Emergency Shelters

   The first choice for a fresh-after-the-emergency shelter may well be a car or truck, or even a commercial camping tent. I even spent one night in a crude hammock I formed from part of a parachute.
   I actually lived in a Volkswagen van for awhile while working and going to school. It was uncomfortably close, but doable. I found myself eating out and going to the library a lot just for the space and company, but at least I never forgot anything when I went anywhere. In the absence of an available vehicle however, consider the following:
   An author named Tom Brown devised a survival shelter that consisted of a pile of leaves covered by branches, and whatever scraps he could find that might assist in thatching. Slither into the nest of leaves and enjoy a snug night with whatever else might slither in. Plastic bags of dry leaves or soft dry trash can also provide emergency insulation.
   During a phase of my life when a motorcycle was very important to me I folded a blanket in a 6’ X 10’ tarp and sat on it as I traveled. With the tarp folded over me, my jacket “horseshoed” around my head and shoulders, and the blanket used (or not), I could sleep warm and dry wherever the wind would carry me.
   Sometimes a level of concealment is advisable. Generally speaking, there is no legal place for homeless people to exist. I remember seeing a security guard ordering a crippled homeless man to move on, and his response was “Tell me where to move to and I’ll gladly go.” I used to walk past one homeless camp nestled among piles of earth that had been dumped on vacant land. One winter morning the area had been bulldozed – merry Christmas non-existent ones. For more on this category of existence see Stealth.
   On a couple of occasion I and a group of friends wanted to enjoy a small fire (a no-no on upscale Southern California beaches). We dug out a pit a little over 8 feet in diameter by about 18” deep and enjoyed a cozy circle around a small bed of coals. When a helicopter patrolled overhead, a couple of us would stand over the coals to conceal it from view.
   On another beach we dug a slightly larger and deeper hole. When patrol Jeeps would approach, we would nonchalantly move off a little ways and return a couple minutes later. Jeeps passing about 30’ away ignored it – they’d seen sand excavations before. Later that night, while a couple of us were sleeping a safe distance from Jeep routs, one of the Jeeps fell in. After about thirty minutes of very creative profanity they were safely on their way. This was cool, we’d never caught a whole jeep before.
On more serious level, such an excavation could serve on freezing evenings to conceal a small fire. In some cases such an excavation might be partially covered by a low-profile dome. Sometimes a homeless person will stay up and walk around all night to keep warm, rather than risk falling asleep and freezing.
   I once built a 23’ diameter low-profile dome out of various scraps in Colorado to keep snow off of a group of homeless. There was a landowner compassionate enough to allow a site, but city officials made them tear it down.
   For some, their situation is due to circumstances they could not control. They are true victims of societal failure. Others among them will admit that they are there because of their own poor choices in life. And there are others still who are living in obscurity because they have warrants out for their arrests – real victims, real failures, and real criminals. But in any case their pain is also real. Have a heart.

Any-Stick Dome
   Here is how you can build a structure from almost any sticks you can find, and they don't even have to be exactly the same length.
   There's only one rule to putting it together: The end of each stick rests upon the center of another stick (except for ends that may be resting on the ground). For additional security, it doesn't hurt to tie or wire the ends in place.
   This technology offers an opportunity for those who have no option but to live outside. If they have the blessing of at least owning a tent, two or three months of full sunshine and constant use is likely to seriously damage it. By building a canopy using this structure, and covering it with anything that could be found or recycled, shade could be provided to protect a tent from sunlight.
If scraps of water-resistant materials could be found it could be “shingled” to protect it from rain, so it could provide living space to reduce wear on the tent. In a more dire situation, it could become the emergency shelter in itself,
   To demonstrate the minimal level of materials needed for a basic structure, I salvaged twigs from a branch that had fallen on a friend's shop. The photo below shows the bundle of twigs beside a sandal to indicate the size, and about 60 feet of twine that will tie them together.
   When I laid out the variously twisted twigs per the format described above, the result was a slightly ordered mess. Natural fibers such as jute and sisal are ideal for this application because they are cheap and are superior to synthetic materials in resisting sunlight.
   By orienting the twigs so they bow upwards instead of lying flat, and then tying them into place, a convex structure begins to emerge.

   Supporting some of the edges on additional twigs allows access. Coverings of any kind begin to provide protection from the elements

   If you can build any kind of structure from the materials used here, you can produce a shelter from almost anything almost everywhere. As far as I know, there would be no theoretical limit to the size that could be built.

A SEQUENCE OF SIZE
   The smallest one of these that I've used was made of twigs, to shade some tender seedlings.
You should be able to build a minimal shelter from slightly larger twigs that could be shingled with scraps of anything that could shed water.
   A son and a friend actually made a structure of about 12 feet square from the thorny, twisted stems of palm fronds. It was fairly flat, and had to be supported at the edges to get it off the ground, but basically proved that you can build it from about anything.
   With staff-scale branches, you could begin to give yourself a little room to move around. I've found it helpful sometimes, to slightly notch one side of each end to fit it to the adjoining surface.
The structure is surprisingly strong, and with more substantial branches, you might be able to build a structure that could hold a hammock off the ground. I haven't tried this and I'm sure that you would need to have the joints all wired securely.
   A word of caution: Lifting up anywhere but on the outside edges can undo the whole structure. In other words, if part of it begins to sag, one of the worst things you can do is prop it up with an internal support.
   For structural wire, consider a barbed-wire fence. It is possible to break such wire with your bare hands by first forming a loop and then pulling it as tight as you can. You then bend the wire repeatedly back and forth for a couple minutes at the point of the tightest bend. Be careful though, the area where the wire is being bent the most can become hot enough to brand.