NOTE: To all of my Brothers In Arms, serving both present and past “HAPPY VETERANS DAY!!” HOO AH!!
Don’t wait until the last-minute and find yourself saying “Oh Crap, time to go!” when SHTF hits. Waiting until the last-minute to bug out could be deadly and at the very least, make your trip much more dangerous, when the time comes. I’m the Sargent and this is going to be the topic of today’s post.
I think we are all prone to a little procrastination from time to time, so it is not unusual for someone to be tempted to wait until the last-minute to bug out. The problem with that, it is dangerous and you need to be on the road the moment that you think a SHTF situation is imminent. If there are others in your group and they are relying on you to make the decision of whether or not to go, then you may be hesitant to make the call, because you fear you may be jumping the gun. Trust me; it’s much better to jump the gun than to wait too long before you bug out. In the military we used to say that it was better to make a bad decision than to make no decision at all, and that is still true today. Don’t let your ego get in the way when it comes time to go.
So how do you know when it’s time to go? That can be a difficult question to answer and it would depend a lot on what the disaster is. In some cases however it will be easy such as an EMP or Martial Law. In the case of an EMP or Martial Law, you would want to be on the road as soon as possible if you even suspect that it is imminent. Don’t wait for conformation that it has happened to leave because that conformation may never come. If it is a nuclear attack, and you don’t have time to make it to your bug out location before the bombs hit then the smart thing to do would be to find a safe place and hunker down until you could assess the situation better. You wouldn’t want to walk through an area that is hot with radiation, so you may need to use one of your alternate routes to get there safely. As for some of the others such as Economic Collapse or plague then it could be a little harder to calculate the best time to bug out. In these cases, you would want to leave as soon as you believe that you or a member of your group’s life could possibly be in danger. Don’t wait for the plague to hit your neighborhood or for you to run out of food to hit the road. Remember that thousands of others will be leaving too and you don’t want to get caught up in the exodus of sick or starving people, who are unprepared and leaving a city at the same time as you. You need to be ahead of them and not behind them.
The same is true for a Hurricane; don’t wait for it to get close to head for safety. You want to avoid the crowds on the roads and interstates by being one of the first ones out. Many people have lost their lives to Hurricanes simply because they took a “wait and see attitude”. You have to look no further than Hurricane Katrina to see that this attitude can be deadly. There are many lessons that we as Preppers can learn from that storm. This will be the subject of one of my upcoming post on lessons learned.
When it comes to things like tornados, earthquakes and terror attacks, then it should be clear that you need to get out as soon as it is safe to do so. The earlier the better! Once you get to your bugout location, you will need to check it to be sure it is still safe and setup communications as soon as possible. Remember that just because you go to your bug out location, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay there. It is much better to realize that you didn’t need to go than to realize that you should have and didn’t go. Well, that is it for today and I hope I have given you something to think about and maybe even something to help you when the time does come and SHTF hits. Until next time, just remember that prepping is a direction of travel and not a destination.
-The Sargent-
