I used to plan for when the SHTF, but I gave up years ago. It was easy when I was single, as my whole universe was a 3' radius around me. Now that I have a family, it's a waste of time to plan for bugging out, or even sheltering in place.
Most of the replies so far make a dangerous assumption that you are either at home, or can get back home quickly. This is almost never going to happen when the SHTF.
You just walked out of a meeting with only a notepad and what's in your suit pockets. Even your briefcase and jacket are in the car. You left the car in an underground parkade, and now that the power is off, you can't get back to your car. Your wife just dropped the youngest off at daycare, and was in the supermarket when the power died. Your oldest kid is on a school field trip, and you have no idea where she is.
It seems all the food hoarding and ammo stockpiling won't help you now. No BOB, no guns, cell phone network down. Just you, your SAK, and the other 100,000 bewildered people standing out in the streets wishing they were at home.
BB
You have made some very astute observations here.
For sure, a preparedness level that leaves one's gear in one's suburban home while one is 15-30 miles away downtown is going to be no match for an instant, unexpectable apocalyptic-level grid crash.
But there are many different directions the fan can be aiming when the "S" hits it. And even "S" comes in a variety of viscosities, scents, and a rainbow of colors. And while there are many potential disaster scenarios in which reuniting with my family members would be difficult, there are many in which it would not.
Right off the bat, I sleep at home. Even on long workdays, I spend more than 50% of my total hours there. So, though a worst case might see disaster striking when I'm downtown, a lot of potential problems might see me right there with my family. And that's assuming there was no warning. For many disasters, I have tried to cultivate a better-than-average situational awareness. The very fact that we are talking through this stuff probably puts us between a half-hour and a month ahead of the mass of other people out there. The fact that I already KNOW that, if the power goes out, I'm going to be in a desert with really-limited water and 3 million other people wanting it means that I already have canteens to carry it, canteens which I keep full, purification devices to make usable whatever I find, and a running list of places I've noted in my daily routine where water could be had in an emergency. More broadly, it also means that I've pointed out to my kids when water-loving birds have flown overhead, and noted for them where they are going, pointing out that this is a great indicator of unseen water sources. They're little, but they're learning fast. Are they a liability in a disaster right now? Probably. But their marginal helpfulness is increasing month by month.
There are dozens of potential disasters--some of which would make a bugout advisable, some of which would not--which one ought to think through. For me, a few disasters really shaped my current thinking. First was when a pair of tornadoes went through the center of the city where I was in law school, about a week before final exams. I think the report of a violent storm front coming in from the west may have had something to do with my decision to drive to my off-campus apartment BEFORE it hit--which, in turn, kept my car out of the path of the trees that ended up falling on many of my classmates' cars. When the tornadoes approached, I had just enough time to scout a good shelter under my building. Good, but better would have been a battery-powered radio and a flashlight within blind reach. My part of town spent 3 days without electricity, and a few hours without even access to news to find out the extent of the damage or the prognosis for recovery--some of us had to rely on hearsay from passing motorists to learn about buildings collapsed, etc. When I finally made it to Wal-Mart for batteries and candles, I found these all bought off the shelves. This was a wake-up call. For all my survival study and training back with my family and (fortunately very outdoor-oriented and emergency-preparedness-oriented) Scout troop back home, I had let my preparedness lapse while I was in law school. It was time for a change.
I began assembling what I needed for disasters. Laid in extra batteries. Bought a full-sized axe for clearing away fallen trees (lots in that town).
September 11, a few years later, was another such incident. After that, I got very seriously into preparing "go" bags for my wife and myself, stocking them with food, tools, shelter, and things we'd need for the kids. At that point, I began cultivating the situational-awareness aspect of emergency preparedness much more seriously.
This led to more layering. Now I keep serious survival equipment at home, a somewhat-less-comprehensive array of gear, food, water, etc. in each vehicle, a small hip-pack of survival gear (plus about a week's worth of food) in my office, and a good deal of other necessary stuff within arm's reach of my desk.
At the same time, I've had to realize that preparing for ONE disaster can mean ignoring another. Preparation for a tornado may leave you unprepared for a citywide fuel shortage. (This happened a couple of years ago--my metro area of 3 million people or so turned out to be served by just one or two gas / petrol pipelines, and when one of these rusted and leaked and had to be shut down, we suddenly had fuel lines for days, with prices up 100% or more in some places. I'll say, the situational-awareness habit had at least developed enough by then that I was able to buy the last two portable gas cans from the local store.) Preparation for a terrorist attack may be one thing--something which you can't see coming, except in the most general terms--but a killer flu may be something you can see coming a week away. (If that happens, maybe you want to "bug in"--not a bad idea to keep some bleach and gloves onhand, think through in-family quarantine procedures, set up to telecommute via e-mail if your work will permit, and maybe give some thought to home-schooling the kids for a semester while all their classmates are trading viruses until the school district gets wise and shuts the schools a week too late.)
