Planning The Ideal Bug-Out Location

Choosing and establishing the right kind of bug-out location is key to surviving societal collapse or any sort of SHTF scenario. Whether it’s just a short-term incident like a natural disaster or a long-term survival crisis with civilization collapsing around you, it is vital to have a secure, well-supplied place to head out to as the bad stuff begins to go down. Without such shelter and supplies, you will find surviving challenging at the least.

This guide will help you understand the key features of a perfect bug-out location. It will take you through the major decisions and considerations you need to take into account when choosing a spot, as well as some key fundamentals that must be kept in mind when making that choice.

What is a Bug-Out Location?

Do you think hunkering down in an urban sprawl is the best idea when the possibility of societal collapse begins to become a certainty? Not if you have read anything else I have written on this blog you don’t. The plain truth is that when massive disaster hits the world, or even just your city, staying in the middle of a desperate crowd of hungry, frightened people all fighting over the limited resources remaining is a very bad idea. As most crisis survival experts will tell you, bugging out is the safest option, and it only becomes even better as a plan the worse the crisis is.

When things begin to go tits up, your bug-out location is where you can go to ride it out in relative safety. It could be a bunker on some piece of land, a cabin, a rural homestead, or something else. It is meant to be set up as a self-sufficient place of safety for you and your family, where you can escape to when the rest of the world starts circling the drain.

In addition to the traditional types of bug-out locations we always hear about, like cabins in the mountains or parcels of land out in the wilderness, I am also going to briefly go over some of the more unconventional types. As always for this blog, the normal stuff has been covered in excruciating detail across the internet, and so I won’t waste too much time on them here. If you have the means to get yourself a nice log cabin in the woods, well, that’s great. Not everyone else does, however, and that is who this article is intended for.

What to Look for in a Perfect Bug Out Location

This is a very wide and diverse world we live in, and while it may seem easy at first thought selecting somewhere safe and secure can be a difficult task. To help you narrow down a perfect location from all the available spots out there, the following quick checklist goes over the fundamentals that will apply to all places, regardless of type.

Distance

The first thing you want to look for in a bug-out location is the distance from people and potential targets. Urban locations, or even small rural towns, do not make good bug-out locations. Proximity to large concentrations of people means competition for the limited resources present, and thus an increased threat of violent altercation. When things begin to get bad, things like food are going to run out fast. While most people tend to be good and caring individuals, extreme hunger combined with fear can bring out the inner animal even in Mother Theresa.

Urban locations are also unlikely to provide the necessary resources for survival on a continuing basis. The collapse of society tends to shut down both public services and grocery stores alike after all, and once the initial phase of looting is over with, there won’t be another resupply coming in. What you end up with is an unsustainable number of people crammed together in a very small area, without the ability or resources to grow or find the level of food necessary to keep them all alive. There is also the potential for disease to begin spreading rapidly in cities, especially after a mass casualty event and the breakdown of public services.

There are way too many people to compete with for supplies in a city, and only so many ways to get supplies in. In the earliest days, there still may be some new supplies arriving, but with a large population of desperately hungry people, any incoming shipments probably won’t actually make it very far inward from the outskirts. Very quickly, any possibility of receiving goods into the city will be gone, and unless you want to participate in the violent frenzy that follows such an occurrence, you should be long gone as well.

An urban area will have abandoned buildings, large warehouses, and other locations that could be places of refuge on a temporary basis but staying under the radar in an urban sprawl will be challenging for even a single person, let alone a group. Too many others are always going to be nearby, and many will end up having the same ideas as you about certain hiding places. The density of people and the inevitability of running out of supplies quickly is a big part of the reason so many people plan on bugging out at the first sign of long-term problems. Those who do not are only adding to the problems for themselves.

