This site describe the safest places to be, worldwide. My research has obviously not taken into account your own personal circumstances. Here are some ideas to help you make a considered decision that is best suited to your needs.
How Much Preparation?
It’s not just money; it’s time and potential embarrassment. For many of us, spending every spare moment building a bunker will cause your friends to reconsider their relationship with you. It is important that you determine how much your survivalist efforts are worth to you in terms of social sacrifice.
The key factors are shelter, food and water. Have these in place and everything else can be worked out.
Costs
You need to consider the likelihood of you actually needing a safe spot, in the near or distant future. Dig deep and come up with your own odds, your own predictions. And then base your degree of survival preparations on that judgement.
It’s a cruel fact of life that those most in tune with the risks of a global catastrophe are the least capable of preparing – financially. People with high incomes tend to be too busy to notice, or feel too immune.
Keep in mind that if you borrow to buy your survival property, and you pay a fair price, you can always sell it later, if you are short on cash. If something does happen, there might not be any banks that survive – so repayments become less of an issue.
Of course there are additional costs associated with buying and selling, as well as any building work you may undertake.
Bunkers
The most expensive option is to build a bunker. Tom Cruise reportedly spent $10 million on his. However, there’s no reason why a functional, underground bunker cannot be built for $20,000 or so. A key question is how long you will have to be inside your bunker. Most scenarios I am aware of will not require more than three days underground, however some scenarios could see you down there for years. Example scenarios include radioactive contamination, a long-term cosmic ray bombardment, civil unrest, or a super-volcanic eruption or asteroid creating a decade-long winter.
A three-day bunker can survive on bottled water, compost toilets, battery power, with the main technical consideration being ventilation. It should not cost much more to build than a swimming pool.
A bunker that protects people for years becomes expensive and complicated. Ventilation, waste disposal, water, power… On top of that, considerations of how your group will cope mentally during long-term confinement.
I suggest that if you build a bunker you prepare for either a short-term scenario (less than a week) or a long-term scenario (more than two years).
No Bunker?
A bunker might not be necessary. Many homes (especially in the USA and Europe) already have basements. Basements are great for surviving many situations.
And there are possibilities where simply being away from it all will suffice, so long as you can be self-sufficient. For example, nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere is not predicted to directly affect those in Australia, southern Africa or South America. But the financial meltdown, and lack of crops, will make having your own rural plot appealing.
No Land?
If you cannot purchase land in a safe spot, consider alternatives. Safe spots tend to be rural, and include government land. Investigate your rights to camp there – you might even be able to take out a seasonal pass each year.
Befriend a property owner, and joke about the potential for you to crash with them if something bad goes down.
Locate properties that are not being used. In an extreme situation you may be able to claim them as your own. It could be anything from an abandoned pig-sty to a mine shaft.
If your safe location is in a sparsely populated area, and the locals are generous and friendly, perhaps all you need to do is turn up. If you are the only “refugee”, it’s quite likely that you will be taken in.
You could even hitchhike to your safe spot, given enough advance warning… totally free survival is a possibility!
Buy a Berth
There are a few bunker communities (in the USA) being built where the only requirements are that you pay the fee (from $50,000 to $500,000) and promise to be good. While some might get off the ground, most won’t, so make sure any money you deposit is kept in trust by a third-party.
If the bunker does become reality, and the world does experience a terrible event, and you do manage to get to the mega-bunker, and it is in a good spot, and everyone in it survives… keep in mind that there has probably been little thought put into what happens next.
The person/people in charge of the bunker scheme might not be good at leading, which means you could end up being led by anyone. Your bunker mates will be those without the resources to have built their own safe spot, and without the ability to get things done on their own. They will probably be easily led, and whatever the group decides, you will need to go along with.
The most likely scenario I can imagine is that you will end up being led by someone who is ex-military or ex-police. They will not be very democratic. There will be plenty of potential for things to go terribly wrong. And if outside is unsafe (war, radiation, extreme weather), you will be stuck with them.
Proximity
There is nothing more important than the ability to get to your safe spot. If you are unable to get there in time, or even get there at all, then your preparations would be wasted. There are three timeframes that seem to fit an event that needs surviving; instant, a few days, and ongoing decline. An example of instant is a tsunami warning. A few days could be an approaching asteroid. And ongoing could be global warming, a slow-burning pandemic or financial collapse.
You need to think deeply about every scenario you believe is possible, and work out how easy/hard it will be to get to your spot, given that the whole world could be in a state of panic, and given that the world may have begun to fall apart. Highways could be clogged. Bridges may have collapsed. Is there an alternate route that is free of hindrances?
Ultimately, accessibility being equal, the closer your spot is to your everyday life, the better. Ideally you will already be at your spot when the event happens, but that may require an extremist attitude unsuited to long-term preparedness.
Other Uses
When the PlayStation 2 first came out, every game-playing husband knew that it was a video game console that happened to play DVDs. What they told their wives was that it was a state-of-the-art DVD player that happens to also have games.
And so it can be for many safe spot scenarios. For me personally, my wife misses the holiday home of her childhood, the comfort of vacationing in the same place year after year. And I feel that I benefited from growing up in the countryside. This means that for my family, who aren’t particularly interested in survivalism, the farm is a place for weekends away, for communing with nature. However, it is my farm, and I’m allowed to build a bunker to play in.
