Where Should You Go: The Perfect Bug Out Location
The best bug out location depends largely on the situation at hand.
You may be able to get by with heading to a distant friend or family member's house for a while if the situation is limited to the general area in which you live. This sort of location is ideal for natural disaster-type situations like floods or wild fires. All you have to do is grab your bags and head on over to the person's house you've chosen.
The key here is to pick someone you trust and know will let you stay with them for a while. Make sure you check with them in advance and make sure they'll be receptive to you moving in for a while. It helps if you offer to reciprocate. Tell them you'd be willing to do the same if they find themselves in an emergency situation.
It helps to have a few places lined up where you can go. If you get to Uncle John's house and find out his new wife is threatening to leave if he lets you stay, you can save his relationship by heading to an alternate location you've got set up.
For some, this is the only plan they have in place.
This is an inadequate plan that fails to take a lot of factors into consideration.
For one, what are you going to do if the emergency is a nationwide emergency? What if your friends and family are in every bit as much trouble as you are? Where are you going to go then?
The next consideration you have to make is what happens if traveling long distances isn't an option. You may not be able to get past roadblocks and/or checkpoints to get to your destination. An EMP bomb may have been set off, rendering all but the oldest of vehicles inoperative.
You're going to need a location close enough to home to where it's a short ride or a long hike away. The first criteria should be that's it's away from populated areas. You don't want a second home in a small town in the foothills. Ideally, your bug out location will be remote enough that it's off the beaten path. A cabin in the woods that's not accessible by any paved road would be a good choice.
When looking for your bug out location, you need to take into consideration how accessible it will be year-round. A cabin near a small stream in the woods may be easy to get to in the summer, but come winter it's going to be socked in with snow. That little 5-mile dirt road is completely blocked and you now have to traverse 5 miles of snow in the freezing cold to get to your destination.
Dirt roads can quickly become death traps with a small amount of rain, especially when the dirt roads run along a steep drop off. Water quickly freezes into ice when night comes around and you're now in danger of sliding off the road.
Make sure you identify all ways into and out of your property. If you're looking at property where the only access is over a rickety bridge across a babbling brook, keep in mind that brook could become a raging river come winter. If the water gets high enough to knock the bridge out, you won't be able to get to your bug out spot.
The spot you choose should be accessible from a couple directions, with one of those directions not requiring traversing a bridge. Get a map and identify any old logging roads or trails you could potentially use to get to your location, and then explore them to make sure they still exist and can be used.
Make sure you have access to food and water. Keep in mind that game is going to be hard to find in the winter and there may be weeks on end where the weather won't allow you to hunt. Keep at least 4 months' supply of food on hand if you plan on bugging out to a remote cabin in the wilderness.
Keep OPSEC in mind when picking your location. In the event you need to protect your location, the more ways in there are, the harder it'll be to protect yourself from all angles. You've got to balance your desire to be able to protect yourself against accessibility.
A canyon with steep walls where there's only one way in and out provides you with a single place you have to guard, but what happens if there's a rockslide that blocks the path? You could be prevented from getting into or, even worse, out of the canyon.