Bug Out Bag, Bug out to where?

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LiveTrap

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I guess I don't get the whole but out bag thing. I can see keeping some supplies in my truck/car at all times. But the whole backpack bug out thing? Where are you walking to in the winter? I can't see leaving the safety of your home to be out there on foot with two days of food and water. Maybe if the neighborhood burned down, including your house. Have you ever seen the TV show "Alone"? Unless you live in the northwest, northeast, or Alabama, your not going to have a large enough area to support yourself with game. You'll have to many others doing the same, or shooting you for being on their property. Most country folk are not going to let you squat on their land and steal their resident game. What am I missing from a situational view point?
 
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I'm bugging out if it gets to the point I can't stay here anymore, we already have supplies along the routs we will be taking plus we have supplies at our destination. A lot of people live closer to the cities and large towns due to employment that plan to bug out to family members or.... further away, regardless if one stays put or bugs out challenges will always present itself regardless. Logically it seems better to stay put but logic isn't the only deciding factor, each person has their set of reasons and I'm in no position to challenge those reasons.
 
I will only leave here if its unsafe to remain, I have already located and scouted at least 6 locations I can move to if the situation needs it.
however I could never figure out these people that say they will bug out but have no where to go, we have a saying over here "never become a refugee", i'm sure we have all seen enough reports about refugees to know how wretched a situation that would be, and in a winter what a short life it would be.
 
I guess I don't get the whole but out bag thing. I can see keeping some supplies in my truck/car at all times. But the whole backpack bug out thing? Where are you walking to in the winter? I can't see leaving the safety of your home to be out there on foot with two days of food and water. Maybe if the neighborhood burned down, including your house. Have you ever seen the TV show "Alone"? Unless you live in the northwest, northeast, or Alabama, your not going to have a large enough area to support yourself with game. You'll have to many others doing the same, or shooting you for being on their property. Most country folk are not going to let you squat on their land and steal their resident game. What am I missing from a situational view point?

You are completely missing the most important aspect, INDIVIDUAL NEED. Many of us cannot BUG OUT at all so we plan to bug in because its what extenal influences dictate, Others among us CAN bug out because their circumstances and personal economics ALLOW them to do so, they also often have some place pre arranged to move to. Others on here HAVE to try and bug out because where they live is totally unsustainable, some to pre arranged locations, others to near by wilderness areas or coastal areas, others simply have vehicles adapted to act as portable shelters.

Who said we were all walking, who said TSHTF would be in Winter, who said we all live in areas that had real winters, who said people will only be reliant on hunting game many people have years supplies of food cached away in multiple locations, others among us grow nearly all our own food. You clearly have made up your mind before you started posting and before you did any research.

Bugging IN.
Quite a number of preppers have looked at the economics AND logistics of bugging out and realised the costs of a home and BOL are simply to expensive and complicated, so they have BUGGED IN. By that I mean they found a more sustainable, secure home, out of the way as best they can further out of town but still often within commuting range. They have moved to better suited properties NOW before anything bad happens. More defendable, more sustainable, more private, more remote, better situtated, better resourced. They actually live in their BOLs for want of a better word. This means much of the time they will already be at home if TSHTF, or if they are at work they only need to get themselves back home by one of many preplanned and checked routes. If those routes are longer than ideal distances the prepper has cached supplies along those routes to allow them to replentish on the way home.

Those who bug in usually have developed plans and procedures for their families to get home from school, college etc in a simplar manner. So instead of wandering off blindly into the wilderness they simply only have to get home from work.

I personally live in a temporate area where severe winters are rare, forest fires remote, quakes unheard of, Occasional ice events, flooding and power cuts are the main natural threat, cities are distant, YET my circumstances mean I have to stand my ground and bug in. Traffic on any given day is to severe to allow to me bug out and I cannot afford an established BOL , so my pack is a Get Home Bag designed to sustain me in getting home from where ever I may be. Culturally I know the people where I live will panic and start to flee this area if something dreadful occured, the road system will close in minutes, thats why I have reccied every possible path, lane, bridleway, farm track, logging trail, canal tow path, storm drain,etc etc in this area to allow me to get home.
 
