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IPFS News Link • Prepping

Should I Stay or Should I Go? How to Decide Whether to Bug Out or Bug In During an Emergency

• https://www.theorganicprepper.com

When disaster seems imminent, there's one vital decision that preppers have to make: grab your bag and bug out or hunker down and bug in? The lyrics from the chorus of a song by The Clash sums it up – you've got trouble either way, but one way will be worse than the other.

Because this song is now stuck in my head, I thought it should be stuck in your head, too.

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know

~ The Clash

Bug in or bug out?

First, some definitions:

Bugging In: This is when you shut the gate, lock the doors, and hunker down to weather the disaster at home with your supplies.

Bugging Out:  This is when you grab your bug-out bag and you hit the road to go somewhere else because your home is not safe.

In all but the most desperate circumstances, my personal plan is bugging in. Being out on the road in the midst of a disaster means you're a refugee. It means your supplies are minimal and that the things you've carefully stored over the years are very possibly going to be lost to you. The personal sustainability you've been cultivating at your home is also lost, including your garden, your livestock, and your water plan.

That being said, after the past few years we've seen in the United States, it seems to me that the possibility of having to evacuate has become more and more likely. What with the wildfires (and not just in California – we've seen them in Colorado, Tennessee, and North Carolina to name a few), the industrial accidents, the hurricanes, the floods, and even volcanos, it seems that disaster can strike anywhere. And it can strike in a way that makes it impossible for you to hunker down safely at home.

This is not a decision that's engraved in stone. A while back, I wrote about the 3 steps to surviving any crisis:

1.) Accept

2.) Plan

2.) Act

If you are completely married to one, and only one, course of action, it limits your ability to perform the first step: accepting that whatever horrible event is out there, has actually occurred. You have to be adaptable if you want to be able to survive extraordinary circumstances. Disasters rarely go by a script, and your plan can't either.


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