Here is an interesting question, inspired by you post ...
What is an ideal bug-out location?
No man is an island - humans need sleep, and someone to watch their back.
Perhaps a town of 500 to 2000 people, more or less in farm country? A minimum of 100 miles from a city?
But then, even if you own a place in such a community, you may not be welcome, unless you bring needed skills - a DR., eg, would be welcome anywhere, a tax collector, maybe not.
Food for thought.
It’s one you can get to with minimal time and effort from where you are, with a support network already in place, family, friends, likeminded acquaintances. It’s one that has minimal threats and maximal potential to support your needs for the duration. Food and the ability to grow more, water, fuel whether that’s firewood or something else. A mild temperate climate and good soil would certainly help, but that’s not near enough for many.
Personally, if Cripplecreek doesn’t come through [pretty please], I have a plan to make it into one of the MANY land reserves in MI. I’d rather deal with a ranger than roving bands of hungry EBT eaters.
The one thing that everyone has to remember is that if it really does hit the fan, you won’t be able to use highways and most likely won’t have that much gas. We have to be able to get to our spot with one tank