You have a years supply of food , and still have to bug out, due to an incident like what was shown recently on the Disaster Channel. You can't take all the supplies with you...what do you do?
Do you shelter in place, fighting off any looters? Invite 4-6 friends, telling them to bring as much food as possible, realizing there may be relative safety in numbers?
Assuming you don't have a secondary residence available, and your next best shelter is a friend 1000 miles away, what would you do?

Well - do we have to bug out, or stay and fight off looters?

My car with a full tank and 3 x 5 gallon cans of gas will just about get me 1,000 miles in 3-5 days without diversions. If that 1,000 miles is like travelling across Mad Max land (a la Discovery/Disaster channel) then no amount of food or gas is going to help me get there - might as well join a wandering tribe and take the scenic route.

If I had to leave behind a year's supply of food I would probably hide it in inobvious places - attic, or below ground in my crawlspace, its nice and cool there, I could always dig it below grade to conceal it, line it with plastic etc. Reality is most scavengers will stay in the living area of the house and not chop through the floor to investigate a crawl space (and I pretty much guarantee they wouldn't find the access). Then if I happened back towards my house someday I might have a year's supply of food waiting for me. I might split up the food into several caches if I could think of several really clever places to hide them - generally I'm not that clever though.

One of the most successful species on the planet would find your foodstuffs (the common rat) if you stored them in said locations. You might as well have a big party and invite some of your favorite looters.

If you cannot shelter in place, take what you can and distribute that which you don't need or can't carry to those around you who you deem most deserving. I don't know the formula for differentiating such things. In a postapocalyptic world, who would be a good guy? You are competing with everyone else for resources, as they are depleted, civility will most definitely wane.

You said we had to bug out then gave the option to stay and fight ? Which is it ???

If my nearest friend was 1,000 miles away my first priority would be to make more/closer friends

The bones of my plan are that we stay in one car rather than split into two. Both of our cars are very reliable, and I think fuel availability will be more important than vehicle redundancy or cargo capacity. I also want to avoid getting split up. Another reason is that with two drivers in one car we can go for a lot longer than we can in two. If necessary and if fuel is available we can drive for at least 24 hours continuously that way.

I'm too close to a major city to think that I could stand off waves of hungry, desperate people.

I will address both condtions, since it appears there may be an option. It would be much better to stay and shelter in place if that is possible. I have all my supplies, equipment, and local support group at hand if we can all stay at our homes. In that case, I believe I am more than adequately prepared.

However, if something compels me to leave, then I would have compartmentalized my supplies so that I can take a good cross section of what I feel I would need to bug out with to get to 1,000 miles or more, with the possible exception of not enough gas on hand.

Were I to leave, and I had the time to prepare properly, there'd be a few abandoned and forgotten cisterns nearby that I would be happy to drop some supplies into for the longer term.

Realistically, no one should worry about bugging out with a year's supply of food or other materials. At most, maybe enough for a couple months subsistence would be the most you'd need in a bug out situation. My reasoning is if things get so bad that you would need more some where else, then why bother to leave? If not, then you should be able to resupply in short order or otherwise provision adequately. You need to take enough to get you where you need to get, but not so much it inhibits your mobility.

Good point - that must be why I am lousy at post-apocalyptic scenarios and you are the King of the Jungle!

I vote for leaving the food neatly stacked for the next guy to find. There are no bad guys when the chips are down and people are hungry - if the world has devolved to the point that it can't feed itself, and folks are scavenging for my year's supply, to hell with it. If things really fall apart, possession constituting the highest value doesn't really mean much to me. I'll have already lost alot of things more valuable than my cache of food. This is why I think these apocalyptic scenarios are mostly useless - it posits that people will stop acting like people once a certain threshold has been passed. That's fine for science fiction, but relevance to this forum??

Entirely relevent, and a part of reality in much of the world already, unfortunate and sad to say. Some people will stop acting civil in times of desperation and a lack of authoritative control is presents itself. Our time for such behavior on a large scale will come soon enough. For now, we can continue to enjoy living a soft, relatively low-risk lifestyle.

