Should You Relocate To A More Resilient Area?

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Likely a symptom of growing social unease, we’re seeing a surge in interest amongst our readership in relocation.

Many are folks living in urban and suburban areas worried that local resources and/or rule of law will not hold up well during a serious economic crisis, civil disorder or natural disaster.

Others have watched Peak Prosperity readers successfully transition to more resilient destinations or even build their own self-sufficient homesteads.

Specifically, we’re seeing a hunger for guidance on the key factors to assess when asking:

  • How resilient is my current location?
  • Should I relocate?
  • If so, where to? And what criteria should I prioritize in making my decision?
Several years ago, we recorded an interview with SurvivalBlog founder and former US Army intelligence officer James Wesley Rawles addressing these exact questions.

It remains one of the best discussions we know of on the topic of relocation, and it's this week's recommended listening for anyone wondering if a fresh start in an area with better natural and community resources might be one of the single best ways to improve their future prospects:

(Full transcript available here)

For those motivated to action by this podcast, Peak Prosperity is now offering Consultations specifically-designed to help you think through & execute on the relocation process.

Given your specific situation, does it make sense? Given your unique goals and needs, what requirements matter most when targeting communities and properties? How should you be structuring your search efforts?

As an output of the planned cohousing project he's leading, Chris is now exceptionally knowledgeable on both the strategic and tactical realities of intentionally relocating to an area richer in resilience.

If tapping this wisdom will be helpful to your decision-making and/or putting your plans into action, schedule a Consultation soon (PP premium subscribers receive a 10% refund).

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/should-you-relocate-to-a-more-resilient-area/

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I’m a bit disappointed that you’ve posted a Rawles video. The isolated homestead is a fantasy that doesn’t hold up to reality, as evidenced by the Great Depression, South African farmers, the Bosnian War and many other tragedies throughout human history. Instead, I’m personally looking at mid-sized cities with good infrastructure, natural resources, etc, because you have to think about:

  • A diverse and localized economy that can withstand shock yet still connected to the outside world for trade
  • Less dependence on fossil fuels (walkability, inland waterways, good freight rail connections)
  • Low crime, poverty and inequality
  • Proximity to hospitals where care will be concentrated during a crisis
  • Proximity to family, friends and a network to help you
And so on. I live in the SF Bay Area, which many think is (and will be) an absolute nightmare. It has a lot of well documented problems & disadvantages, but consider that that:
  • No need for either heating or air conditioning
  • A massive agricultural area (central valley) at our doorstep
  • One of the largest natural harbors in the world
  • No wildfire damage (too cool, close to sea level)
  • A history of resilience during difficult times
I'm not saying it's ideal (I'm considering Salem, Oregon myself) but use your critical thinking skills, common sense and read history. You might be surprised at what it teaches you. For example, even if the world goes medieval, consider that back then, walled cities surrounded by farmland were the best place to be, not the isolated homestead or rural village.
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I live in the Central Valley and work in the Bay area. As cicerone noted, “we” are surrounded by a massive ag area. That being said, the required chemical inputs (NPK + minors) in addition to pesticides is staggering. If the flow of chemicals is disrupted, by either earth’s hard limitations or societal issues, the output will drop significantly. My best guess is a 90% drop by year 2. Small towns will have the ability to feed themselves, but that’s it.
Rawles assessment is, IMHO, correct regarding more rural areas. In the event of any food shortage, the number of folks pouring in from the Bay area would be staggering. Locals are extremely well armed, but in the end that may not be enough.
Other than the Cascadia fault, the Willamette Valley (Salem) sounds like a much better choice.

