Posted on 05/04/2011 4:43:43 PM PDT by blam
Considerations For SHTF Living & Bug Out Locations
Mac Slavo
May 3rd, 2011
Editors note: If you are not yet in the location you want to be if the S were to hit the fan, and are currently looking for either a home or raw land, then we recommend that you also read What Is The Best Place To Live In The United States To Prepare For The Coming Economic Collapse. The opinions expressed below are a supplement to that article.
If insulating yourself from a worst-case scenario is your primary concern then the following considerations, some of which were mentioned in the article above, could help you to better decide what to do next:
* Stay out of the cities: This is without a doubt the top concern when looking at the possibility of an economic collapse or other disaster scenario. Youre likely better off taking your chances in the middle of the wilderness than you are staying in an urban center. Youll be dealing with packs of wild animals in both scenarios, but at least you would have a chance at acquiring some food, water and shelter.
Of course, were not recommending that you make the wilderness your bug-out plan, but rather, are pointing out that cities will be hit extremely hard, and millions of people will be in need of food, gas, clean water, medicine and other supplies. In an all-out collapse, similar to that described by James Rawles in his book Patriots, the grid would go down, transportation systems would come to a halt and urban areas, including suburban areas, would become war zones as individuals, gangs and clans would compete for the last remaining resources.
When you think major city and SHTF, think Hurricane Katrina, but on a regionalized scale affecting tens of millions of people.
* Dont plan on living in the wild: While the wilderness may seem like a much better option than the inner city or suburbia, youre not the only one whos thought of it. Only experienced outdoors men should even consider living in the wild as a primary back-up for a collapse event.
Like the cities, it will only be a matter of time before competition for resources reaches a boiling point. Unless youre one-hundred or more miles from any major human access points, youre going to come across others who are looking for food, water, shelter, clothing and supplies.
Depending on where you are in the country, the elements may become just as dangerous as gangs in the city. Without the proper equipment, youd probably have a better chance of surviving an inner city meltdown then you would freezing temperatures in the north / north-west part of the US.
If the wilderness is your plan, do you have a plan for staking and defending a piece of land for you and your family? And are you prepared to evade and/or deal with the golden horde that will eventually makes it way from the cities?
* How close is your support network? If you plan on relocating, are family members and like-minded friends within a tank of gas to your new location? While an SHTF location 400 miles outside of a major city is a great idea, if your plan is to have just you and your immediate family of 2 to 5 people defending the land you may run into problems. Regardless of how many guns or how much ammo you have, coordinated attacks by gangs or the possibility of being overrun by those who managed to make it to rural areas should be a consideration.
Also, looking at the location of your home town and the reality of coordinating with neighbors and city officials to stop non-residents from entering a particular area would be prudent. A support network on a familial and community level will be critical if you are near any population centers, even if your town is only made up of a few thousand people.
Primarily, your immediate team is of the most concern keeping 24 hour watch and working the land will be critical, and youre going to need more than just a few people to do this effectively.
* Is your new place to live capable of going off-grid for extended periods? Were not just talking about electricity but water and food as well. Electricity and gas power are important, but not as important as your immediate needs like food, water, shelter and defense. With the right people by your side, your defense capabilities should be significantly enhanced.
But if the grid goes down, how will you manage? Will there be fresh water available from a well or stream? What if someone dams your stream up river? Is there enough arable land to produce food and enough water to keep it alive?
Remember, the food you need will not be just for you, but for the animals you might be raising. Do you have reserve feed for those animals, or do you plan on feeding them off the land?
* Location. Location. Location. The above article pointed out that coastal areas could be deadly for a number of reasons. If youve read any historical doomsday theories, youre likely familiar with the statistic that some 90% of the worlds population lives within a hundred miles of an ocean. Bad news if the earth ever decides to sneeze. That, and the fact that those areas become major targets in the event of war or wide-scale terrorism.
The east coast of the US, especially, would be dangerous simply because of the number of people. Even if you arent directly on the coast, golden horde migrations will overrun hundreds of thousands of acres of land during evacuations or panics.
The west coast would experience similar effects. From the south, as the article mentions, there is the real possibility of mass migrations and violence its no secret that certain lines of thoughts suggest the southern US belongs to Mexico so be prepared for an onslaught if you are anywhere within several hundred miles of the southern border.
During any such mass migrations, any easy to traverse land masses will be subject to disturbances and only those in remote or difficult to reach locations will go unscathed. If it even exists, the SHTF protection zones, in general, seem to be the central United States regions this includes flat lands and mountainous regions, stretching from northern Texas up towards the Dakotas and west towards Idaho.
Parts of northern California, Oregon and Washington also qualify. There is, of course, the possibility that some natural events Yellowstone comes to mind could wreck havoc, but other than that, the right piece of property in these areas could be your best bet to survive a whole host of end of America scenarios.
This is not to say that areas outside of this zone are unsafe, as we are speaking more in regional generalities here. Ideally, you want to be out of the migration path of the horde, preferably on higher ground in the mountains, or a good distance from any major or high trafficked roadways if youre living on flat land.
One rule of thumb would be to look at how far away a major city is from your location. If tens of thousands of people live within a gas tank of that location, you can expect unfriendly visitors.
* Hideaway, safe room, bunker. We may be getting into tin-foil prepping here, but well mention it anyway. Mass migrations are going to be of critical concern in ANY collapse scenario. Even those in a fairly poor location can still have a back up plan. Our advice: If you have the ability to do so, do what the government plans on doing, and go underground.