Family + Friends
It is most likely that few of your friends or relatives will be interested in your madcap ideas about the “end of the world”. But if and when that day comes, they are bound to recall that you have made preparations, and they will want in.
It is a balancing act. While you certainly do not want your neighbourhood to know you have a bunker or supplies, it would be beneficial to have people you know and trust along for the ride. Make sure that when you share your plans with others, that you wouldn’t mind spending weeks or years in a bunker with them, along with the acquaintances whom your story gets passed on to.
Ultimately it might not matter who knows, if only your favourite people know where your spot is, and have visited it. While they might tell random strangers about your preparations, they are unlikely to hand out an address. Therefore the key people to not share your plans with are your neighbours (unless they are friends). Neighbours already know your address…
Escaping
Beat the pack, be ahead of the hordes, and get out first. Not only will this mindset help you avoid traffic jams, it might get you to your spot before whatever-it-is happens. This means keeping your ear to the ground – don’t be someone that hears about the SHTF on the 6pm news. Use a smart phone, subscribe to news feeds and alerts (volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis…), and check the news regularly. Don’t wait for 100% verification that something bad is happening; you can always return home if it was a false alarm. Here are some key factors to also consider:
- Avoid vulnerable roads. Be wary of tunnels, bridges with no alternate route, potential landslides, potential flooding
- Practice getting to your spot using back roads, work out multiple ways of getting there
- Have your car and bags already packed. Have your supplies already purchased. Make sure you always have a full tank of gas
Sometimes, no matter how prepared you are, fate will spoil your plans. Along your chosen escape routes, look for many places that will be good spots if you can’t get out of the city. Most preferable are underground structures that are easy to get out of after an earthquake. This could be shopping mall car parks, homes with basements, train stations and tunnels. Even a culvert could be substantially better than sitting in your car.
Say your car won’t start. Aside from the possibility of acquiring another vehicle, know all the homes and buildings in your neighbourhood that have better survivability than your own home. Commercial properties are likely to be abandoned, and if you turn up to someone’s home with survival gear, they could welcome you with open arms.
If you will be evacuating on your own, consider a motorcycle, preferably of the dual-sport type. You won’t be able to carry much, but your odds of reaching your safe spot are improved immensely. Fuel is still probably going to be a problem, but if your only hope of escape is via blocked freeways, a motorcycle could be the ticket.
Letting Strangers In
Charitable readers who build bunkers might consider sharing their space with people they don’t know so well. It might be a friend of a friend, or even a complete stranger who you met randomly or even online. It is a lovely thought, yet the risks are numerous. Unless you know someone really well, my advice is that you do not plan on surviving alongside them.
At every level of society, from the government and military, to school committees and street sweepers, there will always be some who wish to dictate how things are done, and those who will happily follow, and many in-between. It is important that you know your survival companions well enough to have an idea of how they will react in group situations, and when things go wrong.
You also may be unaware of a person’s mental health, addictions, sexual needs/desires, violent tendencies, greed, delusions and so on. If you do take on strangers, make sure your leadership is strong, and that you have facilities for locking up those who do not play ball.
Panic
In a SHTF scenario, it is critical that panic does not affect your odds of survival. Have you ever packed for an overseas trip a few hours before the plane departs? And in the taxi you are wondering if you locked the doors, if you packed your passport? A SHTF scenario is a one-off, and you are not naturally pre-programmed to cope, not like a holiday. If you have not made meticulous plans and had a few dry-runs, it is almost guaranteed that 10 minutes after heading off to your safe spot you will realise you have forgotten something critical, and will have the dilemma of returning to collect it, or carrying on without it. This is why you should have a “go bag” or even a ready-packed “go vehicle”.
Meeting Places
If phones aren’t working, how will you rendezvous with family and friends? Make sure you have predetermined places to meet. Don’t just say “we’ll meet at home”. Home might not be a safe place to be. Meet at A, but if A is not an option, meet at B, and so on. For my family, B is an underground car park, C is an abandoned factory along our safe place journey, and D is our safe place.
Camping and Vacations
If thinking about all of the above ideas has your head in a spin, and you know deep down that being fully prepared is something you will only dream about, then there is an easier option.
The key to initial survival is being somewhere relatively safe. Regardless of any other forms of preparation, being in a safe location when the SHTF will be better than being somewhere un-safe.
Most people take an annual vacation. For your next vacation(s) why not head somewhere safe? If you always have a beach vacation, how about just once in your life you spend some time in the hills?
Not everyone can afford a vacation, especially not an international one, but you don’t have to stay in a hotel. Perhaps you have relatives you can go visit. For the very cheapest holiday, consider camping. Some of the safe spots I list are well-suited to camping.
One Last Thing – Do it!
The doomsday event (if it happens) won’t be what kills you, your family and your friends. The ultimate cause, given that by reading this you are already concerned and aware of the possibilities, will be your own lack of action. Apathy is a modern problem. In prosperous countries it is all too easy to “get by” without putting much thought into things, without planning and following through with those plans. Do you want apathy to be your final label?