Equipped to Survive includes planning for the inevitable. If you go out in public, you should expect that sooner or later you will be confronted with the ugly reality that there are a lot of people out there willing to use whatever force they can to separate you from your belongings. No one else is going to stop them. So if you don't plan to, then expect to have nothing eventually. That may be a fine and acceptable outcome for some, but I have responsibilities and commitments still that preclude me from such a carefree attitude.

Today, my attitude is you can have what I am willing to give you, or what the government takes from me and gives you as redistribution (and only because I can't stop them, for now), nothing more. I can and will fight you and anyone else hard for the rest of what is mine.

A Short Wheelbase Ford Transit will easily carry a years supply or food for 2 people. A years food supply for 2 adults works out at around 600-800kg. A ford transit is capable of carrying double this amount. There is bound to be someone in the local area with a similar vehicle (plumber or building contractor) where you can offer 6 months of food for getting out of dodge. Having 6 months food supply is a lot better than having none. Remember also to take your packets of seeds with you as well along with your gardening tools. You may have to cut open the vehicle roof above the passenger side to mount the machine gun nest of course. Just watched Hot Fuzz on BluRay

http://www.fordtransitdirect.co.uk/newsales/newvans/transit/swb.aspx

It seems sheltering in place and fighting off looters would be preferable to bugging out and putting youself out among the looters. If at all possible, I would opt for staying put, keeping a low profile and hopefully avoid the attention of the roving bands.

"My reasoning is if things get so bad that you would need more some where else, then why bother to leave?"

I agree with this. For most likely scenarios, bugging out would be temporary, due to chlorine/ammonia tank rupture, fire, etc. Bugging out is an interesting scenario to contemplate, but not very realistic. You may be able to take food, water, weapons and gas, but what will you be doing for shelter? Living in a loaded 4WD would get old really fast. Build shelter? With what, just your kaybar? You're just one more refugee with dwindling supplies in a situation like that.

During widespread disorder, gathering friends and neighbors to create a sort of fort (even of several homes in a group) would seem to be the best way. You could share the work, the protection, the growing and guarding of fruits and vegetables and small livestock. Most soils need improvement for growing decent crops, so it's best that you get started on that before the need -- afterward is too late.

I've been talking to a friend in SoCal, and she and her husband have been quietly getting some of their neighbors to store supplies and make plans to do just that for the last two years. SoCal wouldn't be my first choice of the place to do it, but you do what you can with what you've got. But planning ahead puts you far, far ahead of the rest of the pack.

Sue

Discussing the psychology of folks - prepared and unprepared - after a disaster, I'm all over that - figuring out where to build forts with my friends or what to do with my stuff before I embark on a 1,000 mile journey surely fraught with post-apolcalyptic peril, not so much.

If the situation is so dire where you live that you must evacuate -- and so dire everywhere else that you may need your year stash of food -- then if you can't take it all with you by yourself, it's time to coordinate with some of your neighbors that you trust.

Traveling in a group could increase your safety margin. And no point leaving behind what may very well be looted anyway.

You have gobs of food, maybe one or more of them has gobs of guns, ammo, tools and fuel. Maybe one of them is a skilled mechanic who can keep the vehicles running. Or has a cargo trailer. Or has medical skills and medicine. Or has a place in the hills where you all can evacuate to. Or has camping gear.

Be good to know all this in advance of an emergency.

Create a community on wheels. I'd rather bug out with a group I know than alone among millions of strangers.

Circle them RVs, Transits and SUVs, the 'Feds, Canucks, Iranians, Gang Bangers, Aliens, Zombies, Yankees, British, North Koreans, Ruskies, Confederates, Injuns, Mexicans, Cubans, Alaskans, '* are coming.

* delete as appropriate depending on the level of paranoia.

Ahem, no racism or political incorrectness is implied, its just that I've just watched to many Hollywood movies. Oh and to much CNN and Foxnews. Sometimes fact and fiction begin to merge at the edges. And I do apologize beforehand for anyone or group that has been left out.

Should the great zombie attack come, I am sitting tight.

I know the terrain, the area, where things are, where people aren't.

Unless it is an environemental catastrophe - nuke/poison gas kind - I am hunkering down, cleaning some weapons and watching and waiting.

Sorta helps when your entire neighborhood is retired Airborne, lol.

Is this a trick question?

