As an example of the low population density in the West, I often like to cite Idaho County, Idaho: This one county measures 8,485 square miles—bigger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. But it has a population of just 15,400. And of those residents, roughly 3,300 people live in Grangeville, the county seat. Who lives in the rest of the county? Nary a soul. There are far more deer and elk than there are people. The population density of the county is 1.8 people per square mile. The county has more than 3 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land, BLM land, and designated federal wilderness areas. Now that is elbow room!
Channelization and Lines of Drift
Most primary routes out of major cities will be very dangerous places to be in the event of a massive involuntary urban exodus. Imagine the situation WTSHTF in small towns on either side of the Snoqualmie Pass in Washington, or near I-80 across the Donner Pass in California, or along the Columbia River Gorge (dividing Oregon and Washington), or virtually every other stretch of interstate freeway that is within 150 miles of a metropolitan region. These channelized areas (also called “refugee lines of drift” by military-police war-game planners) should be studiously avoided.
Conversely, there are areas between lines of drift that will likely be bypassed by refugees and looters, due to poor access (constrained by small winding mountainous roads, water obstacles, intervening canyon lands, etc.). Some of these bypassed zones may be fairly close to urban areas. It is a dangerous gamble, but if you must live near a city, I suggest that you carefully search for what may be a largely bypassed zone for your retreat and/or home.
High Fuel Costs and Retreat Locales
The substantially higher fuel costs that we’ve seen in the past few years will likely change the way you look at your retreat, and where it is located. Remote properties will seem even more remote when gas tops five dollars per gallon. If you are retired, self-employed, or a telecommuter, the impact won’t be nearly so great. As fuel prices spike, you can simply adapt your lifestyle to make trips into town less often. But if you have a daily job in town, then the impact could be substantial.
If you have not yet bought a retreat, then you might want to make the new fuel-cost paradigm a more important part of your locale-selection process. If you do some concerted searching, you may be able to find a piece of land with a low-volume natural-gas well, or a surface coal seam. Another possibility is finding property with a large year-round stream and sufficient change in elevation (“fall”), allowing installation of a micro-hydro system. You should consider buying a retreat that is close to a community in a truck farming region—someplace that is expected to be self-sufficient in the event of chronic gas and diesel shortages. There are of course security trade-offs, so such a decision will be a momentous one to make.
Precipitation and Growing Season as Retreat-Locale Criteria
I have always recommended that readers do detailed study of microclimates before relocation. Start with state and regional climate data books and Web sites, then do detailed climate and soil studies using data from the NWS, NRCS, and various online resources.
My general guidance is to avoid areas that require irrigation, with the exception of the very few locales that are serviced by an end-to-end gravity-fed irrigation infrastructure. If and when the power grids go down, many parts of the western United States will quickly revert to desert. Hence, my preference is for reliable-rain or dryland-farming regions where crops can be grown with regular spring and summer rains. But here is the rub: Many of those regions are heavily populated and might not be safe in the event of a major societal disruption. So your choices will be narrowed to a subset of a subset.
When you are traveling in search of potential retreat properties, observe the native vegetation on the nonirrigated hillsides. What you see is what you’ll get when the grid goes down.
In-Town Versus Isolated Retreats
There are two distinct modes of fixed-location survival retreats: “In town” and “isolated.” The former depends on some local infrastructure while the latter is designed to be almost entirely self-sufficient and self-contained. Isolated retreats are also often termed “remote” retreats.
Not everyone is suited to tackling the tasks required for self-sufficiency. Advanced age, physical handicaps, lack of trustworthy family or friends, or chronic health conditions could rule out total self-sufficiency. If that is your situation, then you will probably want to establish an inconspicuous in-town retreat rather than an isolated “stronghold” retreat.
If opting for in town, carefully select a town with a small population—somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 if it has a true end-to-end gravity-fed water supply, or from 200 to 1,000 if the water system is in any way dependent on the power grid. A population of more than 1,000 presents additional sanitation problems. Towns larger than 3,000 people lack a cohesive sense of community, and any town with a population smaller than 200 lacks a sufficient mix of skills and the manpower required to mount an adequate defense in the event of a true worst case. At some point over the 3,000-inhabitant threshold, it could be every man for himself. It is therefore best to avoid larger towns.
The late Mel Tappan wisely opined that if your house is at the dead end of a road at the edge of town with no nearby neighbors, then it might just as well be five or ten miles out of town—since it will be psychologically outside of the invisible ring of protection that will constitute “in town.” If you are in town you will benefit from what I call a Neighborhood Watch on Steroids. Make sure that your retreat is either clearly in town or not. A property that is in between will have none of the advantages and all of the disadvantages.
