Bugging Out – An Activity Better Shared

Getting from your normal residence to your retreat during a time of emergency is something that may (or – hopefully – may not) be a difficult and challenging experience.

We all hope that due to our greater level of awareness, we’ll recognize a society-destroying event sooner than the other people around us, and so we anticipate having a head start over the rest of the population.  While others are passively waiting for the government to magically come and save them, and are anxiously eating the last of the food in their cupboards, we’re ‘getting out of Dodge’ and making our way to our retreat, wherever it may be.

But that’s a best case scenario, isn’t it.  We sometimes see how the slightest flashpoints can create sudden outbreaks of rioting and lawlessness, and particularly if the route to our retreat takes us unavoidably through other population concentrations on the way, while we can cross our fingers and hope for the best, it is more prudent to also plan for some less optimum situations as well.

Many people write about increasingly convoluted strategies to succeed in getting to one’s retreat – indeed, we write a lot on the essential topic of how to bug out, too – see our collection of articles on bugging out.

But one of the most overlooked strategies that can most directly boost the positive outcome of getting to our retreat is a very simple one.  Travel with other people.  Don’t do it alone, by yourself.

If you simply travel with a second couple or family, in a second vehicle, you then have an automatic back-up and redundancy.  Your vehicle could fail, or theirs could, and hopefully you could then all squash into the one vehicle to continue your journey.

Plus you have more skills and resources at hand.  Maybe if you have a problem with your vehicle, between the larger group of you, you will have the resources, the tools, and the spare parts to solve the problem and resume your journey.  You only need one set of tools, no matter how many vehicles in the group traveling together, so you can have some cars save weight, and/or carry more and other things instead.

There’s a very great truth in the adage ‘safety in numbers’.  Casual opportunistic ‘bandits’, rogue cops, or whatever other challenges you might face while bugging out will be more interested in picking off single vehicles without witnesses or support vehicles nearby.  In the early stages of bugging out, the various lawless groups will not yet have coalesced into any sort of organized and more formidable form, they will be ad hoc small groups of individuals seeking to prey on even smaller groups of victims.

Of course, if the people you plan to bug out with are slow and unwilling to leave when you wish to leave, you have to make a difficult decision – which is preferable?  The head start and time advantage of leaving early before a mass exodus and a rise of lawlessness making your travels both more difficult and more dangerous?  Or the extra comfort and security of having other people to travel with you?

The answer to that difficult question depends a bit on your circumstance and the route and conditions involved in traveling to your retreat.  We’d certainly advocate getting out of your city as a high priority, and maybe agreeing to meet up with other members of your community at a relatively safe location part-way along the route, in a less populated area.

This is part of the benefit of the Code Green Halfway House, for people traveling to reach the Code Green community retreat.  Even if there is no-one else in your local town, by the time you get to the Halfway House, you are likely to meet up with other people who are fanning in from other areas, and you can then travel the rest of the way in a more secure convoy.

The bottom line is clear and self-evident, but seldom stated.  No matter what mode of vehicle you are using, your bugging out plan should start with an attempt to join up with fellow preppers and to travel together.  This is clearly another reason why you need to have a retreat community, rather than just a single residence for only yourself and immediate family.