Thanks for your response, Granny — you raised a number of issues that I have had to think through — always with an eye towards flexibility and ability to improvise....
As I’ve said a couple of times, I learned a lot from watching the Katrina debacle — and that’s colored a lot of my thinking....
Clogged evac routes are, as you correctly point out, a serious consideration, and I’ve spent a good bit of time poring over maps to plan a number of bug-out routes that keep me well away from the ‘official’ roads, and all of them end in state and national parks/forests (yes, I did consider the ‘farmer with shotgun’ scenario ;~)) within the full-tank range of my vehicle, with running streams for drinking water and, hopefully, some fish....
Water purification is something I’ve thought a lot about, and, not being able to afford, or easily transport, any of the commercially available systems, I’m going with simplicity and improvisation — paper filters (stacked coffee filters - cheap, readily available, easily stored and transported) to filter out turbidity and large contaminants, and boiling to take care of the biotic contaminants... (And, yes, just having to trust to luck that I’ll find something relatively free of industrial/chemical contaminants)
As to ‘living rough’ — yes, I have done it, and I have very few illusions about it being easy.. Survival is full-time, hard work, and the only way I’d even attempt it would be if it became the best option out of a number of extremely poor choices..
Water purification is something I’ve thought a lot about, and, not being able to afford, or easily transport, any of the commercially available systems, I’m going with simplicity and improvisation — paper filters (stacked coffee filters - cheap, readily available, easily stored and transported) to filter out turbidity and large contaminants, and boiling to take care of the biotic contaminants... (And, yes, just having to trust to luck that I’ll find something relatively free of industrial/chemical contaminants)<<<
Ahhh, but as soon as I spot the smoke or fire, I will be over to take your food.
So no fires.
A cave maybe. When I have been in the old indian areas for prospecting, we would find caves that showed more than one fire had been in them, or even hollows in the mountain side.
Yes, there was other proof, than the knowledge of the area history, as the indians loved to peck in the rocks to leave their story for those behind him.
I was attempting to learn how to read them, and like so many things, they were all articles/books that had no basis in fact, were that writers opinions.
The day Papago Indian friends came to visit and found my books and notes spread out, and would not stop laughing, cured me.
When Cindy could keep a straight face, she told me that there were, as I recall 10 kids in her family, they lived at Sells, Az on the Papago reservation.
On Sunday’s, the mother insisted that dad babysit the kids and she had a day off.
Most sundays, they went to the hill near the house and the kids spent the day, yes pecking stick figures in the rocks, and called it story telling.......LOL