Tappan championed the concept of small-town retreating: owning a mini-farm that is physically and psychologically inside an existing small community. This approach has several advantages. Before making your decision, consider the following pro and con lists.
Advantages of In-Town Retreats:
• Better for a slow-slide scenario or a “grid-up” depression wherein the local agricultural and industrial payrolls may still be viable
• You will be a member of the community.
• You will benefit from local security arrangements.
• Ready access to local barter economy
• Ready access to local skills and medical facilities
Disadvantages of In-Town Retreats:
• Privacy is very limited. Transporting bulky logistics must be done at odd hours to minimize observation by neighbors.
• Fuel storage is severely limited. (Consult the local ordinances on storage before you buy a home.)
• Poor sanitation in the event of a grid-down situation, unless your town has a truly end-to-end gravity-fed water system
• You can’t test-fire and zero your guns at your own property.
• You can’t set up elaborate antenna arrays, because your house will look out of place.
• You probably can’t hunt on your own land, except perhaps some small game and pests, and then only with an air rifle.
• You can’t keep livestock other than perhaps a few rabbits. (Consult the local ordinances before you buy a home.)
• You can’t make substantial ballistic and anti-vehicular barrier retreat upgrades.
• Greater risk of communicable diseases
• Greater risk of burglary
• Greater risk of having your supplies confiscated
Advantages of Isolated Retreats:
• More room for gardening, pasturing, and growing row crops
• Lower house and land prices
• Better for a total-wipeout grid-down scenario in which virtually everyone will be out of work
• You can stock up in quantity with less fear of the watchful eyes of nosy neighbors.
• You can test-fire and zero your guns at your own property.
• You can build with nontraditional architecture (earth sheltered, for example).
• You can set up more elaborate antenna arrays—and other things t
hat would look odd in town.
• Better sanitation in the event of a grid-down situation
• You can hunt on your own land.
• You can cut your own firewood.
• You can keep livestock.
• You can make ballistic and anti-vehicular upgrades.
• A “dog run” chain-link fence around your house won’t look too out of place.
• Virtually unlimited fuel storage. (Consult your county and state laws before ordering large gas, diesel, heating-oil, and propane-fuel tanks.)
• Much lower risk of communicable diseases
Disadvantages of Isolated Retreats:
• Difficult for just one family to maintain and defend
• Cannot depend on much help from neighbors or law enforcement if your home is attacked by looters or in the event of fire or medical emergency. You will likely be entirely on your own to resolve those situations.
• Isolation from day-to-day barter/commerce
• A longer commute to your day job, shopping, and church
A careful analysis of the preceding lists should lead you to conclude which approach is right for you, given your family situation, your stage in life, and your own view of the potential severity of events to come. Pray about it, mull it over, before making a decision of this gravity.
The Best Retreats
A retreat situated in a hilly or mountainous region is preferable to one on the plains in the event of a worst case. Why? Towns on plains simply have too many vehicular access points, and more access points means more potential intruders. Hill or canyon towns, by comparison, are limited by terrain to having just a few accesses.
When shopping for a home that would make a good retreat, look for a masonry house with a fireproof roof on an oversize lot—or a wood-frame construction if you live in earthquake country. Buy a house with at least one more bedroom than you currently need, preferably with a full basement. (Proviso: A basement only if the local water-table level will allow this without aid of an electric sump pump. The basement must be “dry and tight.”)
The following chapters in this book will go into greater detail about essentials for surviving TEOTWAWKI, but here is a brief overview of what you will need to do at your retreat:
• Stock up on extra tools, sturdy clothes, food, guns, web gear, and necessities for family and friends, who will surely show up on your doorstep on TEOTWAWKI+1.
• Put in an oversize vegetable garden, preferably out of line of sight from the street. Ring the garden with flower beds and some tall flowering shrubs to make the garden look more decorative than practical to the casual observer.
• Get a big, quiet, mean-looking (but obedient) guard dog. I tend toward Airedales (the largest of the terriers) and Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Both are fairly large breeds with loyal and highly territorial temperaments.
• Plant several rosebushes or thorny bougainvillea vines beneath each window. Bush roses and climbing varieties can be used in various ways to defend your home. You’ll need to keep scraps of carpeting or heavy blankets handy so that your family members can use bedroom windows as escape routes in the event of fire or a home invasion.
• Buy defensive wire (military-surplus concertina wire or civilian razor wire). Keep it stored discreetly and out of sight in your garage and put it up only in the event of a true worst-case situation, in which the town must be barricaded. When you donate that wire to the local security committee you will be looked at as a forward-thinking lifesaver, not a wacko.
• Replace all of your exterior doors with sturdy steel ones in steel frames. If your house has a connecting garage, pay particular attention to beefing up the door between it and the house. Turn your garage into a mini-warehouse, with lots of heavy-duty shelving.
