Bugging Out Won't Work.
Not just because there isn't a remote enough location that the locals don't know everything about you.
Words about how Mountain Hicks view Flatlanders and how safe your bugout location really is.
The Art of Survival, Taoism and the Warring States - Of Two Minds BlogBut because what is happening today is a tornado where you can go into the basement and return to normal a day later.
There will never be a normal to return to. (well not in your lifetime)
So, planning to go to a bunker and then return at some day in the future when everything has gone back to normal will be futile.
Many of the city-preppers talk about plans of bugging out.
That they have a retreat location they will go to, to weather out the storm (economic, zombie apocalypse, police state...) and this place is stocked with enough food to last for years.
So, they go to the retreat when they see the storm clouds looming, and then will return to humanity when its all better.
Unfortunately, no amount of food lasts forever. So, this plan fails from the get-go. Their food will run out before normal ever returns. Because normal is not coming back.
Any survival plans need to be designed with the new changing world in mind.
The number one thing will be community.
Unless you want to go somewhere that it is impossible for people to come see you (and that getting to a store, or deliveries is also impossible)
And becoming a part of a small community takes time.
You can't just move there and be accepted by everyone overnight.
The next thing is you need to plan for growing food during a brutally hot summer and a freezing winter.
Plant what you eat. Learn to grow those things. Learn how much time it takes. Learn how to cut down on time by starting indoors, or in a greenhouse. Because we are already in a time where we aren't creating enough calories to feed everyone.
(The reason you are seeing so much food distribution problems caused by Wuhan-disease is to blame what is already happening on something else.)
So, start planning for your new life.
Stop expecting normal to come back.
Those jobs... gone forever.
Those abundant supermarkets... a thing of the past.
Those govern-cement stimulus checks... as worthless as the paper they are printed on.
I'm pickled! (calorie intake calculated)
I recon pretty soon, that we'll be 'calorie secured' for around 4 months.
i am 90% calorie secured for around 6 months.
The missing 10% is really getting to me.
Much you say here is true, but with qualifications. I live in a pretty small village, but my bug out location is carefully selected, and stocked with a year or so's worth of food. I actually already have guerrilla gardens going there, naturalizing fruit trees and some staple crops so they blend in with the environment.
Pasture is a good way to hide wheat or other staple grasses. Trees can be great places to tuck in some berry bushes or fruit trees. Potatoes, carrots and the like can be stuck wherever other herbaceous growth is ongoing. Given a murderous government, like committed the Holodomor, it's extremely important that food production is concealed. Never plant things in rows in a guerrilla garden. Indoor agriculture can be a solution in a concealed shelter, but providing power for lights can be problematic. Solar panels are far too visible, and so are windmills, but hydro can be well hidden and also may be productive of more power for the expense. Suitable sites are far less available when dependent on hydropower though.
There's a few folks quite local to the site, and good people, although I don't interact with them much. I reckon when the time comes, that interaction will develop as necessary, and there's no need to poison that well aforehand.
A bit of planning ahead to make the bug out potentially permanent if necessary is not that hard to do, particularly with solar, food forests, and aquaponics tech nowadays. Folks that just make a comfy hole with some food in it hidden away aren't planning for the gamut of events that could make them want to bug out, and I hope I have.
I recommend the kinds of things I have done as part of the prepwork to folks.
Also, bugging out will never work permanently. Nothing lasts forever, particularly not us. Bugging out will buy time, though, and sometimes the most important thing to have during emerging events is time to figure out WTF is happening and decide what to do about it. The alternative is generally not as useful, although shooting first and asking questions later can buy time too.
Putting a new spin to Secret Garden.
I believe in fighting and in trying.
Yes, but also believe in calling a spade a spade.
Normal is not coming back, so call it moving for a better future instead of bugging out
If you mean that things can get better, that is good, but the fake news is saying that the new normal is social distancing from now until to the end of time.
Actually the future is very tight knit communities called families, and there will be almost no travel. (mostly because the inter-connects brings almost instantaneous communication from text to 3D for any intellectual friends outside of your family)
What i say about "normal" is, the 9-5 job, driving to work, living in a poorly built house that you spend your whole life working to pay off. Jobs, grocery stores, Hollywood, Govern-cement... these things are all going away.
I sure hope so. Those are good things. So, all of this is pushing some people towards making better choices in life, like you said. It might be a question still of how many people or how often people might slow down a bit.
This is mostly how I choose to live. I think a bugout bag is still a required piece of equipment. You never know when you would be forced to leave your homestead for a short period of time. You may be forced to leave permanently at a moments notice.
There are all kinds of things, natural and man made, that can cause you to quickly need to leave an area.
And for that, a bugout bag is a good thing to have.
However, bugout has been used to mean a place where you go to when things get to hot, and you wait for it to cool down before coming back. I just wanted to point out that there will be no coming back.