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The isolated homestead is a fantasy that doesn’t hold up to reality, as evidenced by the Great Depression, South African farmers, the Bosnian War and many other tragedies throughout human history. Instead, I’m personally looking at mid-sized cities with good infrastructure, resources, etc
I fully agree (I've lived remote; most have no idea what living without electricity/running water is like). In reality: people/teamwork/knowledge are our greatest resources (especially in a crisis). This is why population density is usually a plus with local resources secondary (assuming the local people are of the have cultural unity). Example: Japan, one of the most dense and resource limited places on the globe, is also one of the wealthiest. Relocating to anticipate of economic/political collapse really puzzles me. Because knowledge/life skills are usually local. Every year one can get more efficient at growing/harvesting/preserving their own food in their local area. Over decades of fine-tuning, one can grow/trade food from local resources.. Not to mention the friends/family support one can build up over the years. Another problem with the relocate approach: nobody can predict a Black Swan, nor what resources will be in demand. Drought? Famine? Plague? War? One might be moving directly into the fire they are trying to flee and bring no experience to this new challenging environment.
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@Nate, the problem I have with the Golden Horde thesis is that it has never played out that way. Look at Venezuela. Worst case scenario, right? Anyone trying to bum rush the countryside? No. Instead, people hunker down where they are (where they have shelter, friends, etc) and if things get really bad, they up and move to another city or country altogether.
Depending on the nature of the crisis, being in a rural or exurban area could be a real disadvantage. Think of the 2008 financial crisis. The Central Valley got hammered. Stockton went bankrupt. Satellite offices shuttered and contractors were laid off. As gas prices soared and equity evaporated from the Central Valley, people sold their SUVs and migrated back to the nucleus of the Bay Area proper, which fared relatively well.
The same dynamic happens time and again. My grandfather was a proud Okie. He told me tales of self sufficient life on the farm in 1930s. But eventually, it became too hard (not to mention miserable) and the whole family came to San Francisco to help with the war effort.
I don’t mean to say it’s bad to become more self sufficient, or that the Bay Area is nirvana. It’s definitely not. I’m really sad about the state of the City, actually. But let’s be realistic and look at history. A rural homestead has historically been one of the most fragile living arrangements, because you’re literally on your own.
Cities exist because it’s more efficient to pool resources and manage inputs (water, food, skills, goods) into a central location. It’s just a matter of choosing the right kind of city where you personally can ride out the coming storm. That could be anywhere from a small farming community to a larger city that you believe is more resilient, but personally I’m not putting my chips on the “Redoubt” as the place to be in 2050.
 

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James Rawles is correct when he says that moving to a low population density area with some reliable, like minded neighbors, is the best strategy for prosperous survival, and high quality of life. Within a 3 mile radius we have 9 families that I can think of who are good stewards of their land.
Also true is that you can’t live in the city and have a bug out cabin for your strategy. As James said …gardens and orchards and sustainable infrastructure must be nurtured and there are necessary skills associated with rural living that develop over time.
I have lived in or near large metropolitan areas ( NYC, Boston, and Austin) and now have 35 years of country living experience. There is nothing that draws me back toward city life.
 
 

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Cities exist because it’s more efficient to pool resources and manage inputs (water, food, skills, goods) into a central location. It’s just a matter of choosing the right kind of city where you personally can ride out the coming storm. That could be anywhere from a small farming community to a larger city that you believe is more resilient....
This gave me pause but wait - not to pick on you, but seriously, what if the issue is that there are no longer resources coming into the city to pool and manage efficiently? Isn't that the crisis potential we are grappling with? My choices are made. After decades in the big city, I've spent the past seven years learning to grow food on a tiny plot. The village of 300 is surrounded by wilderness and has hundreds of acres of arable land all around, much fallow. There are gardeners around every corner and a few farmers in the Valley. All this food production experience has changed how I see cities. In the city, there isn't land to feed millions within reach of the millions. So they can't produce their own food, even if they knew how. Whoa! I find that alarming. Food comes from the land, or sea, or rivers (once upon a time). Got land? And efficiencies can happen small scale too - sharing time, skills, gear, crops, plants, seed and even land for growing. Also, I just like it here, and so here I am. That may be the case for city dwellers too.  
   
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Cities are very efficient at distributing goods and services compared to rural areas, of that I have no doubt. BUT, they require constant inputs far beyond their local horizon. Take them away and you get Venezuela. Last time I traveled in Argentina (2017) I met a ex Venezuelan police officer who worked in Argentina as a baker. He had left everything to flee with his wife and child. When the police are running away you know its bad. He told me people would kill you for your shoes. This was a country that was doing ok for south american standards 10 years ago. The pace of change will surprise people. It takes time to establish yourself rurally… years even with deep pockets. Peak everything is what 5 maybe 10 years away (hopefully/doubtfully) it will be a mess in a massive scale.
GTFO folks.
S.

