bug out 2 of 3

LONG BUG OUT 2

Okay, I feel I have to repeat this several times.  Bugging out is ONLY a viable strategy if you are moving rather than fleeing.  I can’t guarantee that we won’t have an overnight collapse but I think that logically the odds are very much in favor of a short grace period between oil imports being decimated ( minimum of twenty-five to thirty five percent drop in supplies, BUT even as paranoid as I am I still must acknowledge that this doesn’t necessarily have to be overnight.  Odds are that we keep losing a five percent here, a ten percent there ) and the stock market tanking ( which is probably mostly going to be felt on the local government level as the state and county and city lose their market investments ) and the final plunge over the waterfall collapse.  The very first thing that SHOULD happen is that you lose your job.  Employment is a good bellwether because your loving boss pretty much just sits at his desk all day long with one finger poised over the Pink Slip Printer, his only course of action for any downturn in business to initiate lay-offs.  I would imagine there are also two sets of employee files, the official one to show the unemployment office what a terrible worker you were and the unofficial one with predetermined termination lists.

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In other words, I think you’ll get fired prior to things getting too ugly, as no boss is going to wait three months and jeopardize that quarters profit sharing bonus.  Since profits used to be based on increased sales when we had a surplus and now there is no more surplus but only contraction, the only way to fudge the numbers to pretend to have made a profit is to save money and as far as your company is concerned, you are the source of all evil in the world with your minimum wage paycheck sucking down the corporate profits.  Your bosses paycheck, well, of COURSE they deserve every penny for some reason.  But your salary or wages are a goldmine waiting to be harvested.  At least until the next quarter starts and they need to sack another schmuck.  If you earn thirty grand a year and your boss gets, say, ten percent of whatever costs he saves ( I have no idea how profit sharing is apportioned.  Just spitballing here ) that means the corporation “makes” $30k a year forever or until they sell this turd to a bigger sucker, all at the one time cost of a mere three thousand bucks.  And your boss merely looks at it like he just got a bonus worth two weeks salary and thinks nothing of your pain and suffering.  You are scum because he makes more than you, as today a bank account is worth more than a large dingus or a person of community worth.  I’m trying to underline how the incentive to can your ass actually is a built in motivation for your employer and hence, collapse-wise, actually advantageous to you.

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You are still living in the big city, desperately trying to lie to yourself how nothing is going to get too God awful bad, Fracking Forever!, and here is your greedy lizard puke of a boss thoughtfully sending you a pretty pink reminder that well, okay, it might be time to bug out.  He will stay of course, and it must be nice to imagine him impaled upon a stake while still living, cannibals carving out a chunk of flesh once in awhile to nibble on, keeping him alive so the meat doesn’t spoil ( we just had a few dry lightning fires burn up a bit of wilderness, and one fire started near my old bosses house.  I couldn’t believe everyone expressed shock and surprise when I wished upon a star that her fat ass get singed in the fire.  Number one, we aren’t louse picking savages that truly believe the gods grant wishes, are we?  And number two, if you deserve a bad death, why is it in poor form to hope for such an occurrence? ), but since you’ve kept mentioning that he is a flaming idiot and you are much smarter, now is the time to prove it.  Are you going to move? 

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Most areas are getting in worse trouble than usual.  We’ve already heard from the Dakota fracking fields, how their economy took a Big Squishy.  So here is news from the gold mining capital.  Things have been going on that took the bloom off the rose years ago.  Our Yuppie Scum sister “town” ten miles away has seen more and more house vacancies and less and less sales.  The prices are too dear.  If there was mine job growth, the idiots would still be buying.  Local businesses have been closing ( disguised as a “retirement sale” in one case )  as well as apartment rentals not being filled ( for the longest time nothing was available for rent and we even had hotels renting monthly ) on a wide scale, and recently in the last couple of weeks there are actually lulls in the traffic-this is pure insanity as traffic had become a near 24/7 deal.   Now we are seeing national chains closing here ( no one admits there is a problem, not wishing to believe their investment here was a con ).  Of course, no surprise, “Rue 21”, some kind of fancy clothing store, is closing.  Clothes have been a suckers game retail wise for some time, and Amazon has ZERO to do with it ( Amazon has a total of FIVE percent of the retail market.  Five.  That is it, and profits have always been problematic with them.  They share zero responsibility for the health of sales and the retail industry ).  More surprising, “Dress Barn” already closed down.

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Again, I have no idea what this store was other than simply clothes.  I think they carried Fat Bitch apparel, but I’m not sure.  If they did, you would think they were in a growth market.  Here is their short story.  About two to three years back, a small clothing store right next door to a grocery store closed.  The landlord ( this is a outdoor mall ) expanding into the grocery store ( they wanted to shrink costs with less floor space-the chain is Raley’s and they are not long for this world ) for a bigger clothing retailer, Dress Barn.  You know the rent had to be high, to cover his costs.  Now, they are already closed, and I hadn’t noticed their name on any list of bankruptcy closings.  I had noticed Rue 21 listed, and I had thought that our K-Mart was exempt.  All these past fifteen years or so of K-Mart closings, our local one had stayed open.  I don’t know why, since they never seemed to be all that busy.  Well, now they have a big banner on the building, “seasonal mark-downs 20-50%, must make room for new merchandise” or something very close to that.  Well, that is the strangest “seasonal” savings I’ve ever seen.  Stationary and books, magazines and jewelry, athletic shoes and socks.  Okay, 99% of the store has at least a ten percent off tag.  Granted, this could be a desperate attempt at boosting sales.  Me, I think they are closing the store.