I have some supplies for a few days, bring some guns and ammo and use my guns to intimidate and take food from those who aren't armed. Shoot anyone who resists.

Sounds right?

I hope I never have to Bug Out for any reason ... I wonder if there are any statistics on how often that actually happens?

However, I have wondered if I would delay or "waffle", if presented with a situation where Bug Out is the best alternative? ... in other words, might I wait around too long because I like my stash of stuff too much?

Bingo! As someone said, the best defense is a good offense.

This is simply an exercise of thinking about options.
If your next best option after evacuation is a place 100 miles away great. If you think strictly in terms of evacuating long distance or shelter in place, you may not realize there may be options, leaving yourself open to panic or indecision, both dangerous. There are no hard and fast rules, always options.
Remember, nothing is over until YOU decide it is.

The smart-alecks are out in force but I'll reply again anyway.

Barkabane -- what options do you envision other than evacuation or sheltering in?

Well, if your house gets looted and everything is taken from you, you pretty much have to join the masses on the road to who knows where. Perhaps you can hastily garner support from neighbors you really don't know well, and hopefully they'll be someone you can trust. As said before, changing scenarios mid-emergency is something we can learn about.
Perhaps you bug out and come to a place where you can shelter in place for a while, due to being prepared and open to do things others don't think about.
Again, it's all about options. You don't have just one knife, or one medical kit, or one bug out bag do you.
No. You have several of each, just like you should have several plans to cover all bases. Can't be much clearer than that.

Speaking of food, I just finished watching Soylent Green.

In the year 2022...

Ick. Start buying ramen noodles bulk, they ought to last forever.

Buggin out is great if you've got somewhere civilized to go where the power is still on. But in an all out emergency? I don't know. Seems too risky when all it takes is a group of bored kids with a pocket full of nails and some rocks to stop you in your tracks.

"Well, if your house gets looted and everything is taken from you, you pretty much have to join the masses on the road to who knows where."

If they take everything, you have nothing to go anywhere with. If they've left the house and land, you've got shelter. Maybe begging instead of bugging out would be more productive.

Sue

I think it was Patton who said that. But he had several armored divisions and air support. The problem with armed attack to provide food for yourself is that it only works until you come upon someone better armed. It could end very poorly for the attacker.

Neighbors on either side of me are family, have other family a few miles away, many friends within a thirty mile radius, mom and dad and siblings only five hours away along with other family, but I'll play along. I guess we are talking TEOTWAWKI here aren't we? If the looters came infrequently (say one or two at a time) then hunker down with the food and fight them off. Thing is, they probably won't come just a few at a time. These scenarios are always problematic because it is hard to predict what people will do and how far they will go. Would it be like the movie Cyborg? Or Mad Max? Or Waterworld? Or The Mailman? Will there be hoards of starving "zombies" roaming the countryside? Will they be armed? Will people huddle together and form hunting and gathering communities? Will you have to give up some of your harvests to local bands of armed brigands (led by martin and ben just kidding guys)? What if you live near a large city? Once all the resources in the city are used up you could have hoards of armed looters sweeping by you as they leave the city en masse. Word of someone with food could travel far and fast. You could have hundreds of looters swarming you all at once. Even with reinforcements you could be overwhelmed.
Or would it be just a temporary interruption of services? Would order be restored? Could order be restored? Who knows. Even if you try to disappear into the wilderness there could be thousands of others doing the same thing. Resources worldwide would reach the breaking point. What if you were starving and came across someone with food and they wouldn't share. What would you do? Let's add to this a starving family. Spouse, child, parents, etc. What would you do? Sorry, I digress (what else is new). Merely rhetorical questions, no reply needed. It's just this kind of thing is horrifying to think about.