Find property with a basement, or an old mine or cave, anything that is out of sight. If the horde comes your way this would become your new bug-out location. In such a scenario, one may need to disappear for an extended period, so quick-food considerations, water storage, and sanitation become important.
Plan on 15 30 days at a minimum if youve got to go underground. Theres no sense in fighting if you can get out of the way and let the horde Tsunami pass over you and eventually recede.
As preppers, we all want to say were prepared for anything, but a good prepper knows his or her limitations. It is impossible to plan for every potential scenario, but staying flexible and open-minded is going to be critical for survival. A willingness to admit, contemplate and act on weaknesses in your preparedness plan is of utmost importance.
I’m thinking of something that will disrupt food deliveries for weeks if not months across large areas simultaneously.
People can cope with high food prices by cutting out snack foods, buying store brands, buying sale items, growing and canning their own food, etc.
Once supermarkets stop getting deliveries, people will die.
One thing I notice about a lot of urbanites is that attitude that they would flow out of the cities and take what they want. That’s what would get them in trouble.
The correct way to deal with that situation is to arrive in a small town, announce peaceful intent, lay out a skill set, willingness to work, and ask to stay. More often than not, I suspect they would be allowed to stay and add to the security of the community.
bttt
“What is the probability of an HOA becoming a nucleus of the community organization this article talks about?”
There’s no way I’d participate in anything relating to my own safety that is conjured up by an HOA. Natural leaders will emerge from a community.
Yup. We figure we have 3-4 days, maybe a week, before the strongest survivors of the urban slaughter begin to make it out to us.
We figure only the biggest and baddest will have survived and lay in on us. We'll need lots of ambushes and luck if we are to survive.
I have to agree with you.
I'm not a hunter but I have many guns. My buddies are always telling me to 'get some scopes on those guns.' My retort is usually that if a person is far enough away that I need a scope to shoot him, I probably ought not be shooting him.
You are a real city slicker, aren’t you, if you think that we rural folk only have small arms.
I live in Upstate NY and there are more guns and cows than people. Hunting is VERY big around here, to the point where some school districts actually gave the kids the day off from school on opening day of deer season.
These kids learn to hunt at a very young age and teens are out hunting deer on their own and bagging them.
There are plenty of arms and ammo out here and more skill in how to use them than most city folks can muster.
The problem with troops, if loyal, need to be paid. States like Illinois are in desperate financial shape and our dollar could likely be near worthless. That’s going to make logistics real difficult.
We could unload our entire conventional arsenal on the country and a great deal would still be left intact. The national guards don’t have that much to make a dent. It would also work against the govt to destroy the tax base and infrastructure, but the point is you aren’t going to control territory without boots, and there simply aren’t enough soldiers to maintain control. The military is about concentrated force, a highly dispersed situation is not conducive to victory, such as what happened to our troops in Somalia.
There will be a fan out, but after you take away the elderly, sick and weak, people without transportation, it will be muted. Most people with nowhere to go will look to the first place for food, not hop in the car and drive to Carbondale. Most won’t be armed, gas will be limited, they will be starving and getting weaker, and up against dug in people. The farther away the less the influx. A great deal will never make it out of the city.
Those that do will be outgunned. It won’t be pretty but if they can’t settle in they’ll either starve or be killed, numerical superiority or no. After the initial anarchy things will work out to the natural order, but be sure that there will be little to nothing beyond local control what isn’t wasteland. Even most state govts will be pretty impotent. It’s those in the far rural areas 3 or more hours from a major city that will have the best chance of surviving.
And what about the most likely eventuality? The economic disaster is going to be a very slow process. The government will manage the debt regime for a landing that will be as smooth as possible, because government employees/appointees/politicians are not going to repudiate the debt. We’re more likely to see a slow-motion migration of the “hordes” to the south over the next decade or two. See rising heating costs, and imagine those with a slow motion hyperinflation.
Your questions, which are not particularly answerable because they are so vague.....
OK, what about >45 year old overweight people in SHTF areas? Which group are you referring to? The ones in the cities, who will be ill equipped to leave and make it very far, or the ones in the rural areas who will be defending themselves? Who are you wondering is going to be doing the shooting? The ones bugging out, or the ones defending against those bugging out?
If you were more specific when you asked how many, as in what kind of information you wanted, people just might answer.
You keep mentioning the 45 yo thing. Let me tell you I am over 45 a bit over weight but I put my experience skill set work ethic up against 80-90 percent of those 20-25 years younger than me. I also grew up with no silver spoon ate beans 4 days or better out of the week, wore hand me downs, learn to sew, wash iron, cook plant and work a garden, and take care of my younger siblings. It was cold in our house in the winter and we shared one window fan in the summer. I camp, hiked fished, was a boy scout and learn to shoot. I have had a job of one kind or another since I was 15. I have work in a foundry, a steel fabricator, I’ve been a janitor, night clean-up in a porcelain fixture factory, dug up trees at a nursery, delivered furniture, managed millions of dollars of equipment and materials on large construction projects (both petrochemical and telecom) self taught carpenter and cabinet maker. I can read, write and do math in my head and don’t need a cash register to be able to make change. Other than HVAC there is not anything I hire done to my house. I’ve manage to accumulate a good deal of prepper knowledge over the last few years. And I do my best to live by two codes the Ten Commandments and James Owen’s Cowboy Code. How many people under 25 do you know that can best that?
Quit being such a snot.
And for those that are younger than 45 and might be in good physical health, they need to consider their parents and other family members who may need to rely on them for some of the basics. If travel is involved, could a 40-year old and his wife and kids take the parents and the in-laws and protect them and feed them properly? What about medicinal needs?
Lots to consider when the SHTF...
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