What If I'm Homeless?How Can I Stay Warm?(Urban Edition.)

This instructable is designed to tell you how to stay warm, in varying degrees of cold.
There will be pics in a few days.
This article assumes you do not have a house or apartment.
Being homeless in a car is the luckier of the two situations in some ways, unluckier in others, and deserves an Ible of it's own.
This also assumes level of society is infrastructure-intact.
I believe infrastructure-hiccup homelessness, again, deserves an Ible of it's own.
Yes, those are challenges, smartypants!
Here's a couple more,btw....
Save Water, Make a Doctor Sink - a regular sink-to-footpedal sink mod...anyone?
Quiet Compressed Air Car Mod-Making your car run on compressed air. quietly.
How to get Friable/FoodGrowing Land to be Considered a positive factor in Property Equity in residential neighborhoods, so composting/working the soil would build property value by it's own real merit.
Starting a garden with your whole Apartment Building to Feed Yourselves from a secure Garden!Rooftop edition?
How to Save The World From Itself in Your Free Time
NewOrleans/Georgia Style Sweet Potato Pecan Pie Recipe

OK! BACK TO THE TASK AT HAND!
So, crap, guess what. You're homeless.
Things didn't work out for now, and now, well, ...now what?
Where do we go from here?
First things first.
What does a human need? (not Want, but Need.)
Quickly.....unfortunately, much of your Western civilization programming will be working against you in this process. We've been taught to gratify many of our less important whims.

Fundamentally, a Need is something required for pragmatic survival.
A Want is something that would be nice. Your priorities may vary, but what a human needs to survive
is pretty simple. Air, Water, Food, Shelter. Sometimes you may additionally need medicine,which can occasionally be improvised.more about that later.

If it's cold, you have to figure out the way to stay warm. If you're in a place where it gets much below the 40s(fahrenheit. About 4.4 Celsius), you'll need to do it fairly quickly. Before dark.
When the sun goes down the temperature drops quickly, and that's bad news for you.
Even if you're a husky fella,
your extremities will chill and cramp easier, and if you go to sleep, if you wake up, you may wake up with hypothermia. Not fun.
There's also frostbite.. Oh, buddy.
If you're caught homeless in the cold, don't panic. This is survivable, and a chance to prove you're resourceful enough to do it well enough to come out healthy.

Step 1: Things to Remember

Stay Dry - This makes your chances for staying warm much better. Your core heat can be leached out of you by the cold, so the drier you are, the warmer.
Layer up- Start with absorbant or moisture wicking long underwear if you have it, if not, you can improvise with
various materials.
Here's the idea you're going for.
The homeless guy from The Day After Tomorrow-he's got the right idea BUT if there is danger of getting wet, paper will not be your buddy. It'll stick to you and your clothes and keep you wet.
Find clean packing materials (platic/styro/cello, etc.)instead if you can, try loading docks behind stationary stores or hardware stores.

Keep your sense of humor and your temper- irrational thinking will waste your time and energy. Keep calm and be resigned to the idea that there is a solution to your problem, and you will find it if you focus.
Alcohol- a little might be okay, but a drunk homeless dude in the snow/rain is a bumsicle. not really a Need.
also, makes you give a lot of warmth away with excessive peeing.
Pee as soon as you need to.- your body puts the kettle on to heat up urine. It can use up body heat
you'll need to stay focused on surviving.

Step 2: Batten Down the Hatches

Tuck in all layers but the outside coat. if this is uncomfortable, remove 1 layer from belt.
the coat will flange over and protect the layers
beneath.

If it's wet:
Garbage bags can be pretty good raingear.
if you have 3 large bags and three regular sized shopping bags, you can get it to stay
use one as a hoodie.
Hold bag upside down. make a face sized hole about a foot down one long side.
use the two others to make MC Hammer pants-you may look silly, but you'll prove you're 2 Legit 2 Quit this world! take a regular shopping bag and pinch both corners off the bottom.
push your already garbage-bagged legs through (cant touch this.)
take the bags, pinch off one corner of each, and push your foot through.
If you have shoes,take them off and put a regular shopping bag over each.
put the toe inside a corner.
tuck the ends inside.
your foot should already be through hole in one bottom corner of large trash bag and protruding out at about the ankle.
put the shoes on.

Congratulations!
You should look kind of like Robert or Benson, the guys hanging around the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness.
hopefully,This is enough. if not, go to step 3.

Step 3: Get Down and Insulate!

If it's Wet and Freezing
You're basically water resistant at this point. are you still crazy cold?
Well, if you can't get a mug of hot cocoa, you need to insulate.
What to use, what to use?
My father told me this one, he actually had to come up with it in the field.
It probably saved his life.
Find a source for clean packaging materials, bubble wrap is ideal, but if you can find pallet cellophane and packing peanuts(make sure they're not cornstarch-based or they'll melt if they get wet)they'll work.
Look out for carpet padding, it can have mold or urine. or moldy urine.
Don't use pink or yellow fiberglass insulation. Trust me on this.
Put the peanuts between two layers then fold over.
Depending on how cold it is, you can pack your pant legs ,shirt, sleves, etc. or your stylish vintage early 90's poprap icon tributes. Take that, Kanye!
We're old school!
It goes without saying that bubblewrap makes a nice mitten,
and if you can make the rainhat beneath( baseball cap not required) and line it with small bubble wrap or another regular shopping bag, you can insulate your head a little better.
A lil somethin' fe ye head.

