This is the second part of a two-part article about issues to do with viably bugging out and transitioning to ongoing life in your retreat. If you arrived here direct from a search engine or other website link, you might choose to first read the first part which sets out the four main problems associated with bugging out and then return back here to read about the three solutions we propose.
SOLVING THE FOUR PROBLEMS OF BUGGING OUT
In the first part of this article, we explained the four main categories of problems with the typical concept of maintaining a bug-out retreat and moving there in a crisis :
- It may be difficult to get to when you actually need to bug-out
- The retreat or may not be available and in good condition when you get there
- The retreat may quickly prove to have problems and limitations once you start to live there
- The reality of starting to provide your own food may turn out to be much more difficult than you’d hoped for
There are solutions to all these problems, please now read on.
SOLUTION 1 – BUGGING OUT VERY EARLY
In its ultimate form, this solution might seem extreme, and it might be massively life-changing, but it is also the ideal answer. Move to your retreat now and live there permanently. That way, when – if – TSHTF, you are already in place, with a known quantity as your retreat, with all systems tested and functioning. The only major impact will be you switch from enjoying the convenience of electricity from the national grid and local utility company, and you can no longer order in supplies of liquid/gaseous fuels as and when you need it. Oh, and the local country store can no longer be counted on to have much of anything for sale, either.
But at least you are already in place, already set up, and your lifestyle changes are minor rather than major.
You might perceive it impossible to turn your back on your high paying jobs, your city lifestyle, and everything else. That might be true (in which case, keep reading, for our second-best solution), but maybe you should also revisit some of your assumptions about what you need and must have.
For example, you can live much more inexpensively in the country than in the city, and things which you formerly perceived as essential and necessary ($100+ meals several times a week when eating out, tickets to expensive shows, expensive business clothing, etc) can be replaced with much less expensive but still pleasant alternates (alternating between having friends for dinner and going to their place for a meal, or treating yourself to a meal at the local diner where dinner for two costs $20, enjoying the less sophisticated but more sincere amateur and high school productions, plays, musicals, and wearing comfortable unassuming clothing rather than name-brand fashions).
Instead of needing to pay for both your residence in the city and your retreat, you now only need to pay for your retreat, which probably costs less than your in-city residence. And maybe instead of an impressive 4,000+ sq ft mansion, you realize that for your family of four, you can live perfectly comfortably and conveniently in a still spacious 2,000 sq ft residence. You no longer need to choose a property as much to impress and as a visible statement of your ‘success’ and affluence, instead, you can now choose a property for functionality, convenience, and appropriateness. Instead of making payments on (eg) a million-dollar home on a one-eighth of an acre lot, you’ll own, outright, (eg) a half-million-dollar home on a five-acre lot. Oh, you’ll also be saving money on property taxes and insurance, too.
Instead of buying or leasing a new premium brand vehicle every year or two, you buy an ‘old junker’ (that in truth is neither old nor junk) and keep it for ten years. It has fewer electronics but is much more reliable because of that, and both easier and cheaper to repair when it does give trouble. A more modest older car can save you the better part of $1,000 a month right from the get-go.
And instead of working a 50 hour week, plus another ten hours on commuting, you now have 60 hours free to farm your property or work in a local business/store in the nearby town. Maybe you can even take advantage of telecommuting and still do some of your previous work, but remotely from your retreat rather than in person in the office.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars a month on a health club, and tens of hours doing artificial exercise in a gym, you instead spend time working in the fields, simultaneously getting exercise and instead of spending money, earning money, and growing food.
When you actually start to pick apart the elements of your modern lifestyle and convert them to an alternate lifestyle, you might be astonished at how it proves possible to turn your back on many of the seductive traps of modern-day consumerism and end up with a truly relaxing, healthy, enjoyable lifestyle in the country.
We’d also suggest you consider not just the concept of moving to a solitary retreat where you live on your own. Moving to become part of a prepping-focused self-sufficient community means you’re part of a group of like-minded people, with similar values and objectives. You’ll quickly fit in with such people, and be able to benefit from the synergy that comes from being part of a larger community.
