Recent­ly. I have been look­ing for a BOL prop­er­ty again. I have had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er prep­pers about going in on prop­er­ty togeth­er, alone, etc. Then I exam­ine my geog­ra­phy and demo­graph­ic, and it hit me… I live in a high­ly pop­u­lat­ed low self suf­fi­cien­cy demo­graph­ic and geog­ra­phy. I need more than one Bug Out Loca­tion… “What?” you might ask… or Why? Var­i­ous rea­sons, actu­al­ly. Lets take a high lev­el look at why that might be.

First, not every  SHTF is going to be a TEOTWAWKI. That is just fact. As much as we all pre­pare, and shows like Dooms­day Prep­pers want you to think, there are clear­ly small­er more immi­nent SHTF sit­u­a­tions to be wor­ried about. Just ask all the tor­na­do, flood, Earth­quake, and oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ter vic­tims over the past year or two.

Sec­ond, a BOL made for long and short term SHTF sit­u­a­tions could be advan­ta­geous in a cou­ple dif­fer­ent ways. Let’s define a short term BOL and a long term BOL. Please keep in mind this is opin­ion only and I am sort of brain­storm­ing as I go here, so bear with any ran­dom thoughts that get us pulled aside or that you may not agree with. In fact, do not for­get to com­ment and let me know what you think whether you agree or not.

Short term BOL: The short term BOL, is just that. Short term. What do I con­sid­er to be short term? I think short term would be from 45 — 60 days. Short term can mean an inter­im stop for a few days before leav­ing for home or before trekking on to a longer term Bug Out Loca­tion. Or it could bean three to sev­en days away from home while an emer­gency such as the floods that hap­pened in NJ this past year after the hur­ri­cane pass­es. The short term Bug Out Loca­tion should have a cache or caches of food and sup­plies to last your stay. It should have a source of water, whether it is well, spring, or water that can be brought to the loca­tion from a riv­er, pond, lake, etc, and puri­fied. You may want to have elec­tric­i­ty piped in, or have solar and/or wind pow­er. ro a few bat­ter­ies that can pro­vide you with a cou­ple of ameni­ties.

With that def­i­n­i­tion, I think that just like caches of sup­plies along a Bug Out Routes, the short term BOL acts in a sim­i­lar fash­ion, pro­vid­ing the essen­tials you need in a short term sit­u­a­tion that will allow you more of the ameni­ties you would like to have. Think “toi­let, run­ning water of some sort, pos­si­ble refrig­er­a­tion, etc.”

As for the num­ber of short term Bug Out Loca­tions, I am begin­ning to believe that a prep­per should have a cou­ple of them at the least, whether one is “semi-per­ma­nent” and anoth­er one or two are des­ig­nat­ed longer term “camp­ing areas” where you have sup­plies cached for you and the fam­i­ly. That said, it does­n’t have to be a camp site. It could be a hotel room you rent, but near the hotel there are sup­plies you might need. Every­one’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent so I am aware not every­one (includ­ing myself) can afford to pur­chase mul­ti­ple prop­er­ties or make avail­able mul­ti­ple bug out loca­tions. To illus­trate, I was at a prep­per meet­up this week­end, and the top­ic of dis­cus­sion was Bug Out Bags, a pop­u­lar top­ic amongst prep­pers when they get togeth­er. It’s a good ice break­er con­ver­sa­tion, to be hon­est. It helps to ass­es how far along or how mature a prep­per may be with regard to how far along they may or may not be which their preps. i.e. mean­ing, my belief is that many or most prep­pers put togeth­er a BOB first…

How­ev­er, my point still remains the same as I look at sit­u­a­tions where I may be forced to go west, or north­west, south­west, or north from my NJ loca­tion. In any one of those direc­tions, in a bad dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tion my assump­tion is that there will be a pletho­ra of traf­fic if you do not get out of dodge ear­ly. The deci­sion then becomes, what BOL to head to. Inter­est­ing­ly, should you find your­self think­ing along the same lines, you may want to have a cou­ple BOLs for “emer­gency a,” “emer­gency b,” and anoth­er for “emer­gency c” and “emer­gency d.”  Or you may want mul­ti­ple short term BOLs for dif­fer­ent sea­sons…

I am not going to offer advise as to where to look or what to do to find one. Scott Williams over at Bug Out Sur­vival wrote a great book about bug­ging out called “Bug Out: The Com­plete Plan for Escap­ing a Cat­a­stroph­ic Dis­as­ter Before It’s Too Late,” with a deep sec­tion on poten­tial­ly choos­ing a spot. Jack Spirko over at The Sur­vival Pod­cast has sev­er­al posts on Bug Out Loca­tions, and MD Creek­more has a great book on set­ting up a “Dirt Cheap Sur­vival Retreat.” If you have not picked them up, you should give them a shot.

Am I over com­pli­cat­ing Bug­ging Out?  Com­pli­cat­ing the idea of the Bug Out Loca­tion? Let me know what you think. Not ask­ing where, of course, but do you have a BOL, and is it more per­ma­nent or tem­po­rary? Do you have mul­ti­ple loca­tions or one?

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