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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Relocating, Bugging Out and Living Off the Land … :-P


FerFAL:

This short essay seems to compliment your views on bugging out.
Thought you might enjoy reading it and perhaps post it for others on
your blog.
http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=2324#more-2324
Keep up the good work and best wishes in your new home!
flyboy

Thanks Flyboy.
I suppose that everyone that follows my blog has long ago forgotten about childish fantasies of bugging out and living off the land in the closes national park, hunting and gathering, along with everyone else that came up with the same brilliant idea.

Still, bugging out is a very real possibility. There’s disasters, accidents and terrorist attacks that may force you out of your home. Its not a matter of you wanting to, it’s a matter of having to leave like it or not. If that ever happens, heck if your house just gets burned down or destroyed by a flood, you and your family will be much better off if you made at least some plans ahead of time and have a kit or emergency bag ready to go. If that ever happens I wouldn´t go to the nearest park to set camp. I’d go to friends or family, or a hotel until I manage to get to a better location. Bugging out with a forest as your destination is as stupid as it gets. You need a place where you can get yourself together, regroup and rebuild your life. For me, that would be moving back to my folks place, for someone else, it could be some other family or friend.

This is different from relocating which is what we did. Granted, we left pretty much everything behind to start over elsewhere, a place we’ve never been to before. Yes, it wasn’t a walk in the park, it was pretty stressful, but you do what you have to do when the country or state you live in no longer keeps up with your bare minimum expectations of what life should be. Millions still live in Argentina. Many may want to leave but I bet that millions are perfectly happy living there, but for me that kind of crime, corruption, social and cultural degradation was too much. It had gone beyond what I was willing to accept both for myself and my family.

In that case you organize as best as possible, do tons of research and leave. As hard as it may be and it is hard to relocate, you can manage to pull it off and not feel entirely like a refuge. One thing is leaving like we did, and another very different is just grabbing the kids, a couple bug out bags and running out the door into an uncertain future.

I think that everyone should (intelligently) organize so as to bug out just in case they ever have to, just because you never know if one day you may have to do so. In other cases an event may have such as impact in your world that you may contemplate relocating elsewhere.
As unlikely as either one may be, I believe you are much better off if you prepare for such an eventuality, just in case.
FerFAL
Join the forum discussion on this post!

4 comments:

Loup Espiègle said...

I've always been supporting the "bug out theory", much because I have friendly remote places to go to in case TSHTF. It has never been a question of living off the land in an national park for me. Being a refugee sucks, granted, but that's not really what the bug out is about.

The article from Survival Acres is off topic. The dude doesn't know what "bugging out" means !! He concludes like this :
If you truly think that you foresee a need to bug out — then revise your plans to bug in to a new location within civilization
"Bug in to a new location", sounds like bugging out of one's current location but nevermind...

Friendly remote places, network of friends, escape routes, grab'n'go equipement. That's the bug out plan.
If the nuclear power plant goes boom 30 miles away from my home, I sure will bug out LOL !

Anonymous said...

There's a Part II, and a Survivalist Challenge and a good article here, B.O.B - The reality that demonstrates how expert survivalists do not think anyone is going to survive in the wilderness either.

And a Surviving the horde too.

Anonymous said...

So, where do you go when you have to leave but you have no where to go? What if your parents are long dead and the only relatives live locally and are in the same boat you are in...a boat that is sinking. You have no contacts in other countries or even in other states and can't really afford to stay in a hotel long term. Then what do you do?

Unknown said...

Though bugging out does sound like a really hysterical thing to do, but the idea to prepare for it beforehand is quite necessary if you are living in a hazard-prone residential area. You never know when disaster might just strike you and you are going to wish you had prepared for it months ago. There is a saying "prepare an umbrella before it rains" and the same theory applies to preparing your grab-and-go bags to bug out anytime life forces you to. Just pack those REALLY essential and leave those bulky and heavy objects behind or have the abandoned ones (those catching dusts) dumped away in a storage unit or donate them away.