Under what circumstances would you "bug-out"?

I've been reading the threads about contents of bug-out-bags, and considering the recent hurricane, my wife and I were discussing this.

To me the purpose of the bug-out-bag is to have some supplies handy so you can grab them if you have to leave with very short notice. But when would you need to do this- in the event of earthquake? terrorist attack? fire? riots?

I live in a big city, not in an earthquake zone, and away from large buildings and government stuff. I'm thinking that I should concentrate on survival stuff at home and not worry so much about trying to get out of here. There would probably be no such thing as trying to evacuate here quickly- we could get out of the house quickly but we would be sitting in traffic for quite awhile. Well, maybe I would need to get out of my office and head home, I could use a BOB for that.

What scenarios does everyone else contemplate? Would you be better off leaving your home or staying?

There is a dam holding back a big lake maybe 12 miles from here, and I'm not more than a mile from the river it feeds.

That said, I don't imagine I'd have anywhere enough notice to even try to bug out. If it doesn't wipe my house off the face of the earth or kill me I figure I'll be just fine right here!

We are subject to tornados, and ice storms here. Tornados come up so quickly, and change directions so rapidly that you have to know where the closest shelter in place would be. During this years ice storm we lost electricity for over a week, and had to relocate to a relatives house about 10 miles away. Of course we could make trips back to the home to get what we needed. In the event of a chemical spill at a plant close by we would put up plastic, and shelter inplace unless enough warning was available. About the onlly reason I would have to bug out would be nuclear. Since this is the "Air Capital" we are towards the top of the hit list. If you are not in the blast radius, and can read the plume quick enough you can escape the fallout within a 20 minute walk perpendicular to the prevailing winds. During a colapse of civil structure we would be holding up in place until we could safely escape the area. Probably under the cover of darkness.

Our big danger is from flood due to a failing levy system (Northern California).
It's not something that will happen without a good bit of advance warning.
Knowing the escape route, having some clothes, and maybe some water and snacks are all that would be needed if the people leave when it is suggested.

I'm one of the idiots who will put on yellow clothes and try to convince people that the town can flood, even if it never has before.

Our levys are in poor repair and guard people. The levys on the other side of the river are owned by big business, are in good repair and higher than ours and guard their trees.

Tornado is the #1 hazard in the Dallas area, although flash floods happen occasionally and once every 5 years or so the newspaper gets another chance to publish a photograph one of the highway bridges over the Trinity sinking into the river.

Locally ... there is a creek behind my apartment building that floods rather impressively once or twice a year during the violent thunderstorms that roll through the area spring through summer. I've yet to see it get high enough to do much more than cover the bike path 8' below the building in up to 6" of water. The buildings on the other side are about 5' lower than we are, on the outside of the curve... I think they'll have more to worry about than I do.

We get ice storms, but those are mostly inconvenience.

I'm not suere there are any other plausible disasters to plan for. "Civil unrest," fire, rain of frogs - those I just have to deal with on a case-by-case basis.

It's also good for the unexpected.

That factory you didn't know about 20 miles away catches fire and starts blowing toxins toward you. That train you didn't think about that wrecks and spills contanimants. That plane that dropped out of the sky into your neighborhood. That stray lightning bolt that just blew through your den and your house is on fire. The ruptured water main that thought your home would look good as a city fountain. The underground gas line that blows a crater in your street.

The stuff you don't think would happen but could.

Icebreak's got it. All the things you can't think of (or don't want to), would be the real reasons to bail. I'd abandon our home for anything that threatened my family's life or well-being. If my house was a pile of rubble and my family was in my arms, I'd have no worries.

Icebreak remembers the chemical factory explosion we had here in my town. I worked right next to it for years and never knew what they did. Toxic cloud, and a city wide evac was ordered. Out of the 45,000 people, probably only a few hundred left. It wasn't needed as it turned out, but it could have gone either way. I was out of town in less than 12 minutes. You can't predict what will happen, and there is no way to prepare 100% the odds may just get you. You can't eat ammo, and you can't defend yourself with protien bars, everything is a compromise. I am into being light and fast, my BOB (I have two) are both backpacks in case I have to walk. I have a very fast small car that gets good gas mileage so I can go a long way fast on a tank of gas. The basics are the same - food, lights, etc. The other things I carry are a police scanner and a small solar battery charger. If you bug out, you are going to need to know what is going on and there is no better way than listening to emergency services about what is really going on. I have three very remote areas I will camp at that my family knows about.

Can anyone find that old thread here in the Cafe? I can't get it to work.