All that being the case, you don’t want to be entirely out of reach of the nearby population center. As you will most likely end up on foot at some point if not right from the start, your bug-out location should not be more than a 4- or 5-day hike from your nearest urban center. 75 to 100 miles is a good bet. This will enable you to get to the town or city if needed without spending too long away from your primary location. Even if you have a vehicle, you must remember that you will not be able to rely on gas stations for refueling. Being too far away presents difficulties for the future. In summary, you need to be far enough away from the urban sprawl to avoid the rush of fleeing refugees and the raiding parties that come after, but close enough to access the area later if needed.

Seclusion

Going hand-in-hand with distance is seclusion. As we discussed, the presence of other people can be a danger that will decrease your chances of survival. In a SHTF situation, especially one as permanent as societal collapse, you must first look out for yourself and your own group. It is not the time to be generous and friendly, as I can virtually guarantee that few others will be.

Keeping this in mind, your bug-out location needs to be concealed from others who may pass nearby. It needs to be hidden from all the prying eyes, ears, and noses out there. The location you choose should not be visible from any roads, trails, or railways. Try to avoid places that have clearly visible trails leading directly to them off the main roads. You will need cover from the air as well, so trees should help mask your location from the sky as well as ground level. Another alternative, depending on the environment, is an underground location like a cave or old mine shaft opening. You need to consider potential visibility at night as well as during the day. This means making sure any lights or fires will not be visible from the roads. Again, tree and shrubbery cover can be very good for this. You want the type of visibility that gives you the advantages and takes them away from any opposing force. You want to see but not be seen.

Sound is a very important factor to think about. In wilderness conditions, sounds can carry far. You need to soundproof your area as much as possible and limit your activities outside to quieter activities during the night hours. Smells also travel quite far, especially aromas that do not fit in with the terrain, such as campfires and cooking food. Try to keep outdoor cooking to a minimum. If you must cook, do so at night when there would be fewer people around.

During the time you will be at your new BOL, you do not want to get too comfortable in your distance and let your guard down. The more extreme a collapse situation becomes the greater the odds that those who do make it farther down the survival road are going to be the ones who turn to violent and desperate acts out of sheer need and instinct.  No matter how unfathomable it may seem to some, the dire situation will drive them to do things they never thought possible at some point. That is the reason I tend to use the fictional term “Zombies” to describe such individuals. Of course, I don’t mean actual zombies, it is just to describe people who have reached the end of their rope and will do whatever they have to do to survive. Zombies have forsaken their humanity and forgotten the bonds of community. They have come to the point where they can only care about themselves.

Distance and seclusion go together to provide you with isolation from the zombies that will roam close to whatever remains of civilization. It is a kind of defense-in-depth, and it is the very best defense of all should times like those come about post-collapse. It may not reach that level, that rock-bottom where humans begin to revert much closer to their natural animal state. But one thing is for certain: better safe than eaten.

Transit

The isolation we discussed above tends to make locations more difficult to reach, which is part of the plan but can also be a problem. When choosing your safe spot, you need to make sure you have multiple access routes, ones that you can monitor for activity. At the beginning of a crisis, major roadways tend to be jammed with the vehicles of fleeing people or even roadblocked and patrolled by law enforcement or the National Guard. You need to make sure that you can bug out to your spot by other means than just the main roads. Get to know the different ways out of your population center, whether by backroads, hiking paths, or even offroad trails. Good maps of your area of operation are critical to have, but don’t let them be a crutch to avoid getting to know the area firsthand. During a SHTF scenario, you will not be able to rely solely on GPS to navigate. It might be nice in the early stages, or during a more regional disaster, but paper copies and personal knowledge are the best backups to have.

Distance is good, but the amount of potentially hostile terrain you have to traverse in order to get to your BOL is an important thing to consider. You need to make a plan on how to get there, practice that plan, and then make contingency plans. Your method of transportation is also a vital factor to consider, especially if you have more people than just yourself to look out for. A single person in decent shape can cover quite a bit of ground on foot, but a group comprised of people with different ages and abilities is going to move a lot slower. There are a lot of bug-out vehicle choices out there, and you may even want to have several transportation options. Bug-out transportation plans are very much something that must be tailored to each group’s plan and environment. There is no perfect transport option for everyone. Soon, I will be writing an in-depth guide regarding this factor.

