Presuming you don't already live in a rural area.
https://www.survivopedia.com/why-you-should-bug-out-to-a-rural-area/
https://www.survivopedia.com/why-you-should-bug-out-to-a-rural-area/
Why You Should Bug Out To A Rural Area
By
Bill White
October 8, 2019
When most people talk about bugging out, I get the impression that they’re talking about bugging out to the wild.
This isn’t a new impression on my part; I’ve been seeing it for years. Yet bugging out to the wild, while a great sounding idea, is the hardest sort of bug out to do. The typical bug out bag only includes three days worth of food, yet I never hear anyone talking about how they’re going to replenish their food, once they get to their favorite wilderness location.
But living off the land isn’t as easy as it might seem. Granted, many thousands of people lived off the land in the early days of our country. But the ratio of people to game was much better back then, making it fairly easy to find dinner. In any situation bad enough to cause you to bug out, the only places where you’re going to be able to find abundant game to hunt are those which are a long ways from any cities, towns or even farms.
Of course, you could bury a massive stock of supplies out there in the wilderness somewhere, just waiting for you. That would be a big project and keeping it secret would require a lot of patience. But that’s not to say you couldn’t do it; it would just be difficult.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the kind of bug out that happens when the government calls for an evacuation due to a hurricane. While technically a bug out, it’s different than what we usually talk about for two reasons; because it’s temporary and because everyone is looking for hotels and temporary refugee centers to go to.
But that’s not a realistic example of a bug out either, due to the fact that what we’re seeing is all of the unprepared people and what they do. There are surely preppers included in every one of those mass exodus exercises, but they either blend in with the crowd or simply use the crowd as camouflage.
Regardless of whether you and I end up bugging out for a short-term problem, like a hurricane or because of a TEOTWAWKI event that causes a breakdown of society, we need a workable plan to keep our families safe.
If you happen to have a cabin in the woods, which you can use as a bug out retreat, more power to you. I’ve wanted to buy some land and build such a cabin for years, but the finances just keep eluding me. The best I’ve managed so far is a backpack and a tent; which isn’t a survival retreat by any means, it’s more for use along the way to my retreat.
But where am I going to go? That’s the question.
Find a Small Town
My solution has been to find a small town that’s far enough from our home that it will probably be missed by any regional disaster, while still being close enough to be accessible in the event of a disaster. While that town is only 70 miles from my home, it is also 131 feet higher above sea level, as well as being 80 miles farther inland than where I live. That means that the town is much more likely to survive a hurricane, the biggest threat that faces the area in which I live.
There are several reasons why my wife and I have chosen this town, chief amongst which is that we like the town itself. But it was also important to us that it be a small town (actual population is slightly less than 2,000 people) in an area that is at least semi-agricultural. We wanted it to be close enough to be easy to get to, while far enough inland and high enough above sea level to be relatively safe from hurricane flooding, even if it was still close enough to be hit by said hurricane.
The town we found isn’t really on anyone’s radar for anything, even though it has its share of cute shops and its monthly market days to bring in tourism. But other than that one day a month, there’s really no reason for anyone to visit that town. There’s nothing to make it look like a good place to run to in an emergency.
As with many other small towns, there are a few small motels, as well as a fair number of places for sale or rent, although the prices to buy a house are a bit steep. It also has one important thing, which is critical to our plans… a self-storage business. It also has a small river flowing by, providing water.
So, what’s wrong with our little rural town? Like any other small town, it’s suspicious of outsiders. Small towns are different. Everyone knows everyone; and they can spot a stranger from a mile away. So, while they depend largely on the money that those outsiders bring into the town, those people are easily identified as who they are… outsiders.
Should a disaster happen, it’s likely that the residents of our small town will be just as suspicious of outsiders as they are now, or even more so. As with any other small town, they are unlikely to be very welcome to the masses of people from the city, who are going to think that things are better in the rural areas and flood out of the cities, looking for help. Those towns are not going to be a haven filled with food and other critical resources, like many will expect.