I was talking with an old friend and the subject of the ongoing war in Ukraine came up. He asserted that he would have acted to leave Ukraine sooner, if he had been there. Frankly, I don’t think he would have, and I told him that. I based that on the fact that during the recent Antifa rioting, he point-blank denied that there were riots within an hour of him. When he could no longer deny that riots were occurring, he opined that it was “basically a different world” and again, made no preparation. If he could deny all that, then why would he have accepted the difference, in Ukraine? He didn’t have a real answer other than “Well, it would be different.”
I think a lot of people in the United States don’t understand what that choice entailed, for the people caught in between. The brutal reality that Ukrainian refugees face is far more than Americans are used to thinking about, namely:
- Foreign language in bordering countries
- International travel (with attendant costs, luggage logistics, and papers)
- Hostile attitude towards you (eastern Europeans)
- Knowing that refugees are easy pickings and actively targeted
- Corruption even in neighboring cities in your own country
- Information hellscape: Your wife alone or, your wife with your kid(s) trying to make sense of it all.
- Recognizing that you only have limited money and that bugging out will deplete your savings. You may run out of cash in a foreign country.
That’s a heck of a choice. It would be much easier if you had family living across the border. But that’s not everybody.
What I tried to communicate to my friend is that this choice looks a lot easier from the outside. Especially when you consider that the war in Ukraine, as horrifying as it is, is not total war. Precious little comfort that is to those who have lost in the horror that always is part of war. Yet the fact remains that this is a limited war. If you know it is limited then you can bring the potential danger of being a refugee to a gargantuan pitch in your own head and downplay the situation you face. This is a very human reaction.
Tough Decisions
It’s no easy thing to know when to leave and we should all turn it over in our heads. When would we have left? Why that point? What would it have cost? In your prediction of what you think is a risk for you, what would the analogous point be for you? As you run this thought experiment I want to add two large concerns that are easily overlooked in the current pampered state of the US and the casual ideas we tend to have.
1. Social reality still in place.
There are authority figures with force behind them as well as voluntary contracts between citizens and companies. You can still contract with taxis and trains. There is still some measure of police presence. Money still buys things. In general that’s a good thing in that it keeps the “war of all against all” from taking hold. On the other hand the social reality is thin and can change in an instant. The train is canceled, you may or may not get on the next one. Wait and see. No promises, no refunds. Sound fun? In a horrible irony we start relying on it more as it becomes weaker.
Whatever problems there were with corruption in the social reality expect them to be get worse. That’s not a shot at Ukraine it’s just reality. I watched the first season of Zelensky’s Servant of the People well before the current war and it is one of my favorite political satires of all time. The heart of the entire show is that the corruption that keeps Ukraine from being what it could be is so omnipresent that it’s a constant fight to make any progress. The upshot of all this is that when you start at a place where price gouging, extortion, and bribes are the norm for official business, then how do you think it goes as the peace is broken?
American readers should not breathe too easy about being free from corruption. I have had money extorted from me to get my bag on a bus — and this was one of the more expensive busses rather than Greyhound. I have seen a fellow passenger’s bag stolen, mere yards from me as we all waited in the middle of the night with no shelter for the connecting bus. I was “interviewed” by that same criminal minutes before. I learned about “interviewing” after I learned firsthand its existence. That was pre-pandemic with good times. It’s worse now as our social order has weakened. It is an order of magnitude worse in the Ukraine where the social reality is shifting. It’s there but in flux.
Understand this. You (or your wife and kids) need to be able to keep safe by force or trickery in an unsafe world. You also need to be able to interface with legitimate (and harried and overstretched and possibly corrupt) organizations. What does that have to do with bugging out? Consider:
You have to present yourself well.
You can’t show up looking like a soldier on patrol and expect to interface well with border guards and NGOs. You don’t want to be a borderline case, you want to give them reasons to say “yes” and “that’s reasonable”. You don’t want to be extra work or “almost able to help you but…” and you don’t want to look hugely out of step.
You can’t opt-out of civilization entirely but you can’t pack like it’s a vacation.
You’ll need official documents. Phones, much as I hate them, are important as that tech allows communication, identification, as well video records that you may need to protect yourself. It may be more important than purifying water.
At the same time, you can’t straggle because you packed wheeled luggage that you thought you’d only have to carry 100 feet to a moving conveyor belt. You might need to hike a mile over rough ground. While shepherding your kids. And straggling is always bad.
You must put yourself in the hands of others who you can’t simply trust.
Extortion, Predation, and Con Artists are things you need to have on your radar. At the same time, you have to trust others to process you (and your children). You have to be adaptable, since beggars can’t be choosers.
None of this sounds appealing. This should make you understand just how bad “staying put” might be. And, as atrocities come to light, remember that these are not new. Mass murder, killing of the wounded, torture of prisoners, rape, starvation, dehydration, destruction of whole cities and farms around them is as old as Rome. In light of that, fleeing and putting yourself in others’ hands can seem a reasonable choice.
2. Everything you leave behind may be lost forever.
Caches are a partial hedge. The things you left behind at home may be stolen or requisitioned. The home itself may be destroyed, in whole or in part. There are no guarantees that anything will be there. You’re going to likely abandon things. So, be ready to cache things, and accept the fact that they might be lost forever. Have an idea what kind of risk you’re running if someone else finds that cache.
Think of caching long term and short term. I have been in a situation where an outing required more security and regulation than I anticipated. Legally I was in the clear for the larger area but the activity had its own policies and metal detectors. I could not keep my knife on me and still participate, and to get back to my car would have been a half-hour travel time. So I surreptitiously cached it. I identified an area with lots of ground cover and a permanent landmark (lamp-post). I then performed a normal action (a stumble) that allowed me to drop and conceal the multi-tool in the area. Afterward, I was able to retrieve it. That’s a very short-term cache. I’ve also done that with backpacks but the larger the item the harder it is to cache. Importantly, I would not have done that with a firearm, since the risk that it would wind up in the wrong hands is far too high.
A long-term cache would be for things that you cannot take with you but don’t want looters to take. You’re talking about burying a large thing probably on your own personal property. There are plenty of guides out there on large-scale, long-term caching. In this case, you are burying something for when you come back to your property months or years later. Think about the worst possible outcome (that tree might be destroyed, your house may collapse) how will you find where you put it? And, of course, remember that you may never come back. So does it make more sense to sell it, even for pennies on the dollar? Would you rather give it to someone in the area? Only you will be able to answer that.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)