In short, it is imperative that you have multiple routes planned for reaching your safe location, and options for transport, including the ability to navigate there overland if necessary.

Shelter

Exposure is one of the deadliest threats you will face if you have to head out into the wilderness. This can mean different things depending on your area of operations, but in any case, you must have some form of shelter in place at your bug-out location before you need to go there in an emergency. After making it through the initial evacuation from whatever calamity befell your area, you are likely to arrive tired, worn down, and maybe even injured. This is not the time to have to construct a shelter.

If you are planning to use land with an existing structure, you are ahead of the game. Make sure to handle any fortification well in advance and check the condition of the building often. If the location you plan to bug out to does not have a structure of some sort you’re going to need to erect one. Your shelter could be simple, like a prepositioned trailer or even a hidden tent, or you could even build a structure from scratch. Whatever you do plan to use, make sure it is ready and waiting for your arrival.

Sustenance

Food and water are going to be major concerns after you have taken care of your initial needs for safety and shelter by bugging out. Without a supply of fresh water and available food, you will only be able to survive as long as your supplies last. Your bug-out location could now be a semi-permanent home so access to freshwater and a source of food is essential.

If you have the luxury of choice, look for a location that is within walking distance of a stream, river, spring, or lake. You want to make sure the water source is available all year round. If it freezes or dries up, you’re going to struggle in the cold or dry season. Water will also be necessary for cleaning, cooking, maintaining hygiene, and watering any future crops you plant. Make sure the supply is large enough for such things. Be careful how close you settle to the water, as it will be an attractant for animals, of both the four and two-legged varieties. You can deal with a relatively contaminated source of water if you have some good filters available. When moving out with the plan to survive long-term you need to be able to get to water in a short time. On the other hand, you do not want to situate your primary BOL too close to a major water source if you want to avoid major interaction with others.

If you are really far out in the wilderness, then this probably won’t matter as much. But you have to always remember that many places, which were once low-activity areas, could become more heavily trafficked post-collapse. If good water points are limited in the general region, you might find that others will use these spots to ambush the unwary. This is a trick as old as time. Watering holes have always been choice locations for hunting animals to lay in wait. You may not be one, but you have to start thinking like the kind of predatory animal that many people are going to revert to being after the SHTF.

If you have no locations available with water sources, such as in the case of a desert region bug out, do the best you can. You should also consider prepositioning water resources nearby in caches, and having the gear available for a rain catchment system. There are many possibilities, but it is very important that you do not neglect this aspect of the location.

Food can come from wild edibles, vegetable gardens, fish, or game. You need to have sufficient room and conditions for growing your own food. This is more of a longer-range consideration, but an important one. In the beginning, consider keeping caches of freeze-dried foods and such available near your location. Properly “staging” your BOL is a very important part of planning, which I go into detail about below.

Defense

Your location needs to be defensible in every way possible. Natural defenses such as cliffs and canyons are ideal, but you also need to balance your choices with the potential for natural disasters. Canyons can flood, forests can catch fire, and cliffs can result in landslides. Keep all of those things in mind when choosing the spot you will be settling at. When you’re scouting a location for the first time, make sure you examine all the access and vantage points nearby, and think about how they could be watched or defended. Is your location close enough to a population center that any mass exodus might cause you trouble in the form of desperate refugees? Does the spot seem to be an incredibly good one that other like-minded survivors may have also thought of?

You have to avoid taking any chances or shortcuts when it comes to safety. I would recommend being armed and ready when approaching your staged bug out location at any time, whether it be for the first time after SHTF or just returning from a hunting jaunt several months into your residency. You do not want to go in unarmed and discover someone came in and is now in the process of looting your supplies. Bad times mean people doing bad things. I go into greater detail about defense of your BOL elsewhere, just remember to keep your mind defensively oriented at all times.

