Advice on Being Prepared for BugOut

National Guard forced all people out of their grid locked vehicles and put them onto buses which took them to the airport for transport. Gone were all the survival goods that the family had packed. Granted, they were not survivalists and only packed family mementos, but if they had, the survival goods would have been forced to be left behind in the car. The National Guard were armed and ready to shoot if the people did not comply. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

If there is a need for an emergency bug out and you are an urban resident, how are you going to leave in time to avoid the traffic jam and gridlock that will surely occur? I am not being factitious; I am truly posing this question to this NG for discussion.

I had the same thought. I am going to rent a storage locker near my bug out site and keep my food storage/ammo storage/etc there and include my bicycle in my truck when heading for my 70 mile away bug out site. I could think of nothing else worse than sitting in that situation. My bug out site is a 12 acre mountain property with a partially completed cabin on it. Worse case I could walk to it in 2-3 days. Survive!

As someone who has a slant on this issue, the first thing I urge you to do is stay current with factual, unbiased news sources. It is essential to see the writing on the wall before the sheep see it.

Have 2, 3, or perhaps 4 routes pre-planned and reconnoitered well in advance. Stay off the main highways and do not have your survival goodies visible in your vehicles. Never let your gas tank drop below half, and always keep the vehicle well-maintained.

Always carry at least three hundred dollars in (twenties?) small bills for any sudden purchases that may crop up. If you do need to get to your retreat due to civil unrest or a socio-economic upheavel; the 300.00 will buy quite a bit of canned veggies, top ramen soups, MRE's or whatever you might need more of. If you work in a large metro area and have your family in the burbs, prearrange what will transpire if the roles are reversed and the strife occurs in the burbs and not the city. Have a meeting place set up and pre-arrange what gear the burb dweller will bring.

If you have the luxory of having a bug-out retreat that is relatively safe, maintain 80% of your gear there...cleverly concealed in camouflaged rooms or cache's around the property. NEVER share your arrangements or survival plans to anyone who is not of our ilk.

If you have a location selected but do not own property there, make several trips to the area at various times through-out the year, so the locals get to recognize you and your vehicles. Get to know the local grocer, realtor, home construction laborers, and sporting goods store owner...these folks will probably be the most well-known in the town and the mere knowledge of names and occupations may get you through the highway blockades which are sure to spring up when the strife transpires.

Stay current in your 6 month dental appointments, stay current in tetanus and hepatitis precautions, first aid rtaining, CPR, skills related to fishing, firearms proficiency, food acquisition, and 'blending' with others who may not necessarily be your educational peers.

If your State has license plates that bear some indication of your community or county, you might want to consider going to a junk-yard and buying a set of the local plates. If you are bugging to a different State, ditto. Do not don a business suit if you are driving in a logging type environment. Wear a flannel shirt and an old baseball hat. You will look the part and avert nervous locals to more obvious strangers.

My friends, as one who has been prepared for a number of years, I feel we are on the brink of a re-structuring in our Country. I might recommend you look toward the Militia movement or any group that supports the second amendment.
Get to nkow others who believe in our American way of life and in selfreliance.
Be a good neighbor and an honest person. Give others the benefit of the doubt unless you factually know otherwise.
Just my two cents.

This article details the perils of "bugging out to a remote location". Biggest problems are: very limited travel payload, and unwillingness of residents to accept you. You're not going far if the roads are closed. Once you get there ahead of the hordes following you, those residents already there may/will be unwilling to accept you, even if it's your land (ex.: I lived in the country for about 10 years in a home my grandparents lived in for 35 - and when I left I was still a newcomer).

This article details the perils of creating a remote bunker. Biggest problem: people find & trash it, even if well hidden. Other stuff happens too while you're gone (ex.: my aforementioned country home, maintained at low temperature, suffered a faulty thermostat and dinged me a $400 heating bill before I caught it).

"Bugging out" is just a matter of getting away from wherever you are and getting somewhere safe, secure & provisioned - which best is wherever you call "home" on a daily basis. If "home" isn't good enough for long-term survival, move. My bug-out theory is either (A) I'll have to walk home, taking up to 3 days, due to abrupt societal breakdown, or (B) family has to vacate home on short notice with up to 3 days to work things out, but on the whole society is intact. SHTF we can deal with by "bugging out". TEOTWAWKI is a bad time to start over with what little you can carry and what little is left of your now-occupied, looted, or incinerated remote bunker.

