Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
The most useful and valuable resource any revolutionary movement can have is…what? Operational bases located in other countries. The FLN had Tunisia, the Viet Cong had Cambodia and to a lesser degree China, Anti-Castro forces have/had Florida, etc, etc. The advantages are, to me, obvious. Remember when you were a kid and played tag? If you were on ‘base’ you were immune from getting tagged. Same thing.
I mention it because I think one of the biggest advantages that a person can have in terms of personal preparedness is a secondary location to relocate to. Take the case of Katrina victims, for example. Lets say they do get on a bus or get some gas for their Buick and get out of Dodge. Where to go? If you dont have a secondary location or some good friends or relatives to set up with youre going to be living in your car or a hotel and neither one of those is an attractive option. The solution would be to have a place to go where you know that even if the accomodations arent exactly the same as the place youre evacuating from you at least know theres food, fuel, water, clean clothes and power waiting for you.
Realistically, this is probably the most expensive aspect of preparedness (short of fortifying or building-to-suit your primary residence). There are a few ways to go about setting up a secondary location. Your secondary location could simply be good friends or relatives. Showing up on their doorstep with just the clothes on your back would be a bit of a burden so if they are, as we say, ‘Like Minded Individuals’, they might not mind you leaving a couple footlockers in their basement in case you ever wind up becoming their guests for a few months. Clothes, bedding, toiletries, some food, etc…the usual stuff, goes a long way towards making oneself welcome. A decent all-season tent would be nice because then you could just pitch it in their backyard and really be a low-profile guest. Shower in the morning using their bathroom, run an extension cord out to the tent for a small heater or radio, and you’d pretty much be invisible to them.
Another option, and one I’d like to pursue, is to simply have the land available to retreat to. Realistically, we all want a nice fortified, spacious dwelling to pull up to as the mushroom clouds bloom in the distance. In reality, thats a pretty big-ticket item. The old addage about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush really comes to play here. Example: the property you want with nice old stone farmhouse, year-round spring and fertile fields is $300k. While youre saving that money The Big Event happens and you need to relocate…but you havent gotten the property yet. A more realistic alternative, in my opinion, is to buy the bare land first and hold onto it until such time as you can build on it or re-sell it when youve saved enough for another place. This way, while your saving up for that perfect bunker you still have a place to go if you need to. A few acres of land that is in your name gives you alot more relocation options than a real estate brochure and money in a savings account. Its a place to park a trailer, set up a tent, drop a cargo container, or even build a small, basic build-it-yourself-in-a-weekend cabin.
While your sticking money away for the Perfect Place, you have this chunk of land as a fallback position. When you finally do have enough money you can either build on your proerty or buy the property you’ve been wanting all along and sell your other one (which probably appreciated in the interval).
At least, thats the theory….