Together, all of these fundamentals will help you establish a baseline for choosing an ideal bug out location. They will help you create a defense-in-depth for the place you will be bugging out to, and prepare it for long term viability.

Planning your location

Planning the establishment of a bugout location (BOL) means you have to examine the situation from all angles. There are a great many different scenarios that can play out, from a simple local disaster to a complete SHTF collapse of civilization. Knowing what you are planning for is a big part of the process, and it can be easy to get sidetracked and miss out on small but important details. In this post, I am covering a lot of material, and some things will be taken into greater detail later when they justify their own posts due to sheer complexity. But here, we can get some basics established and provide a framework for you to consider your situation and improve your own plan.

Everyone has unique issues they have to consider when it comes to creating a bug-out plan, whether it is a temporary or permanent one. Some of you out there may be single loners living downtown in urban apartments, and another may have a big family living on a ranch in some rural region. There is no one size fits all format for the project, every individual strategy must be tailored to your individual or group circumstances. Here I hope to provide you with the tactics to form a specialized plan. And even after you master everything, keep going back over it all. In life, even at the end of the world, conditions can change rapidly.

There are also more options for the kind of place you can set up than I could possibly detail here, from living in the underground bunkers of the rich and famous to squatting in an abandoned shack once part of a mining town in the 1800s. Much of what you will end up with is based on your personal circumstances and how much work you do in advance of the coming collapse. There are a lot of possibilities, and for our purposes here we can skip the very conventional ones. There is already a wealth of information available about prepping on your homestead or outfitting your remote hunting cabin. If you already have these things, great, you are ahead of the game. But what if you don’t? That is where some of the more unconventional ideas come in handy.

Places Of Interest

Places of interest, or POIs, are viable spots for bug-out that already exist out in the wilds. These can be anything from remote mountain cave systems and deep untracked forests to abandoned mining operations and crashed wreckage of aircraft from long ago. Embrace your inner Indiana Jones and take a look at some of them.

I have spent a great many of my years exploring my own area of operations in the desert southwestern U.S. and I know it well. The sheer number of POIs that exist out there might astonish you. Whenever I talk with people about these types of options, I always get questions about the legalities of using abandoned property or public lands for these types of things, and that is a valid concern. You can’t break the law and just assume ownership of some piece of land somewhere. But what always gets missed in such revelations is that this information is for post-collapse survival. Should the world be laid waste by a nuclear war, Carrington Event, or some other civilization-ending occurrence, having a bit of paper that says you own the piece of land you are standing on is going to count for very little. Actually, the precise term of measurement used to describe how much weight it will carry is “fuck-all.”

We are talking about where to go when civilization collapses and you have managed to survive that event. And we are talking about preparing for it, not actually doing it now. The legalities do not apply in that case, and certainly won’t exist later when the need arises. For now, let’s call it a gray area and get back to the important part.

Something you should do in preparation for any sort of collapse is prepare maps of your area of operation. I define that area as encompassing whatever distance from your current living arrangements that you can reasonably expect to have access to after the collapse of civilization. Meaning if you live in Kansas, having detailed maps of Alaska is generally a waste of space.

On these maps, you are going to mark down the coordinates of POIs that you discover. These POIs can be a wide variety of things, anything that could prove useful post-collapse. Water springs are a good place to start, as well as areas you have found with a decent amount of wild-growing edible plants. Any old, abandoned locations such as old mining camps and shafts, long forgotten manufacturing facilities, even the occasional rusting RV that someone drove out there to die on some public land. Take some time to think about it, and you will come up with all sorts of useful things and places that would be good to remember later. The general guideline is anything that could provide some sort of resource for you in a post-collapse world. Keep in mind to detail the boundaries for public and private land as well, you will see this material again.