My home is in an earthquake prone area, but that's about it. Maybe an urban fire similar to the one in Oakland a while ago would be a big problem. In case of fire, we'd leave, of course - but as long as our building was still safe, we'd stay after an earthquake. I am only a couple miles from a large downtown and very large shipping port, so a terrorist attack is certainly possible. We'd leave in that case, too.

Essentially, we have two "bug-out" bags. One small one in the car with some food (cat food and people food), tools, first aid, water, etc. A larger one in the house with more of the same. We have several gallons of water in the apartment. Several weapons and ammunition. Our apartment is small enough that if we had to leave quickly, we could grab most of the necessities within a couple minutes, but it's nice to have that one bag packed with a majority of the things we'd need. Saves time.

Some things, like my ham radios, guns, and best flashlights, we don't keep in the bug-out-bag; we use them/keep them around the apartment and it wouldn't be convenient to always put them back in the bag. Ideally, we'd have dedicated emergency radios/etc, but we don't.

We don't have a BOB as such, but we are avid backpackers so we keep the packs pretty much ready to go.

We live in line of sight of the Pentagon.

When the plane hit on 9/11 I was home sick. I turned on the news long enough to see the broadcasts about the towers, then the pentagon, then I went out and filled up my gas tank and threw the packs in the Jeep and called my wife (at work) and told her that if she didn't hear from me again before quitting time that she should not try to come home and should just head straight to our inlaws cabin (out in the wilds of WV).

I would say we came within about 20 minutes of bugging out.

you bug out when the dangers of staying are more than the dangers of leaving. I live on the coast. I'm only 20 feet above sea level on my first floor, if a cat4 or 5 is heading in then my family and I are out of here. There is no point in bugging in if you're not going to be able to survive inside your house.

Bug out when the danger can't be mitigated by just staying put. People have already covered most everything. toxic clouds, major storms, flooding, wild fires, etc. Also if some disaster elsewhere is going to take away your infrastructure for longer than you can hold out. If it's january in Wisconsin and you have 3 days worth of heating oil left and only a cord of wood in the backyard and the power or gas for your heat is going to be off for more than a few days, you better get out before you're out of it. As far as I'm concerned the same applies for extended power outages of no AC in Georgia! If the conditions will be unlivable then get out. It's not cool to suffer and hunker down when you could get in the car and in a few hours be holed up with family or in a hotel or at a decent campground or something with better facilities. But in this case you would have more time to get it together and get out.

A very small BOB can also be great use in a city, something you can keep in your car or your day pack that would let you get out from the office and not have to make the trip cross town to your house to pick it up first.

In my case with the children, I dont think that bugging in for a long term outage of any kind is going to be realistic. We're leaving. Much better to spend a day stuck in traffic and miserable, than 2 weeks miserable with no supplies and no AC and no diapers!

I don't think it gets anymore explanitory than Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds...

"We're leaving this house in 60 seconds..."

Thats where the bug out bag comes in handy.

Mark

Maybe if there were a lot of bugs coming (at you)?!?

The problem with the concept of bugging out is judging the threat accurately. The people who stayed in New Orleans thought the threat was exagerated, so they stayed.

I live 5 miles or so from the Calaveras eqthquake fault, 12 miles from the hayward fault. Part of our emergency preparedness is checking the flood maps and quake maps to see what your exposure is. Our biggest threat is building collapse. As a result, our bailout bag is outside the house in a locked structure that is not likely to collapse.

We'd probably NOT bug out unless it's a case of civil unrest. We are only 20 miles from Oakland and we are right on the path of any evacuation to the east. That puts us in harm's way. Of course, a dirty bomb or release of an infectious disease would also prompt us to head for the hills.

Minjin said:

I don't think it gets anymore explanitory than Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds...
"We're leaving this house in 60 seconds..."
Thats where the bug out bag comes in handy.
Mark

Click to expand...

I could not have said it better myself...
The problem would be that you must be at home to get your main BOB. I keep a mini BOB in each vehicle.
The wife and I have pre arranged meeting places and contact points for when SHTF scenarios. You will know when to GTFO of Dodge. If you ever have to ask yourself "Stay or leave?", just doing so means it is time to go. At the worst, its an unplanned road trip, at best you beat all of the traffic.

I guess there were several different thoughts in my mind...

1) When would you need to bug out. Under what circumstances would it be better to leave than to stay.

2) If you have to bug out, how much time (advance warning) do you have. So do you have to have everything already ready or do you have time to gather it then.

3) If it is a small local disturbance causing you to leave then will services be available a short distance away. If a local factory blows smoke then would it be realistic to drive 10 miles away and stop at the store for food and supplies rather than try to have it all packed up and ready to take with you.