Back on topic, the question is do you bug out and travel great distances or do you hunker down closer to home? And what about the year supply of food? Hmmm. If you hunker down with the food and said looters swarm in it may be too late to bug out then. Even if you are packed and ready it may still be too late. You could be overrun in your sleep. Guards could be taken out. Who knows. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, if you leave the food behind and travel you place yourself among the looters. If electrical services are disrupted on a large scale then refueling a vehicle may be out of the question as well. That leaves you traveling on foot for a very great distance. Not saying you couldn't have extra fuel. But if you get 20 miles per gallon you'll need at least 50 gals of fuel to travel 1000 miles; more will be needed if you want an emergency reserve. If you have a 20 gallon tank (most don't with that kind of mileage vehicle) you'll have to carry 30 extra gals of fuel. That's six 5 gal jerry cans, more if you want a reserve. Guessing not much room for food and water, let alone other supplies like shelter and such. Just an example, you can make your own computations with your own vehicle (and that's assuming your tank just happens to be full when the SHTF). At this point neither option seems very appealing to me. In the end I would probably share the food with neighbors and other family (that's just my current nature talking), hide or store the rest, and either 1) hunker down in the mountains until order was restored or all the crazies with AK 47s and basements full of ammo wiped each other out; or 2) stay with family close by (ideally, all of us could gather at a particular place). Afterwards, if possible or practical, return home and rebuild. Hopefully we will survive and humane and civil relations between people will be the rule of the day.

Now, I lean more toward the bug out, why, I have family all in a valley 250miles from me. Were pretty much alone where we are now. So while I will bug in for small scale disasters, anything large, such as somehting that would make a year of food necessary, I'd be out.

I know it can be fun to speculate and fuel end-of –the-world scenarios and zombie attacks, but I think it might be useful to examine how things are unfolding and will continue to unfold in Haiti. The area approximates a moderate sized US state, travel is limited (it is an island) and most of the little infrastructure they may have had is in disarray. Bug in? Bug out? The potential to learn from this horrific event should give us pause to reflect upon our ability to survive under similar circumstances.

I suspect like in many disasters of this nature, at least 70% of the rescues will occur by local folks within hours. Food, water and shelter will take at best 48-72 hours to start trickling in to the area and take a good 7-10 days to filter in to have any real effect. Emergency shelters will be makeshift, created from debris and found items. Communications, command and control over relief efforts will take 3-4 days and be almost up to speed within a week. Being close to the US, with it’s medical, military and relief agency resources will make things easier, but I venture to say it will still take as long, if not longer than efforts in NOL.

My 2 cents- (Eugene, not responding to you specifically, you were just next in the list of replies)
Pete

Haiti is the poorest country in the entire western hemisphere. They have virtually nothing to help themselves with. They are totally dependent on outside help except for the muscle and make-do of the first (immediately local) responders.

In a country as severely hit and agonizingly poor as Haiti, the PM is probably right about deaths in the hundreds of thousands. And I'm sure he's not just referring to the ones who die in the first four days of trauma.

Sue

What is this "Disaster Channel" of which you speak? I don't think my (UK) supplier carries it, and even if they do, I didn't watch every programme on it last week to know which event you are referring to. Please be specific, or, if it's unmentionable, don't mention it at all.

A year's supply of food is a lot. I always supposed that it was intended to last long enough to plant, grow and harvest crops. That's a nice cushion to have, but if other people need food now I doubt I'd let them starve while I had so much.

He's referring to The History Channel.

In the past week, there have been a couple of busy threads in regard to History Channel shows.

Never underestimate the value of patient recon. Not only can you more productively pick and choose your targets, but an inferior force can overwhelm a superior one if the recon is done properly.

I don't have to eat for three days, if in so doing I don't end up dead from trying to. Observation is a primary survival skill.

I saw this article today and I think it is a good one for all of us to read, as it addresses many of the things we are talking about in this thread

http://www.survivalblog.com/2010/01/coa_analysis_of_common_surviva.html

The author changed my perception on a few things. The range you can actually expect out of your vehicle during a societal meltdown and the number of looters/raiders that one would be faced with in the cities being the ones that gave me the most to think about.

The problem I'm seeing is we don't have much choice. Any good land where you could survive in bad times it too far away from jobs during the good times. I live near a city so I can afford to take care of my family and get the kids in halfway decent schools. If I were to move to our farm, there are no jobs and there are no decent schools. The farm land where I would bug out to was passed down so I didn't have to pay for it otherwise I wouldn't have any place to go.