You should make a large regional map of the entire space, and then have a collection of smaller, more detailed maps that provide a zoom of the various areas within it. Major locations can be marked on the overview map, and smaller or more specific ones can be placed on the detail maps. This is a long and detailed process I call “collapse mapping.” This is something that I will be detailing in-depth elsewhere, but for now, we will focus on the bug-out locations.

Unconventional BOLs

Certainly, not everyone can afford to buy a spread of hidden acres in the middle of nowhere, so what will you do when the SHTF and you need to GTFO? Where you are going is the primary part of your plan to get out of dodge, so here are some unusual ideas for BOLs that most people have not considered. Researching these, and others, in your area can be combined with the above fundamentals to decide what you already have available that could be good places to run to when the time comes to escape wherever you are at.

Abandoned Commercial or Industrial Facilities

Factories, mines, and other industrial facilities that are completely abandoned about the landscape of the world, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. These are places that have already seen collapse of a sort, in that they have been absolved of their usefulness by the owner. In many cases that owner, be it a corporation or an individual, may not even exist anymore. Often, they will have some inherent dangers, such as pollution, dangerous debris, or compromised structural integrity, but they will also have plenty of materials for improvising improvements as well.

Old Mines

Mines can be very dangerous, but they are definitely worth a looksee as potential emergency shelters. You will need to be sure that an abandoned mine is sound so that you aren’t trapped or injured by a cave-in. Another consideration is making sure that there aren’t any poisonous gasses or fluids lingering inside, mining operations are notorious polluters. For safety reasons, as well as for being unnecessary, avoid venturing too deep, as there can be many twists and turns, as well as sheer drop-offs that are very hard to see.

Once you have made sure the abandoned mine is safe, you may have found a great place to stash yourself in the event of catastrophe. There may be supplies, and even building materials hidden inside, as well as room for plenty of people and shelter from the elements. In general, the mine itself is useful as a shelter, and for storage, but most of your activity would be aboveground, where you may have access to materials from the old works or buildings to use.

Ghost Towns

I am not talking about the restored and commercialized ghost towns that have become tourist attractions, I mean the real abandoned and isolated ones that dot the landscape. Believe me, they are more common than you might think, just not advertised. A ghost town will probably have plenty of buildings to choose from, or at least scattered material for reconstructing one, and will be well off the beaten path yet still not too hard to get to. Many spots will even have abandoned resources such as tools, containers, and even old vehicles that can be turned into resources.

Old Farms and Homesteads

Empty houses and abandoned farms abound in the countryside after the people who used to live there have been long gone. You certainly need to do your research to make sure some owner doesn’t still exist somewhere, but often these properties are truly defunct. Many states actually have laws regarding “adverse possession” which allow you to file for ownership after occupying and improving the property after a certain amount of time, and that is something well worth looking into. If the location is truly abandoned, you now have yourself a perfect place to establish as your own.

Other Locations

There are so many types of places to consider that this list could continue for quite some time, but I think you get the idea.

So, how do you find these POIs you might ask? Well, one good way is the simple use of Google Earth, Maps, or other satellite imagery systems. Let me provide you with some examples that I know well, and you can fire up your own mapper and follow along with me in the desert around here. Keep in mind, these locations are not really suitable for use, for a variety of reasons which should be clear upon examination, but they serve as interesting examples of what you can find out there in the world.

Lincoln Ranch, Arizona: 34.203462, -113.691196 Once just another ranch in the middle of nowhere, the land is now owned by a mining company for the mineral rights, but there is not much in the way of activity in the area.

Goldome Mill, California: 35.329286, -115.262976 An old mining mill facility, one that actually has some pretty good pictures on Google Maps, especially since the Indecline made some interesting “artwork” there. Here is a recent video of some urban explorer types checking it out.

Rocka Hoola Waterpark, California: 34.946372, -116.689427 Yes, this was once a waterpark out in the middle of the desert.

Stocking Your BOL

Should you be one of the lucky ones who have your own land, cabin, or homestead, stocking the place with supplies will not be a problem. However, if you are planning to use some unconventional location for your bug-out plans, you need to find some way of having supplies available in the area should the need arise. The process I have used for setting up multiple locations is called “staging.”

