I've been absent from posting on the forum for some time; I’ve endeavored a bit of worthy lurking here and in other forums, and enjoying the beautiful outdoors these past months. Now I have some questions:

Many who are attempting to become prepared for various emergency life-disrupting scenarios will have different needs. I'm not referring to the basics, like FAKs and PSKs, but in strategies and pre-planning. City dwellers will have different needs from those in urban and those in rural areas. My concerns are not at-home preparedness, but more related to being displaced.

For those of us who have followed this line of thought (and pre-planning) many have identified different locations as "safe-spots". These may be a friend or family member's home, a cabin or second home or maybe a cache where one may stay a few days or weeks in the woods.

So my questions are: for those of you who know you can get out of a populated area without being locked in by gridlock (city dwellers will have a tough time) how many miles do anticipate traveling, what are your methods of transport? What have you considered as “safe location” options?

If we need to leave our home there is some rough farm land we have access to about 8 miles away and we would meet there. I would intend to drive, as it is a rural to rural situation. Of course whether I would do that would depend upon the nature of the threat. The reason I want to go there is because it has water in the form of a spring that would need minimal attention and I know every nook and cranny of it should anyone be threatening. If the challenge was more environmental, though, that wouldn't work and I would have to scrap that idea and do something else.

Another thing to consider is whether we are talking about "survival" in the strictest sense or maintaining our current lifestyle with reguards to food and water intake. Most likely it's somewhere in between for most of us. I was under the impression that larger folks, or more specifically folks with more body fat can actually survive longer with less food than leaner folks.