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although what you say is true SE, I believe that for anyone to bug out things will have to have got pretty bad, most likely not until the lights go out, until then mostly everything will run if at a slower pace, once the power goes off then it will all hit the pan, the sheeple will panic without heating, lighting, cooking, the petrol pumps wont work as there is no manual over ride, same with shop tills so they cant buy food as most use cards, cant get cash as the ATM's wont work either.
as most people in the UK run their cars on empty only filling up when the fuel warning light comes on, then YES they will be walking.
 
I'm bugging in. I'm on the edge of dark sky teritory but there is a bit more population than I would like. I do hope to move south to a very rural mountainous area in next couple years but that will be life changing. Current plan is to hold down the fort here in the woods for 2 years till food runs low and then go to farm country an hour from here and try to find some good survivors, but that is 2 years after a complete collapse.
 
I too think staying put with all your supplies and resources makes the most sense. The whole bugging out thing comes in when you are forced to, like from fire, flood, nuke accident, etc. The goal of the whole scenario is to get you to think of what you would do in an emergency. Just getting in a car and following the masses is a sure fire way to become a refugee. When running out of gas and food you’re screwed. The point is to have a secondary plan in mind be fore something happens. It’s never as good to make a rushed decision than to carefully plan out something beforehand. Sure, some people have financial resources that allow a second well stocked home they could get to. Others may have a good family connection and have a place to fall back on. Others have what they could carry on their backs. The whole point is to figure out what options you have available for you and to have some idea of what you would do in an emergency, preferably before your faced with one.
 
Bugging out means leaving most of your supplies behind, carrying whatever you can on your back and starting again.
if your unfortunate enough to have to live in a big city when everything goes tits up then you might have no option, in that case plans need to be made well in advance of anything that will cause you to bug out.
if you live where I do bugging in makes sense, I bugged out of a city 20 years ago!
 
I agree with most of what's being said, but there are times to bug out.

These California wildfires, for example.

Trying to "bug in" during an uncontrollable wildfire doesn't seem feasible.


Naturally but we the group discussed a while back the rural prepper living in a forested area very often has make extra provision to protect their homes with such things as Concrete tiled roofs , Cement board claddings, Rooftop sprinklers, Trees cut far back from around the house and the ground kept very well swept, as a few examples.
 
"anywhere else" is too broad ranging, its not specific enough.
just wandering about "hoping" to find food, water and shelter is being a refugee and we've all seen what happens to refugees.

That's exactly my point. How do you know your bug out location is any better than your bug in location. Can you communicate with anyone that's there?

If you already have a good enough location that somehow becomes unsurvivable. How do know your alt. Bug out locations are not in the same condition? You should not assume that they are better. Therefore only Bug out if anywhere is better than where you are. Going to a planned Bug out location will likely be better than where you are, but you will not have any idea if it truly is.

I plan to spread out my resources where I am after SHTF and use many different caches. I it plan to do temperary bugouts close by, until conditions improve.
 
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I moved to my BOL several years ago and I don't plan on leaving. Of course there could be a time when I might have to leave due to wild fire or....? I know my area very well and know where all the springs, creeks, water tanks, ponds and lakes are. I have 2 planned backup BOL's; one is an alpine lake 12 miles from my front door. This is for summer only as it's snowed in until July. My second BOL is for winter and is in a deep river canyon about 25 miles away, as the crow flies. Both sites have their good and bad points. Both can be reached by horse, Jeep, ATV or on foot, depending on the time of year and circumstances.
 
One of my reserve BOLs is in an embankment on the side of a long abandone piece of roud leading from a roundabout that been replace by a new trunk road further along the road. When the old original road was built decades ago the council built a tool, / materials store into the embankment. The whole section of old road is totally overgrown and never visited by the highways dept.
 
try to plan for both scenarios,try to plan for my loved ones,won't leave any behind if I can avoid it,I'm kinda the "doc-gardner-hunter-security" in my family ;)
there is still a small window to do things before it goes to shits..before you have to bug in/out,risky..yes,but doable.
do we have a BOL? yup..perhaps even two..
 

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