I’ve completed the “State by State” level analysis series that I posted earlier in the month. For ease of reference, this data is now archived at the Retreat Areas static page. (See the new button in the SurvivalBlog navigation bar.) I’m now moving on to providing detailed retreat locale recommendations. While I’m posting these, please give this some serious thought. Particularly for those of you living east of the Mississippi and for our overseas readers, I would appreciate you sharing your expertise. If you know of a particular region with retreat potential, please e-mail me the details, and I will post them.
To begin, a great site for surveying the extent and type of agriculture in various regions can be found at: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropmap
My post for the next few weeks will include listings of my most highly recommended regions in the western United States to consider for survival retreats. Note: I will likely add to or delete from these posts, based on substantive input from readers. (SurvivalBlog readers never hesitate to tell me when I’m mistaken—and I’m always willing to defer to those with more knowledge!)
Notes on My Sources (These were also used for my State-By-State analysis):
Most of the tax and real estate price data is from 2003 or later references.
The Crime Safety Rankings quoted are based on 2003 data compiled by the Morgan Quinto Awards. This ranking compares six crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle thefts. This data is plugged into a formula that measures how a state compares to the national average for a given crime category. See http://www.MorganQuinto.com for details.
The population density data was calculated by my #2 Son
The health insurance rate data was courtesy of Web M.D. See: http://my.webmd.com/content/article/74/89117.htm
For current information on home schooling laws in various states, see: http://www.hslda.org/laws
For current information on home birth laws in various states, see: http://www.cfmidwifery.org/states/