Reply #33: That is right.

[Atypical Liberal]

I am pretty much banking on being able to stay where I am during a crisis. You are right that in any kind of disaster that completely wipes out my home, I'm screwed. I'd like to be able to have some sort of shelter, but I don't. So, we'll have to make due with the assumption that our home will stay basically intact, or at least that the food supplies will be somewhat recoverable.

I live in Huntsville, Alabama. Our biggest natural threats are tornadoes. If a tornado hits our home, everything in it will potentially be lost. Fortunately, however, tornadoes tend to cause very localized damage. They are unlikely to precipitate any kind of societal breakdown.

I know there are people who tend to think about "bugging out" when "the shit hits the fan". That is, they envision running away from civilization to go live in the mountains or something. I don't think this is wise. First of all, you could be caught up in a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of other people. Gasoline will almost instantly be gone, and traffic jams are highly likely. Unless you are willing to go "cross country", and have a vehicle that can do it, and you assume you will have no compunction about driving across other people's property, smashing through/over fences and the like, I don't think you will find yourself able to "bug out" very effectively. Additionally, you will be limited as to how many supplies you can take with you. Remember, a good supply of emergency food and water will amount to a few hundred pounds and considerable space. Additionally, you will find yourself possibly stuck in traffic or otherwise surrounded by a mob of people who may very well force you from your vehicle and now you have lost everything. I've often heard of people having a "bug out bag", which I think is even more ridiculous. Even if you are in good enough shape to don a 100-pound backpack and travel any distance with it, you are now severely limited in what you are able to carry to survive with.

In such a scenario I feel people will be much better off staying in their homes, working with their immediate communities to safegaurd each other, and thus being able to avail oneself to the hundreds of pounds of food and water they have stored for such an emergency.

I am anticipating a disaster where my home is pretty much still intact, but the usual services of society fail, such as food and gasoline deliveries, and electricity, and police. The most realistic scenario I can think of is some sort of massive natural disaster, like an earthquake, or some sort of terror attack such as a biological or nuclear weapon activated in a major city that then causes people to flee urban areas everywhere.

If we ever actually have to leave our home, we have a 20-year-old RV that we bought a year ago for camping. I hope that it would survive and that we could live in it.