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I lived the first half of my adult life in an urban/suburban environment and now live in a fairly secluded rural area. There is really no comparison. In any city you are by necessity dependent on the supply chain. As others have pointed out the supply chains in cities tend to be much more efficient than in the country. Thats true…because they HAVE to be. Everyone is dependent on them with no ability to produce or procure the necessities of life on their own.
In the country I can’t make a phone call and have anything I want delivered to my door. Thats true. But its also true that I generally dont NEED much that I can’t produce for myself.
I still have relatives in NYC. After the hurricane, when power was out for less than a week there were RIOTS. A sense of desperation was palpable. Without electricity, there is no water. Without water people die FAST. Luckily the system held up water and food were distributed and power was restored. If it hadnt been, many people would have died, and the riots would have accelerated.
For historical perspective look at what happened to the people in Bosnia, or Leningrad when those cities were deprived of the constant inflow of resources and distribution needed to maintain civilization. It wasnt pretty…especially after the rats had all been eaten.
During the power outage in NYC, I also lost power here at my homestead. In fact, just last week power was out for three days after a storm. I rate it as a mid-level inconvenience at worst. Since I heat with wood from my woods there was no problem on that front. In fact we also have a wood cookstove and we enjoy firing it up now and then. For water, we have our own well with very clean, cool mountain water. It was a pain to carry it into the house but not more than a slight inconvenience.
Our pantry is stocked with canned veggies, and our freezers are packed with home raised chicken, lamb, and beef. Most country people own generators and if the meat began to defrost, I was ready to refreeze it( oh, I have several large fuel tanks for reserve ) That didnt happen, luckily. Even if worse came to worse I have the land, the resources and the know-how to construct a fast smoke-house to preserve meat.
One of the greatest benefits of living in a rural area is the mentality of the people. People help each other in the country. People here know how to do things. In the city its a dog-eat-dog outlook. When the chips are down the city person see’s other people as competitors. With little or no idea how to provide themselves with the necessities, even if the resourced WERE available, the city person is mostly helpless. Here in the country, the few people around are people that I know very well. Most of them will bend over backwards to give you the shirt from their back. Every man is a half-ass mechanic/carpenter/tinkerer/handyman, etc
We are all of us, everywhere, armed here. Thats a BIG deal when you are talking about resiliency and survival. We have know-how, we have tighter communities.
With all due respect to Cicerone’s post, as a guy who experienced both city living and country living during crises, it’s not even CLOSE. The remote homestead is the most resilient homestead provided it is properly organized, managed, and peopled. City life is great when things are running smooth, it’s the “easy life” in many ways during the good times…but when TSHTF, people will suffer and die there. No question about it.

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I hear lots of good thoughts, above. I grew up in San Jose.
One axis of this discussion is the issue of the type, magnitude and rapidity of collapse we are each envisioning. One big issue:

How much fuel for transportation is available?
If the answer is no fuel at all, then our worlds shrink down to a 5 mile radius circle--the distance we can comfortably walk, pull a small hand cart or carry a bucket of water. A rich agricultural food producing area 60 or 100 miles away is just not accessible. Do we envision caravans of horse drawn carts full of food crossing a hundred miles between farm and city? How much armed escort would be required? Why would a farmer choose to make that trip? For the city dwellers money? How many horses and cart do modern farmers have on hand? How many decades would a transition back to horse and buggy take? Water: San Jose California is a near-desert. Only 15 inches of rain per year fall in Santa Clara County, an area with no rivers or naturally occurring freshwater lakes. The rich farmland of this area was productive in decades past only because irrigation water was delivered from the Sierra Nevada mountains via canal systems and pumped into the fields with electric pumps. So if a collapse scenario includes competition for irrigation water from communities upstream along the canal, or an interruption of the electrical grid, pumping stations or vandalism of the infrastructure, then San Jose would return to its desert like nature. But, if we imagine more of a downturn, but not a full collapse, so that
  • the rule of law is maintained,
  • that the electrical grid remains intact,
  • that police or military enforce water rights laws along the canal system to prevent piracy from the water delivery canal system,
  • heavy equipment for maintenance and repair of dams, canals and pumping stations continues, and
  • that sufficient trucking continues to deliver food from the Central and Salinas Valleys,
then San Jose might do OK. At least for a little while. Until the next ratchet downward.        
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I think my post was misconstrued a bit to mean “NYC is the best place to be in a crisis.” Rather I just want to point out that - historically - there’s a wide spectrum between city and country and a complicated relationship between them with regards to resilience.
For example, the Amish are the prototype for pre-industrial living in North America, but even they live connected to the central village for trade and community.
However, if society breaks down, a small community can be a dangerous place to be, as evidenced by the massacres in Bosnia and South Africa. And going way back in time, the Vikings. In other words, rural life is dependent on protection from the state for their way of life.
The traditional solution to this problem was the walled city or city state which could then be organized into leagues of cities for protection and trade. These cities were not the mega cities of today, but rather sized according to the carrying capacity of the land. I believe this to be close to an ideal. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, North America followed this model with small cities along waterways.
Now obviously we have some unique challenges with the predicament we’re in. But I don’t believe the solution is a “self sufficient” compound only reachable by a gas guzzling 4x4, with solar panels from China, playing Mad Max games that never work out that way in reality. I’m not saying this characterizes the Peak Prosperity community, but I think we have to ask ourselves how self sufficient we really are and whether that’s a better goal than a more resilient interdependence between city and country.
In that vein, I think we should rebuild local food systems, local manufacturing, local militias and other traditions that made America great. There are some cities trying to put that into action, some brave architects bucking the trend and other glimpses of solutions that I think are realistic and viable long term.

