Finding The Right Spot

Location, Location, Location!

How to find your location.

We took a state map, drew a dot for the center of our current house. We already live in a rural part of the Appalachia region of the United States.

We believe if The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) happens, the usefulness of a bug out vehicle will be overcome by abandoned vehicles running out of gas. Unless you have a very large, heavy, military style vehicle, pushing a bunch of wrecked and abandoned cars, clearing a path along the way to your bug out location will be too time consuming and dangerous.

So, we examined the map and considered the population centers of our region as potential danger zones. We considered the population density, industrial locations, chemical plants, refineries, etc. We took into consideration the US Interstate System as a potential risk for accidents and spillage of nasty things.

With these factors in mind, we drew series of deformed circles, blobs really, locating where we would consider finding property, and where we should avoid searching for property. We searched as wide as a a three hour drive distance, but tried to limit the results to somewhere within one hour drive.

Several potential sites were dismissed due to their proximity to what we call a risky or potentially dangerous locations, meaning an industrial site, nuclear power plant, Interstate, or train tracks. The goal was to keep whatever we chose within one hour of normal driving from the current house. Sure, this method limits us to about a 60 mile radius from our current house, but we reconciled this by thinking about the number of trips we would be making, and the time/fuel those trips would consume as we went back and forth to the property.

Some folks find a cabin in the woods, or a bug out location that is six or seven hours’ drive away. This seems to be impractical and too great a distance and would potentially influence your choices of frequency of visits to the property; too far and you artificially limit the number of trips you’ll make. Besides, if the property is too far and the TEOTWAWKI is too sudden, you may find your first major challenge in the new world is just getting to your safe space.

Size/Acreage

How much land do you really need? How much can you afford? How close do you want other people?

Some homesteaders can make five acres work. We wanted more, about 50 acres, given the cost of land and our finances. A property too small means neighbors, too large is nice but more expensive.

So the search begins…