You need to get out of there. So do thousands of other people. Most of those people will be slowed to a crawl or stopped dead because their road is blocked. Will you?
This is the second installment of our Prepper Case series. In it, we revisit real situations we’ve been in and invite you to think about how you would handle it, right now. It’s a way for you to check your own preparations for real scenarios. Then we consider how our own preps did or did not help us deal with the situation, to give you some ideas.
When our road was blocked
Our situation occurred on August 21, 2017. The date’s easy to remember because we, along with hordes of others, had invaded Hastings, Nebraska. Why on Earth? Because it boasted clear skies and was the closest place for many of us to view the full solar eclipse.
That meant a whole lot of people concentrated at the same moment in a place with insufficient roads to take them all out at once. Yet, we all hit the road at once. Does that sound something like a city experiencing a disaster that makes people need to leave to you?
One added complication: GPS route-finding failed. Oh, the nice computers spit out routes … but given the scarcity of ‘good’ roads in that thinly populated part of the country, all routes quickly circled back to the main road. The blocked road.
What would you do?
So, that’s the situation. Transplant it into where you are, or are likely to be when the stuff hits the fan. You start your bug-out promptly with whatever preps are now in place. The road is blocked. The GPS route-finding fails. Describe how you handle it.
Ok, done? Let’s talk about it.
Some things are not surprises.
You can’t predict when, or if, you’re going to have to bug out of town. You can predict that when you do, there may be a whole lot of other people trying to do the same thing at the same time. Most of them will get on their favorite big highway or ask their GPS for a route that takes them to a big highway.
We knew that the interstate near Hastings, NE would clog once the eclipse was over. Our plan for dealing with it was two-fold. First, we were completely packed and ready to roll, except for the telescope, camera, lawn chairs, and funny glasses. Once the cool part was over, we were on the road in under five minutes. Second, we jumped on the interstate to get some quick miles in, but had alternate routes we could kick off to at the first hint that traffic was about to slow.
The big road gets blocked more than most small ones.
GPS systems love to route you onto the big road. Most people are used to using it as well. Despite large capacity, it will clog up fast. Alternate routes should be based on “the road less traveled”. Just watch for choke points such as bridges.
Interstates become parking lots when too many people try to use them at once. Image thanks to B137, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
GPS is great — but not sufficient
Don’t take me for a GPS hater. I love them actually; they remove a lot of hassle from travel. But we always carry maps. They’re better for route planning, especially when you need to take the road less travelled. They don’t carry about EMPs or other tech interruptions, either. Also, they won’t suck down the battery on your phone. Once traffic on the interstate started to get heavy, Salty and I kicked off to a side road. I kept track on the map while he drove. No drama or misplacement.
Maps are great tinder if you don’t know how to read them. Practice route planning and mobile map reading, if it’s not already in your skill set.
Know the U.S. highways in the region
U.S. highways are numbered and indicated by shield signs. They stay the same road across state lines.
U.S. highways are a great compromise when interstates are blocked. They are smaller and attract less travel than interstates. They’re big enough to not be stop-and-go. They run a good distance without changing names or downgrading maintenance at state lines. Good — ok, reasonable — bridges link states.
In our case, we took small state roads down to where we knew we’d find the U.S. highway that runs near our home, two states away. So long as we went the right cardinal direction from the interstate, we’d find that U.S. highway. Turn the correct direction on it and we’d get within a few miles of home. No more navigation actually required. In a stressful situation, simple is good.
Click here for a link to a map of these U.S. highways.
So how did you do?
Would your current preps and skill have gotten you where you needed to go? Or may you have been stuck in the eight hour traffic jam? (Days later, we learned that was the fate of the cars that had stayed on the interstate for just another ten miles.) If this mental checkup didn’t go well, now’s a great time to shore up any weak spots. Better now than when the tail-lights start lighting up in front of you.
Oh yes, i remember that event. I also remember Wyoming highway patrol routing us off of US Hwy. 85 onto a smaller state highway that went to a rural 2 lane route that was basically unmarked with a route number, county road number, or painted fog lines along the edge of the road. As for maps I had them but when we crossed the state lines out of Wyoming the roads did not line up with the roads shown on the map of the state we entered. A careful examination of the maps the next day showed the “Official” highway map was in error for the second state (thanks Rand McNally). We got home by using common sense even though we had never driven this route and by using the glow of the lights from a nearby city to give a general sense of direction of travel.
I prefer paper maps and encourage family members to keep them in their car. But sometimes common sense is what you succeed with.
I hear you Tom; we’ve had the ‘blue highways’ not match the map several times; and gravel roads can come and go unnoticed by mapmakers. One trick we use is looking for boundary roads that are more likely to be recognizable. If our map had failed, we’d have just kept going south until we hit the US route, which would probably be recognizable by size and fashionable paint job even if unsigned where the little road came in.