The article was exactly what I wanted to say and what I tried to say. I wasn't nearly as analytical or eloquent though. The author is right about one thing; those with the most value to the community will be able to survive, and probably in relative comfort. Question is, what skills would be most valuable? Obviously medical; like he said not all the doctors would starve. What else? Blacksmithing? Farming? Weaving/sewing? Specialized skills like setting up a water distillery? Any other ideas?
What scares me the most is the loss of modern medicine. If that happened I would be among the early ones to die off. Insulin dependent diabetic is not a very livable/survivable prospect in TEOTWAWKI. I would probably end up among the looters looking for vials of insulin and syringes at pharmacies and such. What a way to go.
Of course that would not be the only problem. What about immunizations for babies? Could small pox become a problem? What about tetanus? No more antibiotics? Small infections would suddenly be big problems. Little house on the prairie meets mad max. I for one hope it never happens.

You can do what I do. I wake up at 5:00 AM in Pennsylvania on a huge piece of land, with my own 300,000 gallon pond, with state game lands all around me, and I work in midtown manhattan at a high-end digital media agency. We "do web sites" like NASA does "Fireworks".

I can afford to send my kids to private schools 'cause my housing is so much cheaper, I have my own rifle range in the back yard, a backhoe and a big garden as well as a workshop that's pretty darn good. Sure, I commute 4 hours a day, but you know what? I end up out of the house from 5:30 AM to 6:30 PM - is that really any different than any other white-collar job? A little earlier in the beginning, about the same at the end.

Thanks, Madcat. The author certainly has put a lot of thought into it and seems to cover the gamut. He's appropriately bleak.

However equipped anyone thinks they are, no one (except maybe sociopaths) can really be prepared mentally for the awfulness of such large scale calamity scenarios. Materially, maybe. But not even Warren Buffet or Bill Gates with all their billions would be safe. Unless they were barricaded on a deserted island and had a lot of faith in their staff doctor(s) and armed guards (in case a boat of hungry people goes astray).

Most people's very lives depend on a fragile triad made up of the transportation network, power grid and finance system. All three of these systems depend on the other two and they are all three unbelievably fragile.

My farm land is in wv so its not the best land and my commute would take me out of state, and there are no decent schools.
Easier to type now on a laptop keyboard. School is the biggest problems now in the area of WV where the family farm is the school system was just audited by the state due to excessive corruption. My father was a machinist and had to change jobs a couple times as business sold out overseas so he ended up driving to MD for work before he retired. I'm in IT, I'd probably have to drive a couple hours each way to work. So for now were living near the city and close enough I can walk to work if needed (.5 miles). If I were single I'd work 4 10 hours days or even 3 13 hour days and live in a car in the parking lot and drive down to the farm on my days off. For now I have to work around the normal school schedule but am planning on building a small cabin on the farm, somehting small enough that it can be self sustaining (too far away from utilities) and we can spedn spring break and summer vacation there. Not much in the way of private schools there, some come and go bankrupt in a few years.

But what it comes down to is to get the ideal place like you have, sure its doable, one must save up money and then find that place for sale. But until then thats why I put a higher priority on bugging out to the land I do have. Maybe that explains it better.

The best schooling often ends up being home schooling. There are lots of places that will help you do it, and lots of places online that will give you a good idea of what it consists of. And you don't have to be college-educated or some kind of teacher to do it.

Sue

I figure I could home school (I can't do any worse than my school teachers did) but I don't think I could balance that between a full time job.

So for now my plan is to try and take off a week in the spring, spend it at the farm and plant a large garden then take a week off in the fall and can everything. I know its not quite that simple since not everything will grow on the same schedule but between those and long weekends I hope to make it work. Want to build a small cabin there and when we get to canning things in the fall then store half at home and half in the cabin.

I understand, you do what you can. It was just a thought.

Sue

Well said.

Here you are 1hr to 1hr 30min to get any work you want, and still live in the mountains or flats and have as much land as you can afford. Lots available, and prices are good.

Thats still a bit of a commute, I know a lot of people find that acceptable now a days but as the price of everything goes up the gas to do it is going to make that hard.
I've made it to WV in 4 hours before, the night they let my grandmother go home because there was nothing else that could be done for her.
I keep thinking that maybe when the kids are off to college we could I could pick up something in Morgantown, maybe at the college or hospital, thats a little over an hour drive.