by Jenab6 » Mon 25 Aug 2008, 23:55:54
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('RedStateGreen', 'I') was just on another forum where the question was posed re: what you would take if you were bugging out 'into the unknown'.
Why do people insist on this fantasy?
Just think about it: some disaster is happening, severe enough for you to be forced to leave your home (a fire, hurricane, flood, etc.). Thousands of other people are probably displaced also. You won't be able to camp out on public or private land, even if it's a decent spot (you know the owners will be looking for this sort of activity, shotguns ready). The hotels will either be full or uninhabitable. Shelters, rest stops and campsites will be crowded and dangerous.
Is there some reason you wouldn't want to go stay with family or friends? It seems as though people just think there will be some idyllic mountain area (that no one ELSE knows about) that they can just somehow find (because we're "bugging out into the UNKNOWN"), without being arrested for trespassing, coming across thugs/druggies who have staked out the area already, or falling prey to the elements.
I've had to evacuate before (wildfires) and it really makes it much easier if you have a place to go already. We packed important documents, a few changes of clothes, and the kids' toys and went to grandma's. :)
Now, if things were so bad that we didn't have that option (a tsunami or its badness equivalent) then it seems better to choose a place to go outside your geographic area IN ADVANCE rather than just "going somewhere".
Is this just a case of "trusting" that "something" will turn up? Some macho "live off the land" wish-fulfillment? Or what? I'm baffled.
You're looking at people whose picture of the pastoral life has come to them via television dramas involving pioneers. If TV show pioneers have problems, they are dramatic ones, like having to fight off Injuns or alien monsters, and of course the humans always win. In the TV series, there's always that perfect spot
over there, with nobody owning it: it's just
there. So the TV pioneers go over
there, and usually it's just a few steps from where their spaceship landed, and set up camp, and begin organizing activities necessary to creating a more permanent camp, and you are never shown the nitty-gritty details (sawing wood, etc.) and the time factor is compressed by about the same factor that the number of Jewish victims of WW2 has been exaggerated (20).
This kind of people has overly romantic notions about hard work because they don't do any of it. They've never built a house, so they imagine that they could build one, figuring that they can rediscover all the accumulated wisdom that has gone into architecture over the past 4000 years through their own common sense. And they never really put that hypothesis to the test until they must, and when they must, they fail. If their lives had depended on being successful, they die. Many people are exactly that sort of fool.
Living through a disaster does require a continuously habitable place to do the living in. Finding one takes time, and it is necessary to beat the crowds to the market for suitable sites. Further, it takes a lot of practice to learn to do without fossil fuels and electricity. There are details to work out, such as water supply, food supply, transportation, security, and so on. The working out of those details will take months at least, and most likely it will take years of practice to become competent at pioneer living.
But, to answer your question again: most people are unrealistic, overly romantic, about survival. They think a disaster is an adventure, like being in a TV drama where everything is scripted to turn out fine. And in their minds, such people usually picture themselves and their behavior as being "movie star pretty." They'll as easily imagine themselves in Steve Zodiac's pilot seat in Fireball XL5. Fools.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MadScientist', 'j')ust laugh and consider the positive implications for the human gene pool.
As a fan of eugenics, I applaud the wisdom of this remark, though it would be nice if we'd the time and resources needed to improve human intelligence through gentler methods than natural selection.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CarlosFerreira', 'M')aybe people are just tired and want a simpler, less troublesome life. Life alone in the wild is cold, damp, dangerous, you get snakes inside your sleeping bags and your kids/parents/old folks get mauled and eaten by bears or something. You get ill pretty fast, you need caffeine or nicotine, there's nothing to eat and everyone perishes. Many centuries ago, before coal, oil, NG or whatever, people would already live together. Bug Out types are either suicidal or misinformed.
