Mobility is Survival

There are two approaches to survival in a disaster. You can stay put, and provision appropriately. Or you can leave and try your luck on the road, in another town. This is essentially Fight or Flight. If you're in a genuinely smart place, with good resources and nice people, staying put makes sense most of the time. You can rebuild if a place is good enough.

 

Unfortunately, many of us live (or have lived) in places we know are not good, and we've encountered sufficient numbers of bad people to be seriously worried about safety. Some disasters can be so intense it is better to move, even a shorter distance, than deal with the consequences of staying. Tornadoes are a good example of this. And the Missouri and Mississippi both flood sometimes. Some people insist on rebuilding in places that flood because their insurance pays for it, even though this is really stupid. Being close to unruly people that can be affected by disaster is also bad, because they'll come to your neighborhood demanding shelter and food and money and your life. Even good people can get desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. That's a mantra worth repeating. Religion is no defense.

 

Some disasters are so big and all encompassing there's not much point in leaving because there's nowhere safe to go. You're better off rebuilding after the disaster, as best as you can. This is how people deal with hurricane damage. It is also how we deal with earthquakes in California. The New Madrid Fault near Memphis Tennessee is capable of multi trillion $$ damages from its series of earthquakes. Last time there were over 8 quakes above magnitude 7.5, each the size of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. These were followed by aftershocks which lasted into the Civil War. Due to the geology of the North American plate quakes in the East shake a MUCH LARGER area and devastate not just buildings but cause liquefaction of roads and dams, fell bridges and landslide closed passes, destroy any in-ground public utilities AND topple phone and power poles. It would be stepping back into the 19th century and take over a decade to recover even a small fraction of the basic living standards. Towns would be better off going it alone than wait for Federal Money when the next day, all nations would dump their Treasury Bills, or worse, demand oil and gas leases for further fracking using their own crews, armed of course. You could only make things worse if you set off an EMP over the Eastern Seaboard right afterwards. The USA would be in no shape to do much about it. The fracking crews could poison the survivors, and shoot them, and nobody would care in Europe. Or China. They just want the oil. 

 

The New Madrid Quakes would destroy so much, all the way to Boston and Chicago and Dallas and drown New Orleans, topple the arch at Saint Louis... you can't even imagine the consequences. Its almost worse that most people will survive because they'll have no clean water and cholera and typhoid and malaria will kill many for years afterwards. They'll be in no shape to resist invaders extracting their oil and leaving the mess behind. Do you stay behind for that, or do you leave? Most responsible people would leave if they could. I'm not sure where they could go, and farming is very hard work, but its better than being poisoned or starving in the suburbs unliveable from all the broken pipes and cholera outbreaks killing entire schools full of children. Not very nice at all.

1. Disasters happen, but most are regional.
2. Disaster responses are economic. A crappy economy makes a crap response. See New Orleans, Haiti, and Burma. Compare to Japan and California.
3. Being stuck at ground zero of a natural disaster is uncomfortable or life threatening. 
4. The solution to natural or manmade disasters is either don't be there when it happens or leave as soon as you can afterwards. Don't stick around unless you get paid to rebuild.

This is why I'm not all attached to places, and why I don't build a bunker-farm to survive some apocalypse. That's not to say that some of those with bunker-farms won't succeed. If they're already farmers or have been learning it seriously enough, for long enough, and stay lucky, they may pull it off. Or some goons will show up and take it from them. That's the trouble with goons.

Escaping disaster, or just getting around despite one, is important. I think transportation should be layered, whenever possible, because it is good to have a backup, and you don't always get a choice.

1. A bicycle requires no gasoline. Everybody should own one, just in case things get worst case scenario on you.
2. A small displacement offroad motorcycle, aka Dual Sport or Enduro or Street Tracker or Scrambler, will provide transport on a narrow trail with good fuel economy, around 70 mpg. They are narrow enough to cross most washouts too.
3. A small car with all wheel drive or light enough not to need it gets around 40 mpg. This is approximately the same as real world fuel economy of a Prius, usually for a lot less money.

Being able to get away from disaster doesn't solve where to live once you get out. Mobile living is all about the minimalism, and about retaining the critical necessities, like being out of the rain, being warm enough, keeping clean, and cooking your food so you can make the most of what you've got to live on. The cheapest mobile living options are:

1. Couch surfing. Negotiable price, and generally something which ruins friendships.
2. Living in your car.
3. A tent, possibly car camping with usual accoutrements.
4. Truck camper. Requires a truck.
5. Small teardrop camper. Like a metal tent on wheels. Can be towed by most cars, even small ones.
6. Poptop camper trailer.
7. A-Frame pop-up camper.
8. Smaller trailer. Minimal, fiberglass, and not long term living. Maneuverable on crappy or even dirt roads.
9. Medium trailer. Fiberglass or aluminum, heavier, somewhat maneuverable on crappy roads.
10. Larger Trailer, strictly paved roads, heavy tow vehicle, usually very expensive, parks or back lots.
11. Mobile home, which isn't meant to be towed often. Requires utility hookups to be liveable. Better insulated and more comfortable than trailers.