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https://jbartlett.org/2019/11/n-h-ranks-first-in-usa-in-economic-freedom-fraser-institute-study-finds/
The latest of many comparative studies of US states that lists NH at or near the top on a variety of measures.

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I think cities will probably vary a lot. When the everything bubble pops, this will be the loss of the US dollar as reserve currency. The center of that system right now is New York. So I think NY will crash hard, as all of its previous benefits from Fed money printing will evaporate. There will be a lot of angry unemployed financial workers there. Combine this with the high population and density, and I would definitely not want to be there. It will probably get hit the worst.
Similarly, San Jose is all about high tech and the internet. I see the relative importance of the internet waning after the bubble crashes, and all that Fed-originated money being firehosed over there right now comes to an end. So I dont think SJ will be a good place either.
On the other hand, some of the larger midwest cities dependent on agriculture might fare much better.

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Some in this discussion have noted how cities are more efficient at distributing resources and the like. I thought it might be pertinent to offer the reminder note that being efficient is not being resilient. Resiliency is having redundant systems, back ups, and surpluses in the system, what would be waste in an efficient system.
It is also probably worth noting that many of the older cities were located where they are for real reasons related to geography, such as deep water ports, or natural convergence areas of rivers/lakes, or proximity to rich farmland. They aren’t necessarily bad places to live. The challenge is whether or not, or perhaps really how much, the population living there now has exceeded the land’s natural carrying capacity.
Something else that comes to mind for me in this discussion is that everyone is viewing life through the lens of an agricultural society. I was recently listening to a presentation looking at the rise of agricultural society as opposed to horticultural societies (what today might be permaculture) where the presenter noted many of the things that had to come along with agriculture, such as some form of police state to protect the harvested surplus and help deal with distribution. horticulture didn’t need this as people would just go gather what food they needed, while tending to the generally wild land in such a way as to support their food plants. This made me think that one of the most resilient things I’m doing is learning how to recognize, harvest, and use what edibles grow wild around me, and live in a region that has an abundance of such food. This could be a rural location, or small towns. Would this approach scale to support our current population? Probably not. However, if I’m one of the few in the region who recognizes the abundance of food growing all around me it would seem to me I have a resource that can’t be stolen, not to mention skills and a knowledge base that would become highly marketable. If you aren’t learning all the wonderful wild foods growing about you, I’d highly recommend it!

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I appreciate all the questions and comments so far - great food for thought. I live at the edge of a more populated region of several million (Triangle area of NC). My county has about 400 people/square mile, but that is heavily concentrated in a small area. I’d create a mutiny if I tried to uproot my family so I have to admit I’m not even considering moving. I have extended family in a much more rural Kentucky location, but the older generations that worked the land and mostly passed on and so it is really not an active agricultural community like it used to be. My area is really ahead of the game since we have a couple generations of younger farmers. I feel like I just have to be better prepared to move than most and leave it at that for now.
I run a bakery and have active partnerships with farmers from 3-15 miles from my location and lots of different customer and other relationships in my community. Everything I make is sold locally with only bicycle transport when needed. There is lots of nearby land that is not being worked nearly active enough so room to absorb additional labor. We have lots of climate variability and coming killer heat for sure, but still reasonable water. Heavy clay soils need to be rejuvenated, but all the people I work with are already doing that. I certainly don’t have an answer for the nearby masses. I’m not going to flee from them, I know I can’t fight them, and can probably only convert a small percentage of them to my way of life. Maybe it will be enough.
 