SOLUTION 2 – A FULLTIME RETREAT/FARM MANAGER
The second solution is an interesting one to consider. You should contract with someone to farm your retreat property and to maintain its grounds and the security of your dwelling. Maybe they even live on the property themselves (in a separate building). This would be a farm manager type person.
If your retreat is going to be adequate to support you and your family and anyone else who would join you, then it should also be adequate, in normal times, to be farmed on a commercial basis such that the income from its farming activities is at least enough to pay the farm manager’s salary, and maybe even leaving you with some extra cash generated too to cover the costs of owning your retreat. Maybe the income generated by actively working your retreat property will allow you to afford a larger, more productive, and therefore more viable and life-sustaining property right from the get-go.
This means that if/when you need to evacuate to your retreat, you arrive at a self-supporting farm that is already in operation as a going concern, and even complete with skilled staff on-site. Sure, you’ll need to adjust its operation – it will no longer be able to benefit from mechanized agriculture, but it is better to downsize an ongoing farm than to need to start one from scratch.
You and your farm manager will already know the most productive patches of land, what grows best and where, and how to succeed in spite of animals, disease, and other natural challenges.
This is of course also a feature of our Code Green Community – you can have your lands farmed in absence, and your dwelling reasonably secured and policed, but it is also something you could realistically arrange for your own ‘stand-alone’ retreat property too.
The only thing to be slightly aware of is the possible danger that your farm manager comes to view your farm as his farm, and when you arrive to settle there, he may feel unwilling to relinquish control of it. You’ll need to pick your manager carefully and be sure to positively assert and demonstrate your ownership/management/leadership at all times prior to arriving so as to ensure such problems don’t arise.
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SOLUTION 3 – MOVING TO AN ‘ADDED VALUE’ RETREAT COMMUNITY
Maybe neither of these first two approaches are feasible. There are some people, in some situations, where that is unavoidably the case. That is unfortunate, but it is no reason to despair.
Instead, you can consider ‘added value’ retreat communities, where you’d be joining a community of like-minded people, with some of the community already living in a place, thereby providing security for your retreat facility, and making it easier for you to join a going concern rather than starting everything, on your own, from scratch once you evacuate to your retreat. Maybe you don’t even wish to live an agrarian lifestyle, working on a farm in the fields. Maybe you wish to provide some type of services or do something else within a community – anything from being a storekeeper to a restaurant owner to a doctor or other professional service provider. While we all focus first and foremost on the most essential things – shelter, water, and food – the reality is that an optimized life in a Level 2 or 3 situation will require a lot more than ‘just’ growing food and eating it.
NOT SOLVED – THE PHYSICAL ACT OF BUGGING OUT
The preceding three solutions have been focused on ensuring you have a viable sustainable living situation after having transitioned/bugged out.
But if you are choosing to remain in place until a time when you need to bug out in response to an emergency situation, you still need to focus very clearly on the most certain and secure way to travel to your retreat in a crisis.
You need to be able to go to your retreat well in advance of problems growing to a point of social collapse, and/or you need to be able to quickly get to your retreat securely when problems become unmistakably and unavoidably present. The latter solution seems to revolve around non-traditional means of transportation – either the extra flexibility of motorcycles or the freedom from infrastructure that an airplane provides.
SUMMARY
By obvious definition and implication, when a crisis occurs, WTSHTF, it is then too late to discover weaknesses, shortcomings, problems, and overlooked forgotten essentials that are present in our retreat. We need to have all these matters addressed and resolved well prior to any situation that tests their efficacy in ultimate measure.
In the first part of this article, we looked at some of the types of problems you might expect to encounter when activating your bug-out plan and hunkering down to survive a crisis. In this second part, we suggest some solutions minimize the possibility of such problems arising and interfering with your ability to safely and securely survive.
We’d wish you good luck, but luck should have nothing to do with your chance of succeeding in an adverse future. You need to be well planned and well prepared.
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