BOL: Pick Three Locations (At Least)

Locations, Locations, Locations

After spending a lot of time on prepper forums and websites, I’ve noticed something interesting.

People are spending an inordinate amount time talking about their Bugout Bags (BOB’s)  and Bugout Vehicles (BOV’s), but very little time discussing their bugout locations… 

I get that, here at 3BY we’ve looked at BOB’s and BOV’s as well, but we also talk A LOT about The Place, our bugout land in the country.

What we haven’t really talked about, however, is that The Place is only ONE of our BOL’s… we have several specific places planned for and scouted, and in two cases with family members we have firm reciprocal agreements. 

Pick three locations (at least)

Spice and I believe every prepper should have at least three locations in mind when preparing a bugout plan.

Since we don’t have any idea what we may be bugging out from, we want to have way different locations for each potential event.

Some events are beyond the bugout scale (for example, a Yellowstone eruption is probably just going to get us, since setting up a BOL in Australia is WAY beyond our means)

Let’s take a look at our BOL options and use them as an example.

BOL: Some place nearby

Option one is something nearby, in our current town.

Why would we do this? Fire and/or storm damage.

In our case, we rent a small climate-controlled office space in our town (where it’s dirt cheap) that I have turned into a man-cave (and a place to store a lot of our preps in stable temperatures. 

We have a recliner and a couch that converts into a sleeping area, all ready to go. It has everything except shower facilities, but we have that covered by our local gym membership. 

The cost of this setup is less than a lot of people pay for storage facilities that are not climate controlled.

BOL: A prepared location for specific events

For us, this is The Place. The Place is very much a work in progress, and at the moment it’s suitable only for a short-term set of circumstances… but we are getting better all the time…

The Place is our answer to a couple of the biggest threats we face, although only one of these two threats involve us actually moving to the place… pandemic.

Spice and I believe that the most likely mass-SHTF event to hit us is pandemic… since pandemics have raged throughout the centuries, and a huge one (the 1918 Flu) wiped out millions within the lifetimes of our grandparents. The best way to not be a victim of the next great pandemic is to isolate yourself, and The Place is a perfect location to do just that. 

The other major threat the place helps us with is economic collapse where money is devalued. Paid for real-estate is a tangible asset that diversifies our holdings. Boring? Yes, but it’s a real protection. 

One additional protection the place provides is against the New Madrid earthquake fault breaking loose with a massive quake. The Place is entirely out of the New Madrid damage area (the sub-surface rocks are entirely different than those in the damage area…)

BOL: Some place more than 50 miles away

Our “shared” BOL is with family. My sister Mammy (an occasional contributor here at 3BY is a prepper) and her husband, The Man Of The House have made a mutual support deal with us. They live about 90 miles from where we live, so that works out well for both of us.

I HIGHLY recommend a family arrangement for all preppers whenever possible. People who you have known your entire life are irreplaceable (even if they did dress you up in little girls clothing and forced you to do a tea party when you were a three-year-old… not that I’m saying this ever happened to me, mind you). 

BOL: Some place regional, but far enough away.

We’ve also got a couple of out-of-the-way places in our region picked out to relocate to if we have a regional disaster and we need to bugout for a bit.

We travel a lot, and we’ve scouted out a bunch of potential locations in our region.

One location we’ve found is a small town in Iowa. We have good friends in the local area, and the town has abundant food sources, access to good clean water locally, and is in the heart of the wind power electrical grid. 

One location is in Nebraska, and it’s also flush with local food resources, has a year-round river, is extremely isolated but is large enough to have full professional services (doctor, dentist, nursing) living locally. 

One key to finding a BOL is, in our opinion, to “go where the food is“. It does you no good to bug out if you are going to have to fight for, or steal, food. To intentionally go where there is no food is just slow suicide.

But Salty, I plan to Bug In, not out… Why do I need multiple BOL’s?

Sometimes you have to go. That’s why every member of your family/group should have a BOB ready to go at all times. 

Don’t have a BOB for everybody? Paranoid Prepper will help you work up BOB’s for the BOBless. 

Every prepper should also have a 72-Hour-Kit or even better a 14-Day kit.

There are situations that come up where you just have to go… your house burns down, your neighborhood burns down, there’s a local toxic spill, a hellmouth opens up under your city and vampires abound (OK, Salty, it’s time to chill on those Buffy The Vampire Slayer reruns), etc.

As we have discussed before, planning to randomly bug out into the woods is a very good way to die. Don’t be that person. Have several bugout locations already in mind, and preps made to use them successfully.

Wrapping it all up

We think it is critical to always prep with a plan. 

We plan ahead for the possibility of bugging out, but since we don’t know what we may be bugging out from, we need different locations predetermined so if we have to hit the road, we know where we are going and we know we will be successful when we get there.