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I’ve enjoyed reading all of the posts. A lot of food for thought. I’m sure there are a lot of different motivations for wishing to change the manner we live and how we interact with the natural world.
But I have to admit that I feel like an outlier on this one. I mean we know what the last economic conflagration looked like, right? And we know what kind of hardships we entailed getting through that, right? I’m not sure anything I saw 10 years ago (and my eyes were wide open as I saw that coming a mile away) would suggest to me that I could toss off the reins of the modern economy and go full homestead/mountain man.
I love watching Marty Raney or Eustace Conway on TV as much as the next man. BUT it just seems unrealistic, to me at least, to even countenance trying to go it alone on my farm and patch together a living on nothing more than what the land provides. The economic infrastructure isn’t there now. Everything is geared to make produce/food as cheap as possible.
Even if I didn’t love my job, I would still have no choice but to keep one foot in the current economy while I pursue as much independence as possible from it. Only in certain situations and conditions can one detach completely from the modern economy. And almost always those who manage to do so end up depending on trade with those who are connected in order to make ends meet.
Can I lower my debt? Provide a goodly portion of my calories via my own resources? Achieve as much job security as possible? Live below my means to where my family could make it on one much lower income job? Invest in such a way as to lower my risk in case of another, maybe worse, economic debacle? Get the farm to the point where it pays for itself?
These are the questions I think apply to me and my situation. Are people in my area going to be using draft horses and living much closer to the land? I’ve no doubt they will… in a couple hundred years. In my lifetime the problems are much more dicey and much less romantic than that.
Will

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Adam Taggart is obviously a man I have a lot of respect for and he’s eons ahead of me in this game. But I think we saw, during the recent California wildfires, some assumptions uprooted.
For one, it became clear how car dependence is a real Achilles Heel. He was stuck in a traffic jam fleeing towards San Francisco down the only freeway, congested Highway 101. Gas prices are almost $5 a gallon here. What happens when it’s $10/gallon?
I grew up in suburban Sonoma County and while it’s a beautiful region with a perfect climate and a rich agricultural history, I wouldn’t consider it especially resilient. For one, unless you’re managing a vineyard (or related specialty agriculture), the economy is very weak; It’s mostly service jobs. Thus, it stays tethered to the Bay Area proper, creating massive traffic jams.
The same weak economy produces economic inequality - there’s VPs from San Francisco playing farmer on the weekend and the majority trying to make do in a high COL area. There used to be a problem with Hispanic gangs. I myself got “jumped” a couple times in high school. I’m not sure if that’s still the case as it’s gentrified quite a bit, but at the same time the middle class has fled the region. For my part, as soon as I graduated I made a beeline to San Francisco and never came back. Anyone with an ounce of ambition did the same.
My point is not to be scared of brown people of anything like that. But there are resilience factors that may not be apparent unless you’re a local such as car dependence (and traffic chokepoints), economy & social dynamics (dysfunctional), which areas always flood (Russian River, Sebastopol) and which burn (mountains and canyons).
If I were still in Sonoma County, and had the means, I would buy a historic house in the walkable heart of Santa Rosa, pimp my backyard to become as self sufficient and off grid as possible and call it a day. Short of a complete breakdown, I think that would get you through more crises than a semi rural location on the outskirts of the county.

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I’ve been hearing a lot about the advantages that New Hampshire offers its residents. Penguin Will wrote,