Thanks for the links, but clicking on the second one I get a logon screen. Hope it's ok if I copy and repost the first one here? (Very good points). Avoiding bugging out:

One core tenet of the Survival and Preparation (S&P) culture that is often misunderstood, misapplied and has a high probability of failing, and that is “the bug-out”. I am prompted to write this after reading so many S&P-related books, blogs and forums where individuals are indicating that their primary plan, and the focus of their preparations, is bugging-out. The common discussion topics of bug-out vehicles (BOV), bug-out bags (BOB), bug-out land, etc, and the overall S&P lexicon confirm the importance placed on the bug-out concept. Although well organized and executed, a 1,600 mile bug-out is portrayed by some of “The Group” in the novel "Patriots".

Don’t misunderstand, bugging-out does have a role in S&P: if your residence becomes completely uninhabitable, for any number of reasons (earthquake, radiation, toxins, fire, destruction, war, etc.), then relocation is mandatory. In these cases, being prepared to mobilize and relocate yourself, your family, and some resources is vitally important. Such situations force the prepper to implement Plan B. The problems with bugging-out are both numerous and severe, and are to be avoided or countered, if possible:

Only a small, finite quantity of supplies can be transported Dependency on replenishing supplies is created
A good place to relocate may not be found or actually available even if prearranged.
It may not be possible to travel (impassable roads, vehicle failure)
You may not be welcomed by the residents of where you relocate or in the territory that you pass through
An operational BOV creates an attractive target if it appears to be transporting anything of value and due to the minimal security that can be provided
It has been well established by this blog and many S&P de facto leaders that outside of a few specific circumstances, the primary plan, Plan A, should always be to bug-in. Staying at your primary home has many advantages:

More food/fuel/shelter resources can be available The facility can be better maintained due to your frequent access
Better established social connections and greater access to shared resources
Less need for transportation and transportation fuel Avoids health and safety risks associated with travel Higher levels of security are possible

The problem arises when lack of adequate, fundamental preparation results in the need to bug-out, when it otherwise could have been avoided. In other words, Plan A (bugging-in at your primary home) must be abandoned unnecessarily and prematurely, and Plan B (the secondary and far worse choice) becomes the only option, due to the prepper’s own actions or inactions.

People frequently write about how their urban home would be unsustainable, over-ran, or likely destroyed in many potential scenarios. Therefore their preps focus on bugging-out. When times are good and relative tranquility prevails, there are many attractions to an urban lifestyle, with job availability at the top of the list. Recognizing the added risk and difficulty of post-SHTF survival in the urban setting, preppers often abandon bug-in preparations, relegating themselves to bugging-out. Different life choices, such as small town or rural living, or taking extraordinary efforts to prepare their urban home, increase the viability of Plan A. For me and many others, the post-SHTF advantages of rural life are secondary to the quality of life enjoyed in these slower-paced environs.

The math doesn’t support bugging-out. If one assumes that there are 305 million Americans and about 2.3 billion acres within the US, it sounds promising that there are 7.4 acres available to each American to which to bug-out. So a family of four should get almost 30 acres, right? Taking a closer look, inhospitable open cultivated farmland, open pasture, desert, wet lands, and bodies of water can largely be eliminated as places to which to relocate. Although these places could be inhabited, they are less attractive than “heading for the hills” as is often cited as the bug-out plan. What about the nation’s forests? There are about 747 million acres of forest that appear to be available for relocation. Data suggest there are 50 million “rural” Americans, and 255 million “urban” Americans. So we have some part of 255 million people that currently reside in about 60 million urban acres, looking to relocate on something like 757 million forested acres, which is about 3 acres per refugee. Not only is this not much space in which to live and forage, but:

There will be great demand for suitable locations close to urban centers
Space will not be assigned, so there will be competition for choice space
In a hunting-gathering mode, refugees will be forced to cover a wide area (hundreds of acres) in search of sustenance
Rural folks already are there, feel (and have legal) ownership, and are willing to protect their Plan A bug-in position
In conclusion, I advise that one of two actions be taken to reduce the need for depending on a bug-out strategy:

Commit to and prepare for bugging-in, regardless of your current residency. Fortify your home, stock up on supplies there, and implement countermeasures to unique urban challenges. “Improvise, adapt, overcome” as necessary. Relocate to a place where bugging-in can be more practically implemented in as many scenarios as possible.

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