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If the fracking and gold towns are in economic trouble, what chance does your city have of avoiding issues this downturn?  So yours has an Amazon distribution center, so what?  They just reduced ad commissions 30% and are cutting Kindle Unlimited prices 40% ( I think you have to buy a block of time rather than pay monthly ), plus the Unlimited authors are seeing a up to 20% reduction in compensation ( which, to be fair, might be increased competitor books offered rather than profit reduction, but you don’t know one way or the other ).  You tell me how much longer Amazon has, and don’t sugar coat it!  Okay, wow, I think we took a huge detour there.  But I thought it important to reiterate how bad the economy and your employment chances are.  So let’s just put that behind us and talk about leaving.  I’ll ignore the destination, as that is a separate discussion we’ve had before ( but might have again shortly-we‘ll see ).  Let’s talk about what to take and how to get there.  You can’t have nothing in the way of preps in your residence, since you could be stuck bugging in.  You never know, it could be an overnight collapse.

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You can’t NOT assume your least favorite apocalypses might occur.  Yellowstone could blow, or a solar flare could happen.  The generals might nuke DC and rule from Fort Bragg-hey, you never know.  But whatever you have at home, I would suggest it had better fit into your regular commuting vehicle, which you must leave room in for a few gasoline cans.  If the cans are on top of the roof on a luggage rack, that had better be covered.  No, this isn’t a gauntlet run after the collapse.  But look how poorly gasoline starved citizens acted the last time there were shortages, in the Seventies everywhere and locally during any hurricane or natural disaster recently.  Assume regularly increasing crime.  Here I’m going with the assumption that you have a gas efficient vehicle as it is for your long ass commute, so it is mid size and gets 20mpg.  Not too small, not too big.  I’m also assuming you can’t afford twenty thousand rounds of 223 for several AR’s, or a years worth of freeze dried.  You need to fit your preps in the back seat, along with some of the trunk.  This isn’t to say you neglected to stock your destination location, just that you had to save some stuff at home in case you were stuck there unintentionally.

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If you have buckets of wheat or #10 cans of freeze dried, you need to have already transferred those to Mylar begs, to reduce their storage space.  Leave the Mason jars and wet canned food.  For your cloths, have multiple military duffle bags and a means to lash them to the roof, down the back window and resting on the trunk lid.  Not to say you can’t make multiple trips, but as this series is titled “Long”, I’m going with a one trip plan.  I understand this part of the plan is painful.  I have a mere six mile bug-out and I’m forever balancing in my mind what to keep there and what to keep here, down to ammo distribution and vitamin pills.  If you are fifteen hundred miles away ( I’m just cutting the coast to coast in half as an average ) this is a much tougher balancing act.  What to keep there, what to keep on hand.  Me?  If I knew I had to bug out, if I knew I was in a less than pleasant situation, I think I’d keep the bulk of my prepping supplies in my bug-out location so as to force myself to bug out while erring on the side of caution, rather than dinking around making excuses not to leave.  It will light a fire under your ass.  With that, let’s talk about your actual bug out location.

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From my own experience buying land, I’d much rather pay extra for real estate than pay for transportation.  Does that make sense?  Transportation is a wild card.  Look at how much an automobile has increased in price just in the last ten years ( with the quality sometimes suspect ).  Look how insurance goes up willy-nilly, and mechanic costs.  You do understand, I trust, how our gasoline is subsidized by the government in many ways ( more rich corporation and banker welfare-you give away the fuel to generate sales on SUV’s and McMansions.  Kind of like the Gillette razor blade strategy ) and that can change without notice.  Fuel, even at vastly increased prices, is not guaranteed in the future.  Real estate has the property tax wild card added to it, but there are simply less variables to concern yourself with ( gold or silver stash for property tax, the value retention should cover inflation on the tax.  If they jack it up too high I can almost imagine an armed response-if nothing else courthouse record keeping firebombing ).  Are you close enough to your location for a viable bug-out?  Everyone’s situation is different, I’m merely inquiring if it is better to give up on the last bug-out location investment and making a smarter one closer by.  Even back east, there should be plenty of nearby rural land at distressed prices.  Is it feasible to bug out closer, or is it worth the effort to go further?  Just a ponder-able.  I’d guess that anything over about five hundred miles is really pushing things, if the fuel question is a factor, even pre-collapse.  Let’s continue tomorrow.

END ( todays related link http://amzn.to/2h3Tqdy )

 

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