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.