Dear Editor:
As you likely know from my prior communications, I am a long time reader of your web site, your novel “Patriots”, and your recent “Rawles on Retreats and Relocation” book, which is, other things being equal, well written and interesting. However, the obvious exclusion, which you freely articulate, is the Eastern US. I’ m bringing this up for two reasons:
1) I am an ex-military Emergency Room Physician, who is convinced that TEOTWAWKI is very, very near ( the next signal is when the US Dollar Index goes below 77, that’s it! The “Patriots” [economic collapse] model will then come into full play), who is personally looking at retreats in the middle and east Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, north Georgia, and western North Carolina regions. These are the areas that I am most familiar with, having grown up hunting and fishing, there. Although I have a heavily supplied, fairly secluded and defensible, and very well armed suburban outpost with several highly skilled sons for fire support, I am looking for a secondary retreat for when it looks as if our ammo is exceeded by the number of urban zombies (or, police state drones, same thing) invading the “burbs.” Thus, I am seeing a lot of land that is reasonably priced and fairly remote from the Golden Horde and it seems that such represents a logical retreat location. Obviously the Boston/Washington DC corridor, and at least 200, maybe 300, miles surrounding it, is to be avoided, as when TSHTF, the skill-less, resource-less, dependent, sometimes brain-less hordes from that region will descend upon the rest of humanity like locusts. Otherwise, I see many areas East of the Mississippi River that might be included in a listing of potentially useful survival sites.
2) I suspect that many of your readers are from the East of the Mississippi area, and can’t, as I can’t, truly relate to the Western regions. (Although I’ve hunted in the West and the main difference is that you guys don’t have “true woods” with heavy thickets that require snake pants and machetes for movement.) I think that you either you need to look at producing a new “retreats” book focusing on the East (which it is clear you aren’t really interested in, from the forward in Rawles on Retreats and Relocation or we need a sub-forum on this topic for a detailed, ongoing discussion. Maybe an area of your web site site for discussion on this topic. Much thanks for your work, – Wardoctor
JWR Replies: You are correct. As I wrote in the opening chapter of Rawles on Retreats and Relocation I only have recommendations on 19 western states, (excluding 29 eastern states) for two major reasons: 1.) their high ambient population density, and 2.) their downwind locations, in the path of fallout from the U.S. Air Force missile fields, roughly half of which are around the juncture of Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming, and large fields in central Montana and north-central North Dakota. (Where the vast majority of enemy “throw weight” would presumably land, nearly all in the form of fallout-producing ground bursts.) And, BTW, even if I thought those locales were suitable for retreats, I wouldn’t feel qualified to write on the subject, since I am a westerner. (I haven’t traveled extensively in the eastern U.S.)
I recommend that SurvivalBlog readers that are interested in retreats east of the Mississippi River should chime in on a new thread of discussion at the The Claire Files, in their “Gulching” Forum. I just started a new thread titled: “From SurvivalBlog: What are the Best Eastern Retreat Locales?)