Where to find : this could be behind any of the big box stores, hardware stores ,or supermarkets.
You will improvise. That's how we survive.

Step 4: Shelter From the Storm

Scout around for areas:
Warmed by the sun
Sheltered from wind/water
Near Heat vents - usually behind or near hotels, or large heated buildings,like malls. watch for security.
you're the real reason they're there.
Multilevel parking lots sometimes have small nooks to occupy.
If you can find one lowkey enough, you can either get a few hours sleep, or if it's late enough and there's no one around, stay the night.
If you know you snore loudly, this may be a bad idea.
Camouflage your location to avoid detection.

Look out for areas water may pool later.
If you're really that worried about getting busted, It's not really that cold.
remember:
Jail has food, heat,beds, showers,libraries, phones, and of course the companionship of your fellow man. The jerk.
If it's really freezing and you have no other way, get yourself arrested.
It might save your life.
Or get you killed, but hey, you were already gonna freeze to death!
Getting beaten up or shanked is comparably better then hypothermia death or frostbite and gangrene.
Is it a Want or a Need to survive?

Libraries are open most business days as a source of:
Water
Restroom/Changing Facilitites/ Washup stop.
(If your hands feel numb, try the water with your wrist to keep it just warm, and soak your fingers for a little while.Too hot too quick is bad.)
Be careful with electric hand driers,if you are frozen, you can get burned and not feel it at first.
Internet.
If you're not too dirty, you can walk through heated Supermarkets , Shopping Centers, Hotel and other Lobbies and some bus stations without arousing too much trouble. wearing the garbage bag get-up will definitely get you noticed, though. luckily it fits handily in a large pocket.
If you can find a way into some apartment /motel building laundry rooms, there should be usually a soda machine and at least one drier.
Do this when it's either very late or very early to minimze contact you want to be a ghost
If you can amass a few quarters, open the drier door.
There should be a sensor on the dryer,
jam it with a little piece of wire and a piece of card about like a matchbook or business card.
it might have to be the plastic push-in kind, I'm not sure.

Improvised shelter
Find a source for clean packing material. This can be a dumpster near a loading dock for
Supermarkets
Malls/Shopping Centers
Hardware Stores

Cardboard sleeping bag
wardrobe or fridge boxes are good for this. it's okay if they're flat, that's how they're used.
cover box with bubble wrap, pallet cellophane, burlap,painter's plastic, ag mesh, garbage bags, whatever you can find. cleanest closest, dirtiest farthest away.
layers of crumpled phone book pages/newspaper between full newspaper sheets folded at the ends.
if you can find aluminum foil fold it around and undeneath plastic.
if you can get a pallet,a few sheets of cardboard and bubble wrap, you can make a platform to keep you insulated from the concrete to avoid more chill.
this is enhanced greatly with a piece of carpet, again, avoid the pee.
You may find some uninterrupted sleep near the freeway behind walls, there tends to be more foliage,
Look out for other people's spots, some folks get real ugly and territorial, some will
walk up and be yer buddy.
It's your job to tell between one and the other or be prepared to avoid!

Step 5: Food Furnace

This is what you are. If you can't eat, ultimately you can't live.
You need water and food to function, but when it's cold, you need food
or you'll start getting weak, and that's....weak.
Things to Eat
You really want as much food value out of what you eat when it's cold.
This means nutrition as much as possible in what you're eating.
There are many inexpensive options. Some supermarkets, even one fast food chain I know of, have baked potatoes. These wrapped in tinfoil and put in a pocket will help warm you before and after you eat. If you have access to a way to heat things, this is ideal. you may not.
here area few options to improvise.(I love this website.)
other good lowprice options are
Cheap Burritos- be careful with meat burritos. this can, shall we say, backfire.
Restaurants will sometime throw away still-warm food, monitor a few near closing.
Sometimes bread trucks will give you older loaves they pick up from chain restaurants.
Be honest, don't be pushy, nobody likes an ENTITLED homeless person.
Besides, you're probably on camera, Duder.
If you can swing it from dumpsters or even in-store "samples",
eat a little spinach or tomatoes when you can. sweet potatoes, beans, corn, anything with naturally occuring nutrients is good. Dumpster locks are a sin, as far as I'm concerned.
They should just post a warning /waiver across the whole front
of the dumpster releasing themselves from harm and allow a little mitigation of the trash flow to the Dump. What, did you think that special locked-dumpster trash went to a magical fairy land?

Even If candy is all that's available any given time,
Look for the maximum food value. Instead of Smarties or starburst, get the candybar with nuts and nougat or whatever. If it's freezing, look for the most calories.
Granola works really well for this, but it's not usually cheap.
Dollar store places will also help if nearby.
Dumpster diving is a way to get food, try supermarket dumpsters for veg and fruit, damaged cans/ packaged foods, Donut stores and bagel shops have to throw away unsold inventory after some hours and daily respectively.
I'm not your mom, but brush your teeth!
Tooth related pain when you can't do anything about it in freeze, rain, snow is not what you want.
also, if you can, use conrstarch to keep yer pits and bits dry so they sweat less.
I have heard talc causes a similar reaction to the skin long term as asbestos, please relate in comments if this is so if you know! Thanks.

Step 6: Better Pics Coming Soon!

Thanks for reading, I'll update again soon, I want to go out when I can and take some better pics of the places I desribed.
Stay warm and have fun living the great adventure!