How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [16]
If you are an eastern urbanite you might come to the conclusion that you need to buy “a cabin in upstate New York “ or “a brick house in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens,” but this would be a mistake. A rural area that is within an overall heavily populated region is not truly rural. It lacks real isolation from the basic problem—population. You will need to be at least one tank of gas away from the big cities—preferably no less than three hundred miles, if possible.
The northeastern states depend on nuclear power plants for 47 percent of their electricity. (South Carolina is similarly dependent.) This is an unacceptable level of high-technology-systems dependence, particularly in light of the emerging terrorist threat. You must also consider that virtually all of the eastern states are downwind of major nuclear targets—most notably the U.S. Air Force missile fields in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Colorado. If for one reason or another you are stuck in the Northeast, then consider New Hampshire or Vermont. They are both gun friendly and have a more self-sufficient lifestyle. But unless you have a very compelling reason to stay in the East, I most strongly encourage you to Go West!
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