• Buy vehicles that will blend in day-to-day but will be eminently practical WTSHTF. See Chapter 12 for more details.
• Buy a low-profile camper shell that can be removed quickly in a pinch. Winches front and back may look cool, but they really aren’t worth the weight and expense. You are better off spending some money on heavy-duty front and rear bumpers. Recommended bumper modifications include: large crash bars in the front, a removable cable cutter post that is as tall as your truck’s cab, and ten or more sturdy towing attachment J hooks (front and rear center and all four corners). Buy two or three come-alongs (ratchet cable hoists), and a couple of forty-eight-inch Hi-Lift jacks. Carry two spare inflated tires mounted on rims. That plus shovels, a pick, an ax, a couple of rugged tow chains, some shorter “tree-wrapper” choker chains, and a pair of American-made thirty-six-inch bolt cutters will get you through virtually any obstacle, given enough time.
• Determine the amount of fuel required to get to your retreat using the slowest possible route with a maximum load of gear. Add 10 percent to that figure for good measure, and be sure to always have that amount of fuel on hand. Regardless of the fuel capacity of your rig, buy at least six additional jerry cans to keep at home. (First consult your local fire-code regulations.) Keep those cans filled with fuel and rotate them regularly.
• If there won’t be somebody who is extremely trustworthy living at your retreat at all times to secure it, buy a twenty-four-foot or larger Conex steel shipping container, and have an extra lock shroud flange welded on. Ideally, your trailer should be custom built (or rebuilt) to use the same rims and tires as your primary vehicle. That way, with two spare tires carried on your vehicle and one more on the front of your trailer, you will have three spares available for either your trailer or your pickup.
• Most important: Pre-position the vast majority of your gear, guns, and groceries at your retreat! Make sure to store plenty of fuel there. Buy a utility trailer, but leave it at your retreat to use for wood and hay hauling, or in case you need to bug out a second time. You may have only one trip out of the big city, and messing with a trailer in heavy traffic or on snowy or muddy roads could lead to your own personal disaster within a disaster.
Your Survival Community
I’ve observed that survivalists tend to fall into two schools of thought: those who are loners and those who are community minded. The loners would prefer to disappear into the wilds—somewhere they can lie low, while things sort themselves out back in civilization. In my opinion, this is both a naive and selfish starting point for preparedness. It is not realistic to expect that you can find a remote rural property where you’d have no contact with outsiders for an extended period of time. We live in the era of Google Earth, when there are few truly secret hideaways. Even Mel Gibson couldn’t buy total privacy. His private island in Fiji was “outed.” Even if you live off-grid, if there is a road leading to your house, eventually someone will find you.
Furthermore, you should discard any fantasies that you might have about strapping on a backpack and disappearing into a nearby national forest to “live off the land.” That is an invitation for disaster. Too many things can go wrong: You will lack sufficient shelter. You will not be able to carry enough food reserves. Once lost or broken, your one rifle, your one pistol, and your one ax will leave you vulnerable and unable to provide for your sustenance or self-defense. Any illness or injury could be life threatening. Even just a dunking in a stream in midwinter could cost your life. Also, consider how many thousands of urbanites will probably try to do the same thing. Even if you manage to avoid encounters with them, all those legions of people foraging at once will quickly deplete the available wild game in many regions. For countless reasons, playing “Batman in the Boondocks” just won’t work. So forget about the one-pack solution, other than as a last resort.
If you are planning a remote retreat, plan ahead to double up or even triple up with other families to provide the manpower needed for 24-hour, 7-day-a-week, 360-degree security if things go truly worst-case with a complete breakdown of law and order. One family on its own cannot both provide security and handle the many chores required to operate a self-sufficient retreat—particularly in summer and fall, with ga
rdening and food-storage tasks. The physical and emotional toll of manning twelve-on/ twelve-off security shifts would bring most people to the breaking point in just a few weeks. As a former U.S. Army officer, I can attest to the terrible drain that continuous operations create—even upon physically fit, twentysomething soldiers. Lesser security will leave your retreat vulnerable to being overrun. Manning an isolated retreat will take a bare minimum of four adults, and ideally six. (Typically, three couples, plus their kids.) This will mean buying a five- or six-bedroom house with a full basement.
Most of us will have retreats on a recognizable road, and we will have neighbors. Having neighbors generally necessitates being neighborly. From the perspective of disaster preparedness, one of the positive aspects is the community-mindedness that can arise. I have long been an advocate of setting up small covenant communities inhabited by like-minded people, so when you’re preparing for disaster, spend time thinking about whom you want on your crisis-preparedness team.
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It Page 5