I would say it highly depends on the situation. In a large urban environment, everyone trying to get out of town at the same time is going to be 1) pandemonium and 2) total and absolute gridlock.

Here in the Seattle burbs, I spent 35 minutes to travel maybe a mile yesterday around 5:15pm. During some of our ice storms, it wasn't unusual for people to take 8-12 hours go get home.

In a *real* emergency, I would suspect the situation could get a lot worse. And in a real emergency, the panic level out there is going to be very high, and that induces danger in addition to the inability to actually leave.

Combine that with the fact that your stuff is near your home and bugging out you'll only have what you can/have loaded, I would agree with you that the default mode probably should be bugging in, not bugging out.

On the other hand, you need to be read/willing to go if the situation dictates. Think of a chemical spill/leak.

-john