Only in certain situations and conditions can one detach completely from the modern economy. And almost always those who manage to do so end up depending on trade with those who are connected in order to make ends meet.
I gather that he was writing about some sub-state, non-NH area, but the principle remains. To what extent is NH the place it is by virtue of its connections to the rest of the US? I have never been anywhere near there, so I make do with published statistics and vicarious travel courtesy of maps and atlases. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but it seems to me that NH is terribly vulnerable to larger events in its region. It's so little. How long would it survive even partially intact in the event of serious systemic disruptions and even a breakdown? How soon before it found itself over-run by refugees from far and wide? Is there any hiding place? I think not. Most of us can make only marginal improvements to our situations. This is why I choose to remain in Canberra. It's a medium-sized city now with a bad case of growthitis, but for Australia it has a remarkably progressive and far-sighted government and population. I hope of course that we pull together in bad times, not pull apart. But in some respects it resembles NH. Look at the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) on the map. It's so little. It imports most of its food and transport fuels and still too much of its electricity. We'd be quickly swamped by refugees if the substances really hit the fan. No hiding place.
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the above is more an argument against cities (even moderately small ones, not to mention large ones) vs. rural. Perhaps the best answer is the old European village concept: village small enough for everyone to be familiar with everyone, yet large enough to support specialized craftsmen (blacksmiths, hoopers, etc), and surrounded by land farmed by the villagers, most of whom are involved in food production, perhaps with a multilayered defense perimeter, eg, the medieval, fortified village. Note the similarity to the village concepts around the world, from Native American villages before white settlers to those in pre-modern Siberia. This is the basic setup that occurred everywhere around the world once we transitioned from hunter-gatherer to early agriculture. We are all biased by what we are familiar with. Note the idea of a family living isolated on a piece of farmland is a relatively new one, which has been shown time and time again to be a non-defensable one, from the isolated farms in the American west during the Indian Wars to the white farms in Africa when anti-colonial unrest occurred. Also note the early, pre-nation agriculturist villages were not totally ag only…they still supplemented their food production by hunting and by supporting semi-wild animals, eg free ranging feral pigs, feral cattle, etc… Today I would include all the grain and forage supplemented deer in our area. We have a farm and we just consider the deer another “crop” we are producing. Another interesting thing to note is how recent this phenomenon of the “helpless city person” is. It only became large scale after WW2. Prior to that, the majority of people where involved in agriculture. During the Great Depression, many people went “home to the farm”, where their relatives still lived, poor but not starving. If we have a crash today, most people have no family farm to go back to.

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Except that it’s going to be much worse than the present, what the future holds is unclear. Because it’s unclear and there are a breathtaking range of negative possibilities, it’s impossible to be sure where the best place will be in the future. (But that doesn’t negate the fact that some lucky people are currently living in some of those best places, even if they don’t know it or why.)
Don’t forget that New Hampshire is only my Plan B to escape from my Plan A in Philadelphia. That much I’ve accomplished. I think we can survive here in NH for our predicted lifespans in retirement under a “conventional“ range of collapse scenarios. We can survive a Great Depression kind of thing. We can survive any level of crime coming to NH that I’ve seen in the US (Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, etc.). We can survive the gradually worsening effects of global warming OR global cooling, but not sudden, catastrophic change. There are other really bad things we could survive if they come to the US because we expect they wouldn’t touch NH: riots in the streets, big increases from today in political violence, regular terrorist attacks, state and local government bankruptcies, etc. We and NH make a resilient team under most conceivable collapse scenarios.
I have a Plan C, which is still being developed and equipped, which is based on mobility. I have discarded the idea of establishing a bug out location where we can escape to and live indefinitely in an 18th century agrarian style. That may be what we are forced to do but I don’t think I’d be lucky enough to pick the place that would be survivable in advance. Most people will find their bug out farm location ends up in the middle of a civil war, or nationalized by the government to feed survivors or the military, or in the middle of an active combat zone, or poisoned by some nuclear plant melt down or nuclear weapon strike, or in an extended drought, etc. So our Plan C (which has now been promoted to Plan B) is to maintain our ability to travel almost at a moment’s notice almost anywhere in the country if unforeseen issues literally force us out of our carefully chosen spot here. Our plan is to be able to travel with most of our wealth, tools and vital equipment with us without having to rely on local infrastructure (like gas stations, restaurants, food stores, and hotels). This way we can go to the best location at that future moment, as long as we can reach it by land. That still leaves at least three big problems in that Mad Max scenario: 1) how will we know where the good places are in a really bad societal collapse? 2) can we make ourselves so valuable that we’ll be welcome when we get there? and 3) can we survive the journey if it takes us through places experiencing open combat, violent anarchy (think: armed groups setting up “checkpoints” on roads to rob and kill travelers) or other hazards to our lives? I’m still finalizing aspects of this Plan B and hoping never to have to implement it.
”Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.”