A cou­ple week­ends ago I test­ed a bug out route (via vehi­cle) to a point that inter­sects with a spot where I can branch off into two or three oth­er routes to get to my BOL. We’ll call this inter­sec­tion point “Point B.” I want­ed to test the fol­low­ing:

  • Via­bil­i­ty of the route
  • Nor­mal traf­fic pat­terns to ass­es traf­fic buildup in a SHTF
  • Tim­ings with­out traf­fic to ass­es tim­ings in a SHTF Bug Out sit­u­a­tion
  • Take note of oth­er resources along the way. i.e. Stor­age Facil­i­ties, mini marts, food stores, etc…

What I found:

  1. The route is viable, how­ev­er in a SHTF, it is a rur­al route and may have a lot of traf­fic.  To boot the major high­way that goes to the rur­al route may be impass­able if the SHTF is large enough due to the num­ber of peo­ple try­ing to get home or to their sec­ond homes in east­ern PA.
  2. Point B has resources along the way, includ­ing, a Trac­tor Sup­ply Store, Gas Sta­tions, Mini Marts, and becomes very rur­al, but did not see any ‘com­mer­cial’ areas such as stor­age facil­i­ties where I could rent a small stor­age unit to cache sup­plies, which would mean find­ing a spot, mark­ing it, and caching sup­plies some­where along the way.
    1. So a cache loca­tion should be scout­ed and select­ed for choice sup­plies in the near future.
  3. Point B is rough­ly 50 miles from Point A (the ori­gin of the Bug Out), has a Wal-Mart, many gas sta­tions, camp­ing facil­i­ties along the Delaware Riv­er, and two points where I can take two sep­a­rate Routes to Point C the Bug Out Loca­tion, is pret­ty rur­al, and I hap­pen to know a cou­ple peo­ple in the gen­er­al vicin­i­ty, where I may be able to cache sup­plies if I require them.  How­ev­er, I may just want to use an inex­pen­sive stor­age facil­i­ty if I have to hold up in Point B for any length of time.
  4. In a mar­tial law sit­u­a­tion, the state bor­ders on major roads may be closed, so I may need to become more famil­iar with the back road areas near Point B, and take clos­er stock of them if I have to get over the state bor­der unde­tect­ed via vehi­cle.
  5. The gen­er­al thought I had upon arriv­ing at Point B was that it could take much longer (sev­er­al hours) longer to reach that first point if a SHTF hit fast and peo­ple ran like hell. Point B is a pret­ty good size area for tourists and sec­ondary home own­ers. How­ev­er, it has food and fuel sources that may not be imme­di­ate­ly effect­ed by a SHTF in the NYC and sur­round­ing rur­al areas.

After this sim­ple exer­cise, I urge every­one to test their own Bug Out strate­gies. It was only after the dry test of this route I real­ized I need more plan­ning.  That is mind, there will be no per­fect route when bug­ging out, and I do not expect to get to where I am going eas­i­ly…

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