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 are in the [path of the] “looter flow.”
The question I am wrestling with, is — if you can’t move full time to your retreat, what is the minimum distance you can afford to be from a major metro area, say 1 million people?
Obviously the further away the better for safety — but you also want to be as close as possible as well:
You want to be close enough that you could get to it bugging out on foot, in a worst case scenario.
You want to be close enough to be able to commute there regularly to upgrade, do maintenance, check on your property, etc., etc. … (It would be heartbreaking to find your remote retreat burglarized after bugging out, because you hadn’t been there in months.)
You want to be close enough to be able to talk your spouse into bugging out of the city when the situation looks like it could go bad, but there is no clear go decision.
The closer it is, the easier it is to talk your spouse into the value as a weekend home as well as for survival.
It’s a very tough tradeoff decision.
Obviously you can come in closer, less un-safely, if your retreat is in a very inaccessible and/or hidden spot, e.g., dead end road, hilly, wooded terrain, not visible from the road, and not within hiking distance of nearby roads. Inaccessibility is probably more important than straight mileage. For example, 300 miles out of Dodge, but just one mile off the Interstate Highway is still useless.
You could even get creative with building below grade, camouflage, etc., etc. to be even lower profile. Also if you have a well trained team with sufficient numbers, and your perimeter security is very tight, you might want to chance being closer.
What else could you do to lower the distance needed? Bottom line – how close is no good, vs. how close is a reasonable tradeoff? Yours truly, – OSOM
JWR Replies: As I’ve written many times before, it is best to live at your intended retreat, year round. I realize that this isn’t feasible for everyone. If you can’t live there, at least pre-position the vast majority of your beans, bullets and Band-aids. Have a trusted friend be your full time caretaker. Be prepared to “Get Out Of Dodge” on very short notice. And if things start to look dicey, do not hesitate to bug out and beat “The Golden Horde” out of town.
One thing that you could do to to reduce the distance required is to studiously avoid natural lines of drift. (Such as major highways, river valleys, railroad tracks, and coastal liitorals.) There are potential retreat locales perhaps just 75 miles from major cities that might be bypassed because they are on disadvantageous terrain. (Think in terms of hilly country with just a few small access roads, islands, properties that are on the far side of natural obstacles such as rivers, or that are in large river delta regions.) Take a few weekend drives in the rural areas near where you live. Do some careful map study and then do some driving to meticulously search for the hard-to-access areas. By concentrating on such bypassed areas, you will be off the path of more than 90% of potential looters. But even still, anywhere less than 200 miles from major metropolitan areas will be a gamble, in my estimation. I don’t want to take that sort of risk, so the Rawles Ranch is more than 400 miles from the nearest metropolitan an area with more than 1,000,000 people, and 130 miles from the nearest city of 200,000. It is also in a carefully selected area that is both away from refugee lines of drift and that is not downwind of any expected nuclear targets. Yes, it is a long drive for us to go and visit relatives or even just to shop for a truck or for a major appliance. But the good news is that it is so beautiful here that nearly all of our relatives all want to do the driving to come and visit us. See my newly-released book Rawles on Retreat and Relocation for details on retreat locale selection and envisioned nuclear target structures. In the book, I provide detailed recommendations on specific locales within those 19 states. The book includes my top picks in Idaho (my mostly highly rated state for retreat potential) that have never been posted or published elsewhere.