Posted on 05/04/2011 4:43:43 PM PDT by blam
I already live in a small rural town better than 10 miles from the highway. I think I’m good here where I’m on familiar ground with good conservative neighbors.
And that’s the key. Anyone planning on “migrating” during a catastrophe better realized they’ll be persona non grata in most rural areas and small towns. Sustainability means the middle of the country where there is potable water, tillable soil, and enough land to survive on. And as few other people as possible.
We live on 2 forested wildlife acres on a major river at least 30 miles from a major urban area. A good portion of our yard has been converted to garden, and if the SHTF, I’ll build a coop, buy chickens and goats, and let the HOA, if they’re still around, put bunches of liens on my property.
People shouldn’t leave their comfort zone if they don’t have to. It just creates stress for themselves and possible danger from others already under stress.
I grew up in these rural Michigan towns where neighbors know and trust each other. Also important is the interconnectedness of these little rural towns. (I know someone in most of the little towns in my county) Everyone gardens, everyone hunts or fishes and everyone is armed. Also we have the great advantage of knowing how to cope with economic adversity.
Winter sucks but its also an advantage because those who can’t cope will head south.
I live in a decent area for the zombie apocalypse - an island with a bridge about 3/4 mile from the mainland.
If this are gets overrun, we can flee about 5 hours north. We have a hunting cabin on about 60 acres, on a river, 15 miles of jeep roads from the nearest home and about 35 miles from the nearest town.
I’ve started gardening multiple plots around my yard. It makes it hard to steal a serious amount of food without spending a lot of time wandering around in the dark.
FYI
Unlike the movie suggests, if Yellowstone 'goes off', most of the population of the world will not survive. That's a whole 'nother ballgame.(Try 2-6 years without any crops, worldwide.)
Toba, a super-volcano like Yellowstone went of 74,000 year ago. We're all related to the (about) 10,000 people worldwide who survived..it can be seen in our DNA today.
Late Pleostocene Human Population Bottlenecks. . . (Toba)
I live in a modern house with heavy insulation and all the modern comforts. This house would do OK during the Winter here in the Florida Panhandle. The Summers would be unbearable tho.
I grew up in an old frame house with live oaks all around for shade. The ceilings were high and every room had large windows with screens.
When I was around 12, Daddy along with me and my Brothers installed central air and heat. It was nice but generally, I could simply open a couple of windows and the breeze flowing through made the room comfortable.
This house would be so hot as to be unbearable.
Because most of us have lost the ability to live off the land by farming, it is going to be really rough. My guess is a large percentage will die off. I will probably be among them mostly because of age and health.
I will say no one is likely to come and take what I have tho, well not until I die from natural causes.
I'm on the coast and to close to I-10 and I-65. I remember those 'strange' folks from New Orleans who showed up here, desperate during Katrina. We still have some of their pets here that they abandoned.
Don’t come to Alaska...........Alaska bad place, very cold, you go hungry, freeze and die.
Hate to pop everyone’s bubble but these Mad Max type fantasies will never play out. Societies don’t just collapse into total chaos with every man for himself. Typically there is an out side force that precipitates the collapse of the ruling government and then moves into the vacuum left to take over. There probably won’t even be a short period of time where there is no real governing authority in charge.
Even in hell holes like Somalia there are “governments” controlling most of the population, granted they are mostly tribal in nature but still there is some order and governmental authority being exercised even there. People for the most part don’t like chaos and will gravitate to whatever person stands up at the time (with enough guys with guns backing him) and supports the new regime fairly quickly. Besides, if you really did have a Mad Max type of environment all of you doing the bug out to a survival farm would soon be watching your wife and daughter be raped (if you haven’t been killed already) and your food taken by whatever roving gang spies your hideout and waits until you drop your guard.
So what does that mean in our situation? Who knows! Most likely there will be some rioting and looting in urban areas but with out gas most of the rioters will be stuck in their neighborhoods and will be too lazy/stupid to go more than a few miles outside of there. After that someone will step into the vacuum to take over, restore order rather brutally and then get about the business of taking everything that you stored up in order to feed his goon squad (if he can find it so don’t make it obvious). After that if you haven’t starved to death it becomes a question of rebuilding some kind of economy and restoring functioning services. Urban areas that have some economic reason for being will do well, cities that don’t will die (see Detroit). Rural areas don’t have a lot of economic potential other than farming, mining or some other natural resource exploitation.
So if you want to live on a subsistence level then by all means buy a few acres and go for it. But you’ll be the equivalent of a Mexican peasant and have about the same living standard as one.
This article covers the key points, especially the bug out place. One of the things I’ve been looking at is something underground like the author says. One solution possibly is container trailers run about 2K and could be buried and hidden. Properly rust and water-proofed they’d last for years and would be easy to heat.
Don’t worry, the weak will head south or die trying. LOL
Even with a “wealthy” United States providing huge amounts of aid, there are plenty of places in Africal where people starved by the thousands if not hundreds of thousands.
If the American farmer can no longer feed a couple of hundred people besides himself due to fuel shortages, I think we would go down much faster than most think.
“Winter sucks but its also an advantage because those who can’t cope will head south.”
Good point. We northern folk have already proven that we can withstand anything old man winter throws our way.
So....what do you plan to do when the local sheriff(cops) show up saying that they've been ordered by FEMA to confiscate your 'excess' food for re-distribution from the FEMA food centers, (ahem)up-town?
And...if you're the sheriff and your family is unprepared, wouldn't you lie and go to Cripplecreek's house too?
I'm considering making small emergency 'stashes' of food in 6" PVC tubes and burying them underground, here and there. (When the crooked sheriff walks off with all my food I'll still have something left. Eh?
When do you say no to the sheriff and what action are you prepared to take?
You're close to a do/die moment already and the 'conflict/emergency' is just three days old.....
What we are facing is unprecedented in history. Our society is completely dependent on our modern distribution system. We have saturated the world with dollars and debt. Places like Somalia have never risen to that level to crash that hard. It will be very tough in first world countries.
Once it crashes, govts will no longer have the funds to maintain order. The best bet is the states, but the national govt will be impotent. It will be fairly anarchic, but way worse in the major city areas. They will leave the ruralies to fend for themselves while they try to contain the cities. The scenario the author projects is very possible.
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