Staging is where you take materials and supplies out to a secure hiding place, either close to the BOL or along the way to it. You then secure these items in supply caches for future use. You always have to create multiple options for yourself when it comes to your collapse survival plans. That’s why I always recommend storing supply caches in strategic areas located either along your planned bug-out route or in places that you can easily get to after arriving. This also helps you keep all your eggs from being in one basket, which is never a good thing. If you have a single spot holding all your precious supplies, one bad occurrence and all of it can be lost. Spread stuff out in various supply caches so that it won’t all disappear if one place is compromised.

Picking the right container for your supply cache is very important, and there are quite a few different options. What you choose to use as a container will depend on a variety of factors, such as where you are planning to hide your cache, the surrounding environment, and what it will contain. As a general rule, you want to use a very durable container that is waterproof. Smaller caches can be placed in things like PVC tubes capped at the ends. These can be relatively inexpensive and available in just about every hardware store. PVC tubes make excellent survival containers, they are already designed to be buried underground, are easily waterproofed by sealing the ends of a length with caps, and will withstand quite a bit of wear and tear. Heavy-duty plastic buckets are another great choice for holding a large selection of items. Food-grade plastic buckets with screw-on waterproof lids are ideal.

For very large amounts of supplies that will remain buried and hidden closer to your BOL, what I have used myself are some of the big, heavy-duty plastic totes, like the 25-to-45-gallon storage bins you can find at hardware stores everywhere. They are not usually waterproof, but that is something I do after filling it up with items. Usually in these larger boxes, everything inside will also be contained in various other waterproof containers, and then I will seal the entire thing with silicone and layers of Flexseal. This is for something that is only going to be opened once, after a situation where I would be arriving on-site with no intentions of going elsewhere anytime soon. Another good example would be the big 55-gallon barrels or drums.

The general idea is to have all the supplies you will need already in place out near where you plan to evacuate to. When the chosen BOL happens to be something like an abandoned facility or natural cave complex, you can’t just move in as if it were home while society and all its rules still exist. What you are doing is staging the location to be a future home should the circumstances arise when the normal rules no longer apply.

All the normal rules of storage will still apply, however, so make sure you are following them. This means making sure things are sealed and protected for the long term, waterproof, rot-proof, and bug-proof. Food vacuum sealed into mylar bags containing oxygen absorbers, moisture absorbers placed well throughout containers with cloth and paper, and metal tools and such well oiled and sealed away against rust and corrosion.

Burying these caches is still my favorite go-to option, and if you do the same remember to make sure that the top of whatever is buried will be at a depth of at least two feet. You want to consider the environmental factors of the location as well. Temperature extremes and fluctuations, elevation to avoid the danger of flooding from rain, stability from landslides, etc.

The final thing to keep in mind is that the stash must be hidden. You do not want the area to look as if someone has buried something there, and you also do not want to choose any location where others could ever come digging for any reason. Make sure you are marking your caches in ways you will remember, as well as recording specific and itemized entries on your maps, preferably with pictures.

Other Forms of Staging

There are a variety of other ways to stage your location that will help for future use in setting up to live there. Most of them are of the unconventional sort that few people think about. In the course of my own exploration and mapping of my environment and area of operations, I have done quite a bit. Things like planting hardy fruit trees out in the wild close to water sources. It costs very little to plant large handfuls of seeds out in places, and it is very satisfying to come back years later and see wild orchards developing. The same goes for other plants that can be edible or medicinal.

Another thing I have done is to collect what most would consider to be trash or debris, which is often found scattered over large areas. You never know when large piles of wood, old sheet metal panels, or even abandoned vehicles will be of use in future construction, and with me being in a desert environment, there is always plenty around out there. Keeping track of the locations for such things is another part of my “collapse mapping” project which I will be writing about later. I could build an entire village out of the stuff I have found and marked for the future, and it makes for fun and educational outdoor adventures going out to explore.

