It seems as though one’s dedication to prepping is directly proportional to how far out in the boonies one is willing to hide themselves away.  You can’t reach the gold star level of prepping until you’ve removed yourself from a city setting and relocated to an area that is a few warm bodies short of being a  ghost town.  With a medically fragile son, our family will never be able to pack up our wagons and head into the final frontiers of Idaho, Wyoming, or Montana.   We’re adapting in place.  Suburban homesteaders that, if necessary, could put our son in his adaptive wheelchair and transport him on foot to the nearest medical center.  We’re renegade survivalists.

Where I live there a belief in a  ‘Call Out.’  A large group of people  believe that one morning there will be a knock at their door telling them to load up their go bags, foam clothing, white tents, cook stoves, water storage, medic bags, and  years of vittles, into  their trailers and follow the buses up the mountains where they will be hidden from the armies invading from the East and West.

Nope.  Our family of Renegade Survivalists are working on creating a bug in plan.   We’ll continue to pay off our debt while working to prepare for a variety of emergencies.  But we won’t do it alone.  We’ll do it within a community of like minded neighbors will also be bugging in.  Neighbors that will watch each others backs.  Friends that believe in prepping for a few extra that might not have had the opportunities to prep for themselves.  I’m fortunate to live in a community that has been taught the importance of being ready for the unexpected.

Each Wednesday I meet with a neighbor and  sweet friend,  to work together to build our food storage and other items of self reliance.   We’ve calendared out our year month by month by topic starting with our greatest needs.  We work independently during the week, then meet again to compare progress, go on purchasing trips, and encourage each other to keep going.  We help each other prepare bulk purchases for long term storage.  We run through possible scenarios and bounce ideas off of each other.

My married kids, and parents all live close.  We have our plans in place for what to do if the SHTF at a time that everyone is at work.  My parents have everything at their home that Parker would need during a long emergency.  They are also Renegade Survivalists.

When I read about WWII what stands out to me is that there wasn’t just one way families survived.  There were many individuals through their own ingenuity made survived the war.   Making use of what they had available and relying, if needed, on trusted family and friends, they were able to hold on and find themselves still alive when the war ended.

Interestingly, as I’ve read stories of survival within concentration camps during World War II, the survivors talk about the importance of community in keeping them alive.  Others that had their backs.  Networking.  Sharing.  Yup, even within the hell that was Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, community often meant the difference between life and death.

Not everyone will be able to bug out. Not everyone can simply put together an off grid utopia where no other man dare venture.  In the boonies, with no other support systems, means that you must be able to do it all by yourself.    This is why being prepared to hunker down in a home is not only an important, but viable option as well.

What are your plans for a SHTF situation?