Tips For Bugging Out To The Country

I'm not a big fan of bugging out because home is probably where your supplies are located, you know your neighbors and hopefully have friends and family nearby, and you likely know the area and resources near at hand. Unless you have a cabin or vacation home somewhere, you are leaving behind your greatest advantages in order to become a refugee, subject to the whims of other people. And even if you have a cabin or second home, you still have to get there ... and hope someone else hasn't already taken over the place. 

    A couple things that come to mind on that last point, one fictional and one real. The fictional one is from the novel Lucifer's Hammer.  One of the main protagonists, who is moderately wealthy, and another character are fleeing Los Angeles to get to our main protagonist's cabin/private observatory because it is isolated and there is food. They get there, though, and the caretaker and his wife won't admit them, claiming there is not enough food. Deciding not to push the issue, the two journey on. 

    The second was a news story from 60 Minutes or similar from back when I was a kid. It was mostly about how motorcyclists and other people operating off-road vehicles were tearing up the fragile ecosystem of the Mojave Desert. But some of these people were also breaking into houses and cottages. And one item that stuck with me through the years was the account of a family that had come out to their vacation home one weekend to find it had broken into with dozens of motorcyclists still there. Walking in, the homeowner was offered a beer--one from his own refrigerator--by a trespasser. 

    The point of these is that you cannot guarantee that if you are going to a second home or cabin somewhere that it will still be available to you. If you don't have someone there, it could easily be taken over and claimed by strangers who got there before you, or even someone living in the area. If you do have someone living there, in a widespread SHTF event, there is no guarantee they will allow you to stay there. 

    And what if you don't have a vacation home or cabin to go to?  Then what? Are you going to set up a tent in the nearest state park or national forest with thousands of other people and slowly starve? 

    More likely, if you have to bug out, you are probably going to try and make it to a rural community or hope some farmer or rancher takes you in. If you are better prepared, you might have even planned ahead and have some agreement with a farmer or rancher to take you in. In that regard, The Survival Mom has some thoughts on making things run more smoothly in her article, "10 Tips For Bugging Out to the Country." But she also has some words of warning:

    "Farm” does NOT mean remote or isolated or even self-sufficient.  Farmers live pretty much like you do, but with more elbow room.  We go to the grocery store.  We have jobs.  We have neighbors.  And we have towns nearby.

    Okay, granted those towns can be pretty small by urban standards, but they’re just as full of unprepared people as anywhere else.  That means if the manure hits the rotating device, we’re going to have our hands full dealing with them.

    Bear in mind that most people in the country may not be much more prepared than you are – which is to say, perhaps not at all.  Unless rural folks already have a preparedness mindset, they’re just as susceptible to societal interruptions as your average city person.

    Our only advantage is we’re farther away from the masses of people, city folks who will take to the road in times of disorder, or so some survival experts believe.

    Or, are we really that far away and safe from thousands of straggling refugees? In our case, we live within a very short drive (as in, four minutes) from a town of 1000, many of whom are on welfare and are just as dependent on government checks as anyone in the inner city.  This means they will certainly go “foraging” when they get hungry.

    A rural “survival” retreat may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

    Many people don’t realize that the Greater Depression has already impacted rural areas. Hard. Jobs out here are as scarce as hen’s teeth (as the saying goes) and unemployment in our county hovers around 20%. Most of us are poor to begin with, especially by urban standards.  That means we don’t have a lot of money to pour into elaborate “prepper” projects.

    So does this mean you should give up your idealized little dream about bugging out to the country?  Yes and no.  It depends on how realistic you’re being about your bug out plans.

She then lists and expounds on 10 points:

1. Don't come unannounced.
2. Prepare the way.
3. Clarify your baggage.
4. You're not the boss.
5. Prepare to work.
6. Don't be wasteful.
7. Bring skills.
8. Clarify by contract.
9. Shut your mouth.
10. Practice forbearance.  

And just to be clear because no one else is saying it is, if you are bugging out to the country because of some civilization shattering disaster, prepare to enter a new era of feudalism where if you are lucky you will be a servant or farmhand on a small farmstead or the peasant (or slave) to a larger ranch or farm owner. More likely, at least until those farms run out of fuel for equipment and need the physical laborers, you will be turned away to either starve or join the ranks of raiders or warlords.