A debate within the prepper community that’s probably as old as time itself is simply: Bug-out or bug-in if a major, end-of-the-world type scenario should occur? This isn’t something that I or anyone else can decide for you. It’s extremely dependent upon your location, the situation, etc. It’s because of all these variations that it’s critical that you decide up front what you’ll do for each scenario - if you wait until the decision must be made, there’s a high risk you’ll make the wrong one…
Bugging-In
Bugging-In is when you stay in your home during a major emergency. Many preppers that are more “homesteaders” are planning on this. This is my general recommendation as it allows you to pre-position everything you need at your current location. This just simplifies every aspect of preparedness — gathering supplies, rotating out things that expire, etc.
Being able to bug-in is dependent upon one key requirement — that you live in a place that supports bugging-in. If you don’t, then you either need to move, find a good bug-out location, or both. When considering this, you need to be realistic and you need to consider it by threat. It may be perfectly safe to bug in for one threat and completely wrong for another — you need to identify these before you are forced to decide.
Bugging-Out
Bugging-out is when you leave your home during an emergency. For many people, living in or around major cities, this is a requirement as they have no way to live a sustainable lifestyle in their current home and the local population density is too much of a hazard.
Unfortunately, many preppers are planning to bug-out but haven’t identified a place to bug-out to. This means that these people are essentially planning to be a refugee, which seems like a really stupid and dangerous plan to me. Unfortunately, it’s a “plan” that many preppers are relying on (don’t be that guy). They’ve packed up a backpack for each of their family members that each contain a couple MREs and they think they’ll ride out the apocalypse in the nearest national forest.
“It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.”
— Pepper Brooks, Dodgeball (2004)
In my opinion, the only way that bugging-out realistically makes sense as your initial plan is if all these statements are true for you:
- Bugging-in is not a viable option.
- You have a secure/safe/sustainable location to bug-out to.
- You have already pre-positioned the things you need to survive at the bug-out location.
- You have a reasonable way to get there quickly (with backup methods).
Forced Bug-Out (Evacuation)
Even if you have a great place to bug-in at, and are planning to do so, there are threats that just won’t allow this option. Here are a few examples:
- Chemical spill, radioactive fallout, or other hazards affect your bug-in location.
- House destroyed by tornado, wildfire, etc.
- Area overrun by war, zombies, or aliens.
As a result, there are certain circumstances where your plan must be to bug-out. For these events you need to develop a real plan (and not just to move in with your mom down the street – zombies could be at her house, too). And even for the times where you can bug-in, you need the backup plan to bug-out should the need ever arise.
For those that are bugging-out as their primary approach, keep in mind that the above threats to a bug-in location could apply to you as well. You might end up needing to bug-out of your bug-out location. For more information on this topic, see this article.
Bottom Line
Don’t wait until you’re faced with a hard decision to make it. Look at all the possible scenarios that could affect you and decide for each one if you should bug-in or bug-out. Once you’ve decided this, you then need to establish redundancy. It’s possible you could have to bug-out from your bug-out location.
To help make this decision and organize all your planning, we’ve created a planning tool.