Remember, the general idea is preparedness, and in most cases, you cannot carry all the supplies you will need during an evacuation, or you may not be at home with all your goodies when a collapse-worthy event takes place. This is what I see as the most probable need for having caches set up in advance. It is also one of the more challenging operations to complete. The easiest part is setting up the caches as a resupply option for a journey to your BOL or perhaps an already-stocked cabin or homestead.

Regardless, with some time devoted to it and a little creativity, you can come up with a good plan. Food, water, and other survival gear should be considered for placement at these cache locations. Having a few smaller emergency caches like these along the route can also serve as emergency supplies on an as-needed basis. I would stock these with a set-it-and-forget-it type of plan as they are meant only for extraordinary circumstances, such as having to evacuate quickly, or from somewhere away from your primary home. It does no good to have huge amounts of supplies and gear sitting in your garage at home in a city that will have to be abandoned quickly in the event of societal collapse. Maybe you will have time to load a vehicle, and maybe not. But what is certain is that the supplies need to be where they are going to be used, not where the bug-out begins from.

Conclusion

The primary point to consider here, as with much of my advice, is thinking unconventionally and living outside the box that more traditional preppers may get trapped in. There is a lot of great information out there about bugging out and prepping in general, and all of it is good stuff. Very valuable to know and to take advantage of when it makes sense. But often, one of the things that becomes a barrier to proper preparation is feeling as if you do not have the means to accomplish what others say is critical. Bug-out locations are one of these things. I can see many people sitting in their apartments after a long day at a dead-end job, settling in for a Ramen dinner after going through all the bills piling up on their counters. They will read about buying land in remote mountains and building cabins or setting up homestead ranches and immediately feel depressed and disheartened because they know such options are well out of reach for them. Their prepping journey ends there, and that is not good.

A good part of my own successes in preparation has come from knowing and embracing the idea that collapse is now. I don’t put too much pressure on myself worrying about money to do things, or the minor regulations one might have to deal with camping out on public BLM land, for example. Yes, those are things to pay attention to in normal civilized life, but they will become irrelevant very quickly once that civilization has gone away. So, when I go out adventuring through the countryside, and I see an old abandoned shack somewhere, I don’t pretend as if I have some right to enter it or take possession of it, but I do mark it down as something that in the future may be owned by no one at all, and since it could become handy at some point, it gets added to my ever-evolving collapse survival plan. I don’t salvage materials I find out in the world, because in many cases that could be viewed as theft, but I do know where they are for the future when such concerns have gone out the window.

A great example is one of my own workarounds for remote access to land. Mining claims. I have an LLC that has claims on several 20-acre plots in some very remote locations. There are a variety of rules and regulations that state exactly what can and cannot be done on them. Such as, you are not allowed to build structures with permanent foundations there, and you cannot live on the site as if it were your home. However…the company can, and has, built some small buildings for industrial purposes, such as equipment storage, and there are often “employees” out there 24/7 living in mobile RV trailers temporarily. Quite a bit of materials can be hauled out there and stacked up for future use, and so on. In several years, and with a few BLM inspections, it would seem I have not violated any rules at all, and I haven’t. But, should society come apart, well, I don’t think anyone will be coming to check and see if we are keeping our structures up to code.

A person in the United States can get a mining claim approved in a matter of a few months, with about a total investment of $400 or so, including the $165 per year fee to keep it kosher. And just having official access to the land, and doing a lot of digging, well, that’s awesome. I will be going into great detail in a future article about mining claims, so don’t miss it.

As in any post-apocalyptic film or story, the post-collapse world becomes one big salvage yard, and possession goes from being nine-tenths of the law to being the entirety of it. Keep things like that in mind, because you are not planning for a world in which society continues on or returns to normalcy in your lifetime. You are planning to survive the end of all of it, and maybe, just maybe, have a hand in providing something for future generations to rebuild with.