Free yourself from being restricted to recognized “roads” and the options are greatly improved. Those 4wd vehicles are not just ego or trendiness, not the functional ones with high clearance and offroad tires at least. There are so many unimpeded routes that people never consider because we’re trained to the point of hardwired to think only of “road.” Rights of way for electric utility high tension wires are always kept clear and are everywhere, for instance. Knowing your destination and knowing available options might be the difference between making it or not.
If it’s really that bad, what to do once you get there is another matter.
Good thinking. We get cougars on the rare occasion in our suburban neighborhood. They travel the east-west “wilderness corridor” until it hits the north-south electrical/petroleum route and then follow that.
I keep a pair of large bolt cutters in the truck so that will be useful. And we are right near the recently fortified electrical substation - so can get around that easy enough. That is sort of a interesting/spooky place. Several years after 9-11 they did a lot of construction on the place. Dump trucks were moving in and out for months. No new buildings or structures except for a double fence around the entire place and a large “decorative” wall around the front. Decroative in the sense of randomly missing blocks in the wall. I’m guessing to be used as gun ports.
A neighbor that worked for one of the competing companies that lost the bid for the work said they built a new structure five stories deep. That would make sense with all of the dump trucks.
I like to relate that story - if the government and the utility companies think it is wise to spend millions of dollars on one facility - we should also be putting some effort into planning for a disaster. I’m still curious as to what it is all about they have there - it is a relatively small substation and office building surrounded by residential homes.
The recent hurricane Irma was an education for me in terms of preparedness; I was planning on leaving Florida at 4:30AM and 'beat the traffic' on Tuesday morning.
Auto travel during a mass evacuation ...Wrong !
The three major roads running North/South were already congested, and automobile travel was 4 - 9 mph, and after three congested exits, I returned home to try again earlier next day.
Wednesday, 2:30 AM, road conditions were the same, with authorities encouraging travel on the road shoulders, gas lines were a long wait,
and overwhelmed rest stop facilities were inadequate to handle such a massive flow of 6.1 Million of Florida humanity.
Rather than join in 'running the gauntlet' with other motorists, I chose to return home and 'shelter in place'.
I made ice for refrigeration power loss - blew out the bottom of mom's old aluminum stock pot- but now had three 4 quart ice cubes for the coolers,
gas for the outdoor grill, and converted a 30 gallon trash can (with a new plastic liner) as a water reservoir along with the bathtub.
'Sheltering in place' required some improvisation, establishing strategy tactics, and defining reasonable priorities.
Even as I was getting myself prepared, I found myself helping out my neighbors and lessening their concerns about the hurricane.
I also learned that with a mass migration and forced evacuation in the State of Florida recently, travel from points further South than Ocala is useless.