Stockpile Your Bug Out Location?

Stockpile Your Bug Out Location?
Dan F. Sullivan

For some reason, not a lot of people talk about this very important yet crucial aspect of prepping. Everyone’s got food and water in their pantry, in their bug out bags but no one seems to care whether or not they have any preps at their bug out location.

Is it because they don’t need them? Is it because their BOLs are self-sufficient and don’t need cans of tuna and wheat berries when they can just hunt and dig wells? No and no. I believe this to be yet another overlooked aspect of prepping that needs to be addressed.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… that you’ll need to double the amount of food you’ll store and… that’s not a bad idea. Not because you know have two locations but because more is always better when it comes to survival food. Your current stockpile will last you a lot less than you think, anyway.

Keeping your preps in two places is more of a balancing act that a financial effort, as you’re about to see.

Now, the obvious question is: how do you do it? How do you split the food between your home and your BOL? The easiest way to do it is to remember the two basic scenarios that can happen. When disaster strikes, you will either bug in or bug out.

Either way, you’re gonna need food, water, meds, tools etc. in both places because attempting to travel back and forth between the two could prove extremely dangerous. So storing 3 months’ worth of food at home but only 3 days’ worth at your Bug Out Location means that, in the event that you’ll have to evacuate and live there, after a few days you’re gonna be in trouble.

How does this change the way you prep? There will be a bit of an overhead but it’s not that hard. In essence:

• you’re gonna have to build the two stockpiles in parallel (food, water, medicine, tools, gear, weapons – you name it),
• you’ll have to rotate both stockpiles (which means you’ll have to travel to your BOL regularly),
• …and you’ll have to create extra layers of protection to make sure your stuff stays untouched while you’re not there.

(There are actually a lot of dos and don’ts when it comes to bug out location but I wrote those in a separate article.)

Now, you might think there are only downsides to doing this but I can show you how you can easily turn them into advantages. You see, having to go to your Bug Out Location more often means:

• You get a chance to better familiarize yourself with the routes to get there. I strongly encourage you to take a different route every time you get there and even have your kids tell you where to go to test their memory.
• You get to spend entire weekends with your family in a quiet environment, in the middle of or close to nature. This will allow you to relax, bond and just get away from it all.
• As long as you’re spending weekends there, you might as well eat your survival food and see how everyone likes it. This will allow you to tweak to your “menu” later on
• You get to try stuff that you normally wouldn’t at home (due to neighbors), such as starting a fire, fitness drills, climbing trees etc.
• …and, all in all, you increase your chances of survival in a variety of bug out scenarios and that’s the only thing that matters.

Will this cost you extra than if you just prepared for one scenario? Maybe, but not by a lot… not if you’re smart, at least. A lot of the stuff you buy, you buy in bulk, correct? Things like band-aids, toilet paper, rice, beans etc. So instead of keeping all your bandages in one place, why not split them between your home, your car, your bug out location and your bug out bag? They’re really cheap, anyway. This will make sure you’re covered from every angle and it’s way better than if you kept them all in one place.

Well, that was it. I hope this article got you thinking and, possibly, even got you to reorganize your entire stockpile. Good luck!