifically for civilian support and aid, you might get an easy ride out of the city, and be on your way with little fuss or danger.
You might though potentially be moved into a refugee camp in the area. Despite the horror stories you sometimes hear about these installations, they’re oftentimes the best chance for civilians to stay alive after fleeing a city facing major violence.
Even if you cannot employ their help to get out of the city directly, they’re usually good sources of up-to-date information on the greater situation, information that you can use in your own planning to make informed decisions about how, when and where you will escape, as well as what you might be up against.
Information about the major players is always valuable in these situations.
Route and Transit Considerations
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Poster Comment:
Bug out or shelter in place? These are your choices if the balloon goes up.