Category: Retreat Locales

Letter Re: Survival Retreat Potential of Northwest Florida

Mr. Rawles: I live in south Florida. I would like to know your opinion on having a retreat in northwest Florida, Dixie County to be exact, known as the “least populated county in Florida”. I can’t afford to move out of the state right now and I am concerned about driving through major cities if I had to leave in an emergency from down here. I would like to be able to do it on one tank of gas which would put me about 5 or 6 hours away from where I am now. I already have a small piece …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Jim: I finally got a gallery for pictures to the microwave relay bunker that I mentioned near Whitehall, Montana. . Most of them are self-explanatory but there may be some captioning later. Note that even the outhouse was galvanized and grounded. Mil-Spec! I culled through the photos and left mostly the ones that I thought showed the most interesting features – the high ceilings, thick walls, armored shutters,grounding wires, blueprints, commanding view, and of course the tower itself. I also checked my notes and saw that the internal area was approximately 1600’…or about 40’x40′. For those wondering how such a …


Two Letters Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Dear Jim and Family, This is in response to the article about microwave sites for survival shelters. As it happens, I spent half my summer just South of Whitehall, a couple years before I met you in [deleted for OPSEC]. I was finishing my geology degree and the geology of the area is very interesting. This is the new free mapping program through Wikipedia. It allows for annotations and contains good quality aerial photos of the terrain using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The region described around Whitehall is curious and deceptive. For one thing, there’s an active gold mine north …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

James: Here is some info from someone who actually did go to look at one of these things with a preparedness mindset. The one that we looked at was near Whitehall, Montana. If you have a copy of Google Earth you can view it at (46.081522°,-112.115643° … and be sure to change the 3-D angle of view so you can see the terrific commanding view the place has.) The building itself had 8″ thick concrete walls. Over these walls was 4″ of foam insulation and then a layer of stucco. There were no windows but there were vents covered with …


Letter Re: Advice on Retreat Locales–Former Microwave Sites?

Dear Mr. & Mrs Rawles, I want to thank both of you for what you are doing and for SurvivalBlog.com. I’m a 55 year old US-born male currently living in Mexico. I came back here a little over a year ago thinking that I would be here ’til further notice. The last 12 months have changed that and for a number of reasons, the majority of which are how things are changing here, have me seriously considering either moving back to the US or much further south. Survival and self sufficiency are qualities I admire and know a little about. …


Letter Re: Minimum Safe Distance From The Big City for Retreat Locales

Mr. Rawles, If one takes the Rawles Ranch criteria for minimum safe distance from large metropolitan areas – 400 miles from an area of 1 million or more, then one has eliminated all of the west except Montana north of Helena and North Dakota west of Bismarck (With a small piece of South Dakota northwest of Pierre too). Indeed, all of Idaho (the state mentioned in your novel “Patriots”) is excluded by circles drawn on Seattle and Salt Lake. My area of interest (when I’ve paid off the land and can afford to move) in the Big Horn area of …


Preparing for TEOTWAWKI–A Change of Lifestyle and a Change of Mindset, by D.O.

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI): statistically speaking, the odds are that you and your family are going to die. However, because you are reading this, you have decided that you want to die of old age in the event that Schumer hits the fan. 1. Your Level of Preparedness is dependent on where you are living. If you are living in large metro city. Then have about 60 days of supplies. After that time in a true TEOTWAWKI situation living conditions will have deteriorated to the point that it is unlivable and you will die …


Two Letters Re: Minimum Safe Distance From The Big City for Retreat Locales?

Dear Jim, My thoughts on retreat location, or living location (Ideally the same place) are as follows: From recent disasters (Hurricane Katrina, the Kim family, others), I see that most people are bound by societal rules of the road to stick to the Interstates or major highways, and to trust gadgets, without learning the mapping and math behind them. The worst places I can think of to live are the nice country houses one sees from the freeway. These are certain to be looted in a major disaster. US highways aren’t likely to be much of an improvement. However, as …


Letter Re: Is Radio Direction Finding a Potential Threat for Survivalists?

Merry Christmas Jim, For added COMSEC, I strongly advise those with transceivers to leave the microphones unplugged. This is a sure way to limit giveaway radio frequency (RF) emissions. For those who have to make transmissions, for example contacting family members, the use of [highly directional] high gain multi-element “beam” (yagi) or log periodic yagi antennas at the base station would reduce the RF signature. The higher the gain a “beam” antenna has the more elements there are on the boom and therefore the narrower the signal spread will be, in degrees, off the front of the antenna. An antenna …


Letter Re: Minimum Safe Distance From The Big City for Retreat Locales?

Dear Jim: Re your recommendation that a retreat for TEOTWAWKI needs to be “at least one tank of gas away from the big cities–preferably at least 300 miles, if possible” to escape at least the worst of roving looter gangs. I agree 100% — I see getting out of the [path of the] flow of looters as the # 1 problem. Just like real estate – LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. You can store food, and learn how to grow food in time (or barter stored wealth) but no matter how good you are, sooner or later you’ll take casualties if you …


City Versus Country Mindsets and Expectations, by Inyokern

As we all know, City people and Country people have a very different outlook on life. Some of that is opportunity, some is envy, some is ignorance. For the last 120+ years, the US economy (and much of the world economy) has been one of capitalism and materialism. Making stuff and selling it, making the economy grow until the physical limits are reached. Well, they’ve been reached. Peak Oil has led to the beginning of what is probably a pretty long collapse, but I can only judge based on the Roman Empire and the 1929 crash, history, rather than compare …


Letter Re: America’s Interstate Highway and Freeway System in Decline

Hello James, Another indicator of America’s decline: our interstate highway system. [The following was in part excerpted from a Department of Transportation history web page. and from an article at The Tax Foundation web site.] The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1952 authorized the first funding specifically for construction of the interstate highway system, but it was only a token amount of $25 million a year for fiscal years (FY) 1954 and 1955. Legislation in 1954 authorized an additional $175 million annually for FY 1956 and 1957. Under the leadership of President Eisenhower, the question of how to fund the Interstate …


Letter Re: Total Tax Burdens of States as a Determining Factor in Relocation

James: I noted the snippet [from the recently released book Rawles on Retreat and Relocation] about tax burden by state recently on SurvivalBlog. This is a topic that has always confused me. You can find this kind of information in several places online, but it is often contradictory and it is very difficult to figure out how they come up with the numbers. I have lived most of my life in New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. In Wyoming, we had no state income tax, limited sales tax (5% state and a max of 1% local, if I recall correctly), and …


Letter Re: Property Owning “Refugees” on Adjoining Property

Mr. Rawles, Thank you for putting so much effort into your blog and your writings. I bought your novel “Patriots” a few years back, dog eared it, and passed it around. To my wife’s consternation (and my to the consternation of my brothers’ wives), you’ve started to make a difference in how we look at life. Your blog is a daily “must read.” Since I live 200 miles from my brothers in Iowa (my most likely doubling-up partners) I have to consider a retreat farther north in Wisconsin. There are large tracts of federal, state, and county forest, plus the …


Two Letters Re: Opinion on The Retreat Potential of New Hampshire?

Hi, Jim: I appreciated your comments regarding New Hampshire as a potential retreat site in today’s SurvivalBlog item. While I live in Idaho and am mostly pleased with the state, I did have occasion to visit Vermont six months ago. I was highly impressed with several gun stores I visited, and from information I learned from the stores’ staff members. In actuality, I was very surprised that their gun laws were less restrictive than Idaho’s. Thanks for the blog and your writings. Cheers! – TLP JWR Replies: The gun laws in Vermont are indeed favorable (most notably the legality of …