People have brought up some points that I had not thought of such as industrial accidents, tornado, etc. Most of these would be localized things in that you could travel a short distance away and find intact infrastructure, thus you don't need to take much with you.

But really the main point in my mind was if a person is going to plan for a bug-out event, wouldn't it be more likely that they would need to survive in place and shouldn't they put more effort into planning and stocking up for such an event. We personally, except for flashlights, don't have our house very well stocked with survival stuff. I need to come up with a plan to address that. I'm going to start a new thread for that type of discussion.

My situation is a little different,
I have a bug out backpack with my family's passports, visas, checks and identification inside. If the evac order hits, they are already pre-processed out of this country with a travel itinerary back to the states. Within 45 minutes planes start to roll out and they are on them with all the paperwork pre-filled out and signed by me. Me? I am left behind to deal with whatever the problem is at that time. As a medical person, I am one of the last to leave...
I have played games were I got a call in the middle of the night, grabbed my bags and made it to the flightline in 30 minutes... we took a ride for two hours and circled back. That is the time you think about what you packed in those bags!
After all these years of playing for fun and other times... for real, it becomes second nature. If you want to make sure you have everything you need... and not carrying stuff you don't. "Bug out" and hang out in the woods (or wherever) for the weekend. Amazing how certain things become useful (MREs, water, flashlights, tent, blanket and shortwave)
One of the things I will add to bug out is an electric scooter I have here (modified with more powerful motor/controller) I'll add larger capacity batteries and look up some solar panels. It will fold up small enough and fit in the trunk easily. Load the bike rack on the trunk and throw two bikes on it.
The bug out meeting place for my extended family is 9 acres of farmland in Indiana. Fresh water creek, backup generators, diesel storage tanks, goats and enough weapons and ammo to hold off a small army. The only thing missing is a windmill for electricity... I am researching that. That county has a disaster plan with maps, buried storage areas and defensive positions. Out in the boonies those farmers are prepared to handle snow storms, tornadoes, natural disasters, man-made disasters and all out chaos. My brother tells me out there life can be hard, but it brings the people together as a team to solve the problems before they happen.
Yes, they have Vietnam Vets in that county and the way everything is setup... they know what they are doing. I feel sorry for any thief, criminal or terrorist that crosses that land! If they get some solar panels and windmills, they can be self-sufficient for years. I tasted some home-made beer stored in an underground storage area (around 55F year-round) if tornadoes threaten, they go down there and pop a few brews and play cards.
At first, it sounded a bit strange to me (I visited in 1994), but now it is making more and more sense. Always good to know that if everything goes to hell, there is a backup plan. Taking action instantly is always better than relying on FEMA, the Red Cross or National Guard.

I tend to keep all of our important stuff in some kind of bag, or briefcase. Just in case. If I have to go I can grab the briefcase that has all of medical records, legal documents, id's, and so forth. I have another bag loaded with flashlights, and fireams with pleanty of ammo for both. And so on. All of this on top of my BOB's

Good ideas, all.

Anti_Candescent -

My thoughts exactly.

big cozy -

Yes, I will not forget that...ever. When I saw that huge dark cloud barreling in from miles away it looked like an odd and evil thunderstorm system. It was that event that caused me to re-evaluate my bugout capabilities as well as tactics and strategies. Here's one change I made:

When I get an idea for the bags I write it down so when I run across something I need I can check it off the list. I re-evaluate the bags more often. They aren't static. Like when I read this thread I got a couple more ideas so they go on the list for purchase.

It sounds like you've got it down to a science. I like that you and yours have pre-determined redezvous places.

Yeah that cloud really got my attention.

"We are leaving this house in 60 seconds." EXACTLY.

I've had a "camping bag" for ~30 years before I ever heard the term "bug-out-bag." I guess it sort of qualifies. My home is too far up hill to worry about a tsunami, and a fire-storm is really unlikely in Costa Mesa, short of a thermonuclear incident. :green: What remains is the San Andreas and Newport-Inglewood faults, which have historically made a pretty good mess of SoCal. My home is single story, stud and stucco construction, and *should* survive "the big one" with only a bunch of plaster and stucco cracks. (As to myself, hopefully, I won't end-up underneath my water bed! Should "the big one" happen, I have a couple weeks' food supply and water to match. Lawlessness will undoubtedly be an issue, but I have that covered better than illumination during the power outtage!

Were I to have to actually "Bug-out," I co-own a shack out in the Mojave (135Mi and two routes.) and have friends in that area. Some alarmists/real estate agents say potential "beach front" property! Yes I am lucky!!!! Short of cosmic interferance, I think I am prepared.

Larry