Jim Rawles says you should start to Get Out Of Dodge, NOW. Go read; I’ll wait.
Back yet? Now, I didn’t find his post to be particularly alarming. Some commenters on other sites seem to be miscategorizing his post as some sort of cult-like effort to establish another Bo Gritz-style covenant community. Not so; he’s been saying much the same thing (“move West!”) since at least 2005, when I started reading Survivalblog. Think of it as a prepper version of the Free State Project, just involving more than one state (or two). Rawles has focused on the mountain states as retreat locales near-exclusively for a long time. Furthermore, I’m an atheist myself, but Rawles’ muscular Christianity doesn’t scare me; most Christians, in my experience, are just generally good folks, and the more fervently fundamentalist types I’ve encountered have always seemed more thoughtful, caring, and intellectually engaged (albeit in what seem to me silly doctrinal debates) than most people in general.
As for the wife and I, we’re stuck in a house worth barely more than half what we owe on it; it will take a decade or more of nasty inflation to bring us even. For that and other reasons, including our jobs and the fact that there’s still a lot of money to be made around here, the wife and I plan on being in the Bay Area for many years.
That being said, I’m trying to arrange some time on the way back from Boomershoot to finally visit the not-so-secret-valley I have been jonesing about from afar since 2000 or thereabouts, and look at some houses for sale. I can’t afford any of them, of course (although watching the prices rise and plummet over the past ten years has been illuminating), but in a couple of years we should have enough savings for a down payment on a “vacation home,” and start with that. This isn’t because Rawles said he liked that area too; it’s one of the continuing steps in my ten-year plan to establish a retreat in northeast Oregon or Idaho. We’re on about year seven of that plan….
Well, we did it.
It took us two years of research and planning, but we’ve been here just over a year now… just about 50 miles from Rawles actually (though his ideas had very little – some, certainly but not much influence on that; it’s just that we have much the same preferences around laws, freedom, escape routes etc… ).
I’m dining tonight with a good friend, owner of a Nauticat motorsailing ketch. We’re going to decide how to arm the boat for piracy on the wide Columbia. I’m thinking Barretts and Saiga 12s. I have access to a place I can farm just a short bike ride from the river…Nauticat lives with little fuel, but where is all the reloading gear going to go aboard??? Filter/SODIS the river water, farm/hunt upland, sail up and down the river, many sloughs, etc to hide in….between us, we have enough arms to make up quite the formidable flotilla…see what trouble you can get into just reading “Atlas Shrugged”?
Chris: Yep, when you guys posted about your move I walked around with a big grin on my face for about a week. Seeing somebody I’ve met, and a fellow professional at that, actually make the move, well, affected me more than I thought it would.
RD: you retirees, with all your time to play and everything. I’m jealous!
Rawles is correct, in all but his religious fundamentalism. I see such a movement, but based on POLITICAL fundamentalism, a “back to the Founders’ America” movement. Who knows, it might even jive with the movement the Constitutionalists have been advocating all along: Constitution and first ten, baby, don’t need nuttin’ else. Rawles’ “beans and bullets” makes a lot of sense, though.
I’ve been up in the mountains and way in back of ’em, there’s not that much there and the infrastructure is very weak. Thanks to Globular Worming the Sierras got 50-feet of snow this winter. Since we’ve been here over 23 years and bought within our means, we’re not underwater on the unit, we’re ahead, As a tropic-based original child-unit I say f*the cold, so I gotta find a beach somewhere and go spear fishing – let the beach come to me, tsunami or earthquake, dirt or water – bring it on. I’ve got the bug-out bags ready, but there’s no place to go.
DirtCrashr, you could go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Coast
The soon-to-be son-in-law has spent a bunch of time on the Lost Coast, and a more remote place you’re not likely to find. Of course, WTSHTF, a dirt bike makes for much faster travel than feet….
I love the idea. Loved the Coeur D’Alene area when I saw it a few years ago.
And it seems all the firearms businesses I buy from are either in ID or OR.
Any that follow that guys advice will be well placed when the taliban takes over. I’ll bet sharia law has a sub-section on snake handling. When you get your little slice of heaven set up, invite Glenn Beck along for a koran lesson. All religious superstitionists desire POWER over others and they generally find it in weak minded “folowers”. Ask the survivors of David Koresh’s experiment. So y’all have fun out there and don’t let the boogie man getcha.
David & Company:
I’ll second your recommendation for the lost coast. Rarely gets hot in summer, never freezes in winter. Lot’s of marine mammals, mostly seals and sea-lions, to eat. They’ve been breeding uninhibited by hunting for 70 years now. Get a couple sturdy sea-kayaks and some heavy duty bow-fishing gear and live the Ohlone lifestyle for a few years while two thirds of the sheeple starve and the country returns to carrying capacity circa 1900.
There’s trout in the river, and many more fish off Pt. Mendocino, and elk, boar and deer in the woods, and the land is fertile enough to support wheat in the river valley and fruit & nut orchards and vinyards on the hillsides, and some of it is already under cultivation. The nearest large town is over an hour away by auto, and at least two or three days hiking. Extremely limited small roads that can be easily blocked. No jobs! 🙁
But when TSHTF, Petrolia or bust! Pre-positioning of gear and provisions is the key.
“Mattole against the world!” George Lindley
The only regrettable things about your beautiful valley are getting there from the East Bay following TEOTWAWKI, and the location relative to Mt. Hood. Following the next major eruption, that valley is likely to be under 2-12 feet of ash since the prevailing winds blow straight in that direction…
I’d rather deal with the frequent earthquakes at Petrolia. Like someone once said, “I can plan for those…”
Gah. I will have to look at wind patterns again. Years back I examined downwind effects from a Seattle or Portland nuke and it didn’t seem that the southern Wallowa Valley would see much fallout.
A St. Helens-type event (I well remember the ash hitting Corvallis, hundreds of miles south) is exactly why I’ve never really considered anything remotely close to Mt. Shasta. As a kid I read “Fire and Ice,” a volcano text then on sale at Crater Lake’s visitor center (the one with the impressive Mount Mazama model) and after all the cool science it had a really terrifying appendix with a breathless “news”-style writeup of the effects of a simulated Shasta eruption. Come to think of it, that was probably my first encounter with disaster porn….
I’m moving to idaho in t minus 11 days. not for rawles’ reasons, but idaho is idaho.
I hope we HAVE a couple of years yet. I’m not all that sure about it.
Johnny, if your IP addy is any indication, that’s a very long-distance move you’re making. My family moved across the US twice when I was a kid; disruptive is an understatement, but there’s quite the adventure aspect too. Good on ya and good luck!
One of my dirtbike riding friends lives on the other-side slope of Mt. St. Helens – he and his family isn’t too worried. I bet real-estate there is cheap in THAT location.
I think you need to be there already, not pondering 2-years in advance, taht awy you can get the lifestyle in gear – it’s a permanent change. It’s going to be such a big, gargantuan, humongous, slow-motion crackup that most people will be glued to TeeVee watching it unfold, and Dancing with the Stars – all at the same time. We are probably watching it right now.
If you had some extra time around boomershoot you could also swing north about 2 1/2 hours. Once you got up into the mountains near Lake Coeur D’Alene you’d understand why we’re here, and should you make it all the way up to Pend Oreille we’ll show you around.
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