american desert

AMERICAN DESERT

Yes, we have talked about this before, but I was watching a video that made this subject a lot easier to visualize. Take a ruler and a US map. Draw a straight line up from Dallas Texas to Fargo North Dakota. To the right lives 75% of the US population. Draw a less straight line at the Sierra Nevada mountains on the California border up and squiggle over to the Cascades up through Oregon and Washington State. To the west of that line live about another 15%. Only ten percent, 30 million folks, live between the two lines. Close to half the land mass, ten percent.

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Now, take away five cities within that land area. Las Vegas is ( roughly ) two million. Denver is three million. Phoenix has five million. Salt Lake City and El Paso are almost one million each ( these are metro area figures, not city proper ). Total, twelve million people. Take those figures and add it to the east and west coast. Not counting those cities, the land area from the California border to the Dallas/Fargo line has only five million people living in it. About one and a half percent of the population in about half the countries land area.

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Now do you see the attraction of living out West? Do you now understand how desert junk land can be so cheap, even when the Western states are 80-90% federal land not up for sale? And if I took the middlin size cities such as Billings Montana, Albuquerque New Mexico, Amarillo and Lubbock Texas, Spokane Washington, Tucson Arizona and etcetera, how many decimal points would be needed to get that sub-one percent figure left? As if the figures weren't low enough anyway.

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I simply looked at my world map and picked out the cities big enough to be listed in the US between those two lines. Fifteen in total, the small cities not already listed, totaled three and a third million. That leaves under two million people living in small towns, on half of the continental US. Well, okay, it is closer to 45%. But I'd call half as close enough. One and three quarters million left out of 330 million population. Those small cities were all fifty thousand and up, leaving small towns under that amount in the under two million figure. Surely you can find a job in a town of thirty thousand?

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And the added bonus is that these small towns are surrounded by nothing. You have a huge moat surrounding you made of desert without water. Right now, even after Saudi Arabia was attacked, everyone is blissfully filling up SUV's, not a care in the world ( even two days afterwards, the only survival guy I see covering it was “Survival Prepping For Normal People”. Kudos to him and shame on the rest ), two hundred mile drives no big deal. But in the near future, those kinds of distances are going to be your friend.

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Now, as I've said in the past, the West is NOT a great place to prepare for the end of the world. In that area, there is so little water that it is STILL overpopulated despite its vast landmass. Far too many folks depend on petroleum to deliver water to them. If you are living there, you cannot depend on man made water systems. I would have exactly two criteria if you moved there, and that is a year round natural surface water source and a rain catchment system. I call wells dangerous and overpriced.

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If you envision living a lifestyle that depends on city water from a well, or a well of your own, you should have no business living in the American desert. Which also means pretty much forget about farming. Those areas with the water are so overpopulated you shouldn't be living there anyway, just from population concerns. “Stay away from crowds” still applies in the West. Actually, it is MORE important, as the water supply is too centralized and will draw MORE people like maggots to meat. At least back east folks will stay put, as they get enough rain right there. Out West, water is a trouble magnet.

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In your relocation activities you have one of two choices. Plenty of rain and food with plenty of people, or few to no people with no water. It is easy to find Too Many People along with No Water ( visit Phoenix or El Paso ), but it is a LOT harder to find plenty of water with no people around. You must pick your poison. I don't discount living east. You still have oodles and gobs of options minimizing people ( living in swamps, on mountains, the Canadian border ). But just the sheer mass of folks CLOSE to that is still an issue. I don't call either option, rain or desert, better or worse. It is just what trade-offs you choose.

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The only focus on this article is to appeal to those few who choose solitude over food production, to point out how it is a much better option than was previously portrayed. Just avoiding twenty cities, you have HALF the country to choose a spot where only one half percent of the population lives. That is a rather attractive option. It isn't free. There is a cost. You most likely can't grow your food and you must live a water conservative lifestyle. And while isolation is good, THAT cost is you must deep stockpile to avoid the coming transportation dearth.

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I can hear a couple of you, okay, Jim, where's the downside? I'm not seeing any! You few, you can be happy living in the desert. If anything I said scares you, stay in the rainfall areas. You won't be happy in Big Skies and small streams erroneously called rivers. You'll need big bullets and large larders. And except for the lower, southern desert where all the idiots live clustered together ( no offense to minions-you have your crap wired. I speak of the millions prodding along the golf courses built in the Sonora ), you will be living in the cold. Most desert here is thousands of feet elevation, like the Mongolian Gobi rather than Death Valley.

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Another vital requirement is that you understand what post-apocalypse living will entail. More than likely, you will be a herder. And that requires a militant lifestyle. Either to be a raider, living off the scraps of outposts able to farm, or to be a tripwire for that farming community, keeping outside forces away. Make sure you have that temperament. It isn't for Libertarians who think they have a natural right to their property. It is for people unafraid of taking what isn't theirs, or killing those only passing through. It isn't for Defensive Minded Only folks. It takes a harder edge, matching their surroundings.

( .Y. )

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