Thanks, Ray, but I've seen those things close up and I don't like them at all. Please consider them a gift from me to you.

Sue

I'm jealous, call me Honey too.

When I daydream about such things, I put a few parameters on the equation:

1. I'm not going to worry about asteroids or gamma ray beams. Anything that will terminate a significant portion of the planet's surface isn't anything I can handle.

2. I only have to worry about the next 30-50 years, enough to see me off this mortal coil, and perhaps to give a head start to the offspring.

3. Water is going to be a huge problem. (It already is in the Southwest and in Georgia.) So you want to be somewhere near the headwaters of a traditionally water-rich region. And you have to take into effect the shift of temperate regions to the north with global climate warming.

4. Nowhere near major cities, but someplace with adequate employment opportunities in your chosen profession, enough nearby farming and industrial/manufacturing so that you're not as dependent on trucking essentials in at $300+/barrel diesel. We're all going to have to learn to buy local.

5. We're going to want to generate a fairly reliable amount of electricity at the home, so reliable wind or southern solar exposure and fewer rules on deploying a generation system would be useful.

6. Decent medical facilities and personnel nearby. We are long overdue for either a man-made or naturally-sourced pandemic, and both isolation and access to medical intervention will be important, the isolation obviously to prevent exposure but also to buy time for the pandemic outbreak to be recognized with more time to prepare for the 3-5 months everyone will be locked down while the authorities get through the usual period of incompetence and begin to get a handle on things, distributing effective meds.

7. Reasonably distant from political and military targets of opportunity, and preferably upwind. These days the biggest threats are single to several incident terrorist events and accidental launches from decaying Russian missile silos and storage depots. I live directly east of Washington DC in Maryland and we all know how big the target painted on this town is.

Except for that ice cave in Norway where they're storing the farming seed stocks for recovery after "doomsday" I can't think of too many places that would qualify. But after all that, and thinking about how hard it would be to convince the DW that we should relocate away from her steady, relatively high-paying federal job, family and friends just because "something" might happen, I usually just stick my head in the sand and cross my fingers that heart disease will get me first.

I can tell you, there is at least one of them in the US. I ain't saying where.

A lot of you might disagree, but I say New York City (where I grew up).
Sure, its a terrorist target, but statistically terrorism is very unlikely to kill you.

Advantages:
-Medical care. NYC has some of the best hospitals in the world, and you can get to them quickly compared to somewhere outside of a city where there are long driving times involved in emergency care.

-You don't need to drive. My family doesn't even own a car. Look at the number of people killed in car crashes every year (about 42,000) and suddenly things like terrorism (2,000 7 years ago, once) don't seem like much of a danger. Another 20,000 die each year from the flu... kind of make you wonder if we could make America safer by putting money other places.

-No real natural disasters.

Disadvantages:
-Air pollution
-More crime than rural areas (though not too bad)
-Might be underwater in 100 years
-Terrorism

Anyway, my .02

I think the toughest thing about NYC is that if anything does happen. If we ever get a decent hurricane, there may be a whole lot of people displaced and may be few resources for anyone who remains. If you think about foraging for food or fuel in NYC, there is a very limited supply, relative to other areas.

However that said, show me any place that has people that behaved better than New Yorkers did when things went wrong over the past seven years.

Hmmm. The benign MidWest is invisible again... Good.

Precisely where I live in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, the most exciting things are occasional floods (I live "on the hill", way above even the most extreme ice melt scenarios) and routine annual power outages of a day or 6 due to winter storms.

Tornadoes are for the folks who live farther out of the valley in the flat areas. But not often.

On the other hand, I have to travel elsewhere for adventure.

I did have to dodge a large Tom Turkey strutting in the street this morning on the way to work and 6 deer sauntering up my cul de sac this evening on my way home.

But we have industry, major road, rail, and barge networks, farm chemicals, etc. so I guess it's not quite perfect. <sigh> Life is so fatal...

Tom

Ayers---you need to get up river farther===

Hmm, the place I have in mind doesn't flood, has minimal tectonic potential, is not in any fallout path from eruptions, nuclear/chemical/biological attacks, or industrial accidents, is not prone to wildfire, has moderately low precipitation, a decent water table, moderately arable land, averages one or two thunderstorms a year, decent wildlife population, is in a migratory waterowl flyway, several surface waterways, enough regular wind to make windpower practical year round, relatively inexpensive land, relatively low population density, and fairly easy access. It's only drawback would be it is at least an hour drive to the nearest hospital or other major service.

Oh yeah, and I wish I was there now.

Ben,

After I win the lottery tonight we'll have to talk.

Blitz