There's also doublewide mobile homes, modular manufactured homes, which are built in factories on a sort of assembly line, then hauled to a site and lowered onto a foundation built to match. These vary from small miniature cabins to full sized homes, usually one story. Once put into place they aren't meant to be moved. The upside is they're cheap enough that you can sell them for a profit, assuming the place you put them isn't stupid. And people do live in stupid places, though most of those people are stupid and thus poor. So if you live somewhere stupid, expect to have stupid poor neighbors, who are the sort to burglarize you. Keep that in mind.

Towns can go bad. Regions can either go corrupt or be invaded with Guatemalan communists officially welcomed by a tyrant who doesn't have to suffer the consequences. I've been places where you only get a job if you're blood relatives, or married to a blood relative. Marry in, be born there, or GTFO. Those places can stumble on with inbred incompetence a surprisingly long time. You wouldn't think so, but there you go. People are funny that way. Self destructive but still enduring.

If you move into a community, you are an outsider. When times are good, folks might not mind much. If you do your job and are friendly, they might even allow you a small say in things, provided you don't ask for much and keep quiet most of the time. As soon as times get hard, they start sacrificing outsiders to save the core of the community. That's how communities REALLY work, and why small town politics are so deadly vicious. It really IS life and death. If you complain too much, they'll take it. If you object, you vanish, losing that most precious. This is true in cities, and towns, and villages. If you stay put, you're gambling that a community won't fall so far that they'll take everything you've got and murder you. If you aren't born there, and your relatives aren't running things? You are at risk.

This is another really good reason to stay mobile. Economic disasters drive pogroms, even in cute little farming towns. Only doctors and machinists are really safe, because you're worth more alive, though whether you get paid, and whether you are comfortable depends a great deal on who you marry, and how closely they're related to the mayor etc. If that's not an option? Keep a close eye on your chosen community and when things get sketchy, with unpunished crimes and gunshots at night and vandalism left in place, when things don't improve but show a place is going to hell like Detroit or Oakland or Stockton, pack your stuff and leave.

Do the necessary legwork for a safer destination, line up a job, pay off all debts before going. Arrive with a clean credit rating and letters of recommendation so there's no lingering anger. Stay ahead of the trouble. Trouble may follow, or rebuilding from the disaster will fix things. Maybe you can move back someday. Or maybe you'll like the new area better. If you can't haul your stuff, take what you can. Give the rest to charity. Don't ruin yourself for a piece of heirloom furniture. Your life is worth more. Even Bikers are more sensible about mean towns going the wrong way. Some kid themselves that they're tougher, but a single sniper bullet puts paid to that assumption. Most haul their trailer somewhere nicer.

A smart American company would build trailers with really GOOD insulation, good enough that A/C really works, and a heater actually heats it without costing a fortune. Trailers with suspensions able to handle gravel roads, and solar panels on the roof, so they can go really far off grid, a towable cabin. And sell modular AC, modular external water tanks and treatment, and modular battery banks so the trailer is more habitable.

A smart company would offer themed trailer parks with reasonable rates and STANDARDS on whom can live there. Somewhere craftsmen with skills, even IT or finance skills, can live in a safe place while doing jobs, all with hookups and showers and laundry and night watchmen. There needs to be standards in trailer parks so its not all creepy weirdoes with tattoos and parole officers. You can still have skeezy parks. There just needs to be more than one kind. One where your reputation as a tenant follows you. Where good behavior gets you better rates and access to luxury parks with superior services.

Imagine if recent college grads could actually use their education working in their chosen field. For most this isn't possible because they can't live on the wages offered. This is a reality of outsourcing to the 3rd world, like India. Open sewers? Third world. They have to cut their living expenses. Houses cost around 5-6 times too much. The best they can afford is a trailer the size of a very small apartment, with walls thick enough for Spokane Winters and Phoenix Summers. To work in their field, moving as needed rather than losing money every time they had to pay off a lease to follow the job, or turn down the promotion elsewhere because they just didn't have the income to pay that lease off and cover the cost of the move. Freedom means being mobile.

American companies have fallen to the same levels of disrespect as the Third World. I have heard, from several interviewers now, "oh, we only pay minimum wage but people stay 30 years!" which is an obvious lie. That's insane. Nobody can live on that. I've also run into businesses which are clearly in the illegal drug business but insist on drug testing. Why? Or are obviously using employees on drugs to deal with the low pay so don't test but make lots of mistakes and have workplace violence or erratic and eccentric behavior not only waved off but promoted for. Or have workers who are clearly ex-cons or illegals that look at you like a potential crime victim to exploit, maybe even stab you in the parking lot, or demand a share of your pay. Way too many minimum wage managers demand a job kickback or your interview is over. They keep doing that till a sucker accepts. That's business today. If you don't like it, leave. And often, leaving is the right answer. We are that bad of a country. This is what open borders give us.

So in summary:

1. Avoid bad economies and corrupt towns. Leave if you find yourself in one.
2. Always have somewhere better to go. Spend time researching and visiting those places as a vacation. Always have a Plan B. And a Plan C, too.
3. Always be ready to leave. A disaster might not give you much warning.
4. Understand the long term consequences of the trends around you.
5. Retain the means to leave, and understand the consequences of letting go. Your life is important. Especially when the people around you show it isn't.
6. Understand where the necessities of life come from, and what threatens them.
7. Stay minimal. Save your money, don't waste it on things you may need to move someday.
8. Learn how and when to duck. And when to run away.