To say nothing of all the free samples....

We just had a massive example of forced bugging in by a large urban population.There should be some interesting stories..

I have, and will continue to spend a lot of time in the woods. I'm off work today, and if we hadn't just received another FOOT of snow two days ago, I'd be out there right now. While camping, hunting, or hiking the woods, I have given a lot of thought to woodland/swamp/prairie survival as a result of scenarios posed on this forum, and have compartmentalized my survival strategies into two major areas:

(1) A situation where I get lost or hurt in the woods and have to self-extract and/or assist another.

(2) A widespread power outage/civil unrest/weather emergency/toxic environmental condition. We don't have tsunamis, volcanoes, or big earthquakes here.

I will admit to heresy...I do not have a BOB poised for immediate action, but I do have a small GHB in my vehicles. The reason is, like several of you have said, IMO there is no realistic scenario that makes bugging out into the woods with a backpack the best option. The stark reality of the prairie and the boreal forest is that while beautiful, there is almost nothing to eat out there for 9 months of the year. My brother, also a 'pragmatic prepper' says " Never walk around in the house wearing anything you wouldn't want seen on the five o'clock news". I do have several large empty military backpacks right next to my food/water and camping gear storage area if needed.

My take:

For scenario (1) I carry what I would need to stay in the woods for a few days if necessary. I carry the means to do first aid, make shelter, get water, start a fire, carry or obtain a little food as the season dictates, navigate, and signal.

For scenario (2) You simply cannot depend on stores, agencies, or the government for aid for a week or more.

I have a 30+ day emergency supply of food (mostly non-perishable, 100 rolls of toilet paper, water, cooking/heating fuel, split wood, batteries, and more. I have the means to defend or move it all if necessary/possible. I have a lightweight Aliner camper that I store ready to go in my yard away from the house, along with several sizes of tents, tarps, rope, cots, and everything associated with camping. I also have a yard barn that I keep clean and it would be pressed into service as a shelter if my house blew/burned down.

My house is my primary shelter, and my back yard is the most likely campsite for me if my house was destroyed.

The main scenario that springs to mind is to avoid the authorities, which is less about survival and more about being a criminal on the run. We've had some in the UK who evaded capture for a while.

In a pandemic, or if there were bad civil unrest, it might make sense to avoid population centres. The trouble is, many other people would have the same idea and in the UK we don't have enough wilderness to go around. I would prefer to bug-in for both scenarios.

I will say that being able to survive comfortably in the wilderness is a good thing. There may not be hotels or other civilised places to stay. Having a tent that you can pitch in any field gives you options over going to some emergency shelter. (However, even a field isn't really wilderness.)

Really? Leaving aside whether bugging out at all is an over-reaction, why bug out to the wilderness specifically? Why not go to a hotel in another town, or stay with friends?

On another forum there was a series of threads about walking 30+ miles to get home and what gear it would take.

I pretty much wrote the idea off as nonsense for any reasonably foreseeable event, but some people thought it was a great idea.

I don't recall for sure, but I do not recall a single person who mentioned having appropriate footwear. One guy suggested duct tape to tape your feet up. I guess it is an army thing.

One guy said he worked in an unsafe area so his plan was to leave his place of employment and walk home by himself. I have to wonder how safe that is compared to barricading one's self inside a relatively secure industrial or commercial facility and waiting things out.

Several people suggested it was because of their families that they would just have to walk home in a blizzard or hurricane. I don't believe I ever got an answer to my question about how it would be helpful to their families for their corpse to be be found when the snow melts, or how they plan to walk anywhere in 100 mph winds with torrential rainfall.

Well, if they find the corpse one can proceed with paying life insurance and death benefits; if they don't find any bodies, such payments are delayed for several (seven?) years.

That probably isn't what they had in mind...

You are right on about the need for good foot gear. The feasibility varies vastly, depending upon circumstances and the person's level of training and experience

Perhaps I should explain in a little more detail.

i) Lock Down was a euphemism for Martial Law. Even Journalists from News and paper media were threatened by Internal Paramilitaries and Police tactical units at Gun Point together with the arrest of civilians who ventured out in various neighborhoods during the 'Lock Down'. There was also the searches of private residences.

ii) The Boston Marathon terror attacks photos showed Special Forces soldiers carrying Geiger counters just after the bombs went off. There is speculation that they were Weapons of Mass Destruction specialists together with other black Ops.

iii) The recent North Korea situation raised US war preparation recently to DEFCON 3.

iv) Chechen Terrorists and WMDs. When reality gets to point that it looks like a Team America script, its time to Bug Out

My main point was really the difficulty of Bugging Out whether the destination was in an aurban or wilderness area during a Martial law situation.

I saw a lot of FBI hostage Rescue Team, SWAT teams, and other police, with some national Guard vehicles with drivers, but I saw no Special Forces. The geiger counters are a standard procedure to confirm or deny the presence of any radioactivity, but there was never any suspicion of any of that in Boston.

The National Guard personnel were there under the command of the law enforcement and not under military command authority. The military in the U.S. is prohibited from conducting operations domestically unless under a presidential order.

That sort of assumption can cause an uproar here in the U.S.

US Civil and US Military Command structures should be quite separate (responsibility and traceable command authority) but they seem to have become blurred and relatively indistinguishable with command structures such NORTHCOM (Command is mostly ex SFs) and its subordinate commands such as Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) with expertise in CBRNE

http://www.northcom.mil/About/index.html#JTFCS

Redacted

I saw the Secret Service involvement and even Diplomatic Security service involved in the Boston event. Exactly where the buck stopped and who actually had overall command authority whether it was military i.e. National Guard, NORTHCOM Joint Task Force Civil Support, or Civil command such as Secret Service, DHS ATF, Sheriffs department, Boston Police, State Police or FBI JTTF or what other alphabet soup agency was calling the shots was a little unclear.

The Scottish Highlands has a population density of 9/km2 (23 /sq mi), compared to London at 5,206/km2 (13,466/sq mi) and New York has 27,550/sq mi (10,640/km2).

There is nothing much in terms of population north of Dundee and is probably one of the larger areas of Europe for wilderness area (if measured in population densities).

I can't really see the great hordes of Londoners heading for the wilds of the Scottish Highlands and the unknown badland territories north of the Watford gap! Many of them also think that England ends along the Great Glen and then Scotland Starts at on the other side of Loch Ness..