Category: Retreat Locales

Letter Re: The Advent of McBunkers

Hi Mr. Rawles, Here’s an interesting article I just came across: Bunker Mentality: The Ultimate Underground Shelter. This is the web site for the company: Terra Vivos. I guess this concept was inevitable and I would expect that more companies would get into this business. While I don’t fault anyone from wanting to be prepared, I just see tremendous logistical problems that I doubt would be surmountable. It also seems to me that these “McBunkers” might represent a large bullseye target from opportunists. Take care, – BB JWR Replies: I agree! Be very wary of large scale commercial ventures with …


Letter Re: Advice on Moving Offshore

J. Rawles: My wife and I have the chance to buy a farm in the Toledo [southern] district of Belize. With our savings, and [with] what we net out of selling [our house] in San Diego, I can afford to pay cash for it. I really feel the need to “Get Outta Dodge”. The farm has two springs and a creek. I’m self-employed. I write software, freelance, mostly for my former employer. I earn around $80K per year. That [much income] is considered a fortune [in Belize.] I speak decent Spanish, and my wife is fully fluent [in Spanish]. (She …


A Practical, Full Spectrum Suburban Survival Plan, by JIR

Survival planning can be overwhelming and a lot of the advice you get is not practical or compatible with our lifestyles. A lot of us choose, or are forced to live in the crowded East Coast far too close to cities to survive TEOTWAWKI. I dare say, a lot of SurvivalBlog readers live in suburbs just outside medium to large population centers. Many of us have jobs that don’t migrate to small towns and would face a substantial loss of income if we moved away from our livelihoods. Some of us like our current lives and feel that hunkering down …


Letter Re: Demographics and Population Density Map Resources

Mr. Rawles: I’ve seen a few posts mentioning Population Density maps, but what I’ve seen so far doesn’t let you really drill into a particular geographic region. Webfoot has population density maps (among other demographics) based on the 2000 census, and using Google Maps. With webfoot you can drill down to a city level and get a good granular picture of an area, instead of inferring density from a static, US-wide map. It can be a little slow to load, but the wait is worth it. So if you’re like me, and trapped in the Northeast, you can use this …


Suburban Survival, by The Suburban 10

I am a public school teacher with five kids and one income. There is little in the way of extra cash to protect the family, but I will do my best to prepare for TEOTWAWKI. If you want to plan well; plan as if it was a lesson plan and you are going to teach it to a class. My class is my family the the goal being not to get anyone panicked (Refer to # 9 below). Having a receptive audience is difficult, because of what I deem…complacent comforts. These are built into the core and routine of our …


A Personal Journey in Preparedness, by Mountain Man

I’m fairly new to SurvivalBlog but now it’s an every day read. I wanted to write and share my own journey of preparedness with you and your readers. After living with three and a half million people for about 22 years, a move to the country was long over due. I made the decision to get out of the city back in 1999, when I starting to take things a bit more seriously with all of the talk about Y2K. I was really hoping that something would have happened back then so I could test my skills at being prepared …


Letter Re: Northeastern Colorado as a Retreat Locale

Dear Mr. Rawles: Having read both of the letters about Northeastern Colorado Retreats and having personally lived the general area since 1967 I wish to offer the following comments. I believe there are merits in both letters. The area is best described as semi-arid with an annual rainfall in the range of 12-13 inches per year; but, keep in mind we are recovering from a 10 year drought with average annual rainfall around 8 inches. These averages are accurate as our family has farmed and have kept accurate records since 1973. We have a large garden and routinely can more …


A “10% Test” Survival Trip by C.J. in Helena Montana Edited by Capt. Barr

I work as an independent hospital contractor. Our home base is in Montana, but I am independent. I work as temporary health care staff at hospitals, being licensed in about 5 states. I usually make pretty good money traveling, but I miss having a fixed point in case of crisis. My wife and I really enjoy living in Montana, we were having a good life: hunting in the mountains panning for gold and camping. While working at a good paying contract, the hospital I was with had asked about renewing the job for another several weeks. I accepted the renewal …


Letter Re: Northeastern Colorado as a Retreat Locale

James: I read this article and I must say that I have a few disagreements with it. I grew up in Washington County, Colorado. Yes, it’s a wide open space with some farming, lots of ranching and a general self-reliant attitude, but there is a definite downside. 1) Weather – the weather in this area is turbulent to say the least. Expect occasional white-outs and definite bone chilling wind all the long winter. Summers are either dry enough to scorch crops or rain, hail or tornado’s flood do their thing. In all the years our family has farmed in the …


Letter Re: Northeastern Colorado as a Retreat Locale

Sir, Having lived in the northeastern corner of the state for the past 16 years (retired from the Air Force in 1994), I can give you some accurate information about the area for your readers who are considering moving to a retreat area. The northeast is a very sparsely populated part of the state. I live in Washington county which has an area of some two million plus acres but only has about 5,000 or so people living here. The area is mainly in farming and ranching, and the far eastern part of this corner of the state is located …


Letter Re: A G.O.O.D. Memorial Day Weekend Test

Dear Jim, Greetings and thank you, to you and all your wonderful contributors of the past. As most of us live in the ‘City’ or suburb of the ‘City’, there is a feeling of when TEOTWAWKI occurs, we will grab our G.O.O.D. bag get in our vehicle and head out to our personal retreat, hidden from the Golden Horde. One quick question – when will the TEOTWAWKI occur? What date? What time? And how will we know it has occurred? As I have read most of the writings from the beginning until now, I seem to have missed that date, …


Letter Re: Some Thoughts on The Golden Horde

One of the SurvivalBlog concepts that has fascinated (and haunted) me since learning of it has been the concept of the Golden Horde: the exodus of the unprepared-but-entitled softies, fleeing the cities in search of food, water and shelter after a SHTF scenario. I say “haunted” because – out of necessity – my retreat lies in the middle of a triangle formed by three medium-size cities, so I’ve long suspected that I would be in prime Golden Horde country. In order to understand what such an exodus might actually look like, I decided to make some assumptions about travel behavior …


Letter Re: Terrain and Arboreal Camouflage for Retreats

Mr. Rawles, Well, we survived this latest storm but it gave me time to finish your novel “Patriots”. It was a very easy read and full of useful information. I know I have so much to learn. It really has helped me put things into perspective as far as priorities and what is or isn’t important in life. I can only think of two areas that were not covered well enough that I feel would help in this type of environment: The first area is the design and use of landscape and terrain to help conceal a retreat. The impression …


Letter Re: Finding “Just a Little Piece of Land”

Sir: Do you know of any good web sites that list where you can buy just an acre or so of land in the woods, where people wouldn’t expect you to actually live? I live right on the Florida/Georgia state line so there’s plenty of land around. However, parcels are typically sold in 50 acres or 100 acre chunks. Or [with a lot] they expect you to turn it into a house with a mailbox and all that. I just want some woods. My goal is to excavate for an underground storage shed, with small sleeping quarters. I’ll then gradually …


Letter Re: Are Decommissioned Missile Silos Still Potential Nuclear Targets?

Jim, I know your time is valuable,so I will get right to it. The recent post on buying [decommissioned underground US Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic] missile sites raises a question. Aren’t these sites vulnerable during nuclear attacks/exchange with a foreign country? Thanks for your site and your service. – John JWR Replies: They would only be pinpoint targets if the Soviets are still using ancient targeting data, and that is very unlikely. From all that I have read, they simply are no longer included in the “target structure” for any nation states that are potential combatants. (Like Russia, China, and …