This is why I think a fatalistic "nothing I can do about it as a family man" reaction is a little more pessimistic than we need to be. Sure, if some Taliban sympathizer detonates a homemade atomic bomb in my basement, there's no preparation that could help. But for every such problem for which one cannot effectively prepare, there are probably ten for which some preparation would help.
There are even some long-term disasters, and it's good to give some thought to those, too. Not a bad idea to keep an eye toward the horizon in social and political ways; any potential disasters of that kind? I don't mean to suggest paranoia, but I do have to note that members of my own ethnic group were targets of a deliberate and systematic effort at genocide during the last century, subjected by an occupation government to food rations calculated to be at a daily caloric level incompatible with long-term survival--and I've thought long and hard about what that must look like when it's coming, and what illusions of "it couldn't happen here" kept people from fleeing until it was too late. I've wondered: what would it have been like to be, say, a Jew in Germany in the time before those atrocities got into full swing? And I ask myself, until what point ought one to stay, and cooperate from within the system in an effort to get along, and at what point does one seek out greener pastures?
It need not be quite so stark as that, either. I have noticed with concern that the fact that my city is in a desert--3 million people in a place with insufficient water access and food access, except while the grid is up and humming nicely--means that if things blow at any seam, this may not be a very good place to be. I mean, just think of it at the level of property values. Not usually one's first concern on a survival forum, but if water suddenly (or even gradually) got a whole lot harder to get enough of, that house one's been paying a mortgage on for a decade or three could suddenly (or gradually) become valueless. I think the prudent thing is to keep one's eye on the horizon, on many levels, and with a sober regard for the risks from many quarters.
In recent years I've actually begun looking into what crops the Indians in my own area used to grow for food, and for some years running now I've been trying my own crops of desert-adapted corn, beans, squash, cotton, and the like. There's been some trial and error in that, but I now know the basics of how to do it--and my kids do, too, as I've brought them along in it. They can tell beans from weeds, know when to plant them, know basics of how to parch corn and cook beans and spin cotton. Not a bad start.
I've also found, to my delighted surprise, that the hands-on creative activity involved in learning and practicing survival skills is just about the best entertainment my kids could have. They love building shelters, cooking outdoors, planting crops, making things with knives, hatchets, and paracord, etc.
So, I'm not of the opinion that my new and wouldn't-have-expected-it-ten-years-ago status as dad of all these kids means giving up on emergency preparedness. In a way, it is even a strong call to more of the same. I now have kids whose idea of a GREAT afternoon is making a match-free fire in the backyard and cooking dinner. I also now have kids who love to wander off in the woods, and whom it would be good to make sure know what to do when they get lost.
As to the post above in which it is pointed out (also astutely) that a major disaster of urban-wide or nationwide or worldwide scope would rapidly lead to large numbers of desperate, aggressive people seeking out exactly the same limited wilderness resources you are (and/or looking to your survival gear as their own best hope, potentially with an eye toward eliminating you and taking it), that's also good to consider--though I think the conclusion was a little stark. Mercop's initial observation that one's car stuck in a massive evacuation traffic pileup would be a good display of one's stuff is, I think, well taken. But the lesson to take from this, I think, is just this: (1) bear in mind that there will be other desperate people--many of them--who will want what you have; and (2) bear in mind that you may have to hide your preparations from such people, who may come in numbers or with strength which may be impossible to fight off.
This is a really important consideration--but not one to make one throw up one's hands, on the one hand, nor to resolve to become an amoral loner, on the other. Working this into your plan can pay off. In the past, I've run low on water because I've given some of mine to those who underestimated their needs. So I have taken to carrying more--and to advising others accordingly. Maybe you carry a few extra knit caps, in case you find yourself in a group of others underprepared for cold. Maybe you split your emergency supply of food and gasoline between your garage and some out-of-the-way place out in the woods.
In any event, I'm grateful for this thread, and for everybody's very-thought-provoking responses.
--whatever. Or say things got bad in a large town, but not quite bad enough to qualify for the apocalyptic. You could see a situation where it was good to keep your job, but also to pack non-essential personnel out of the city. I could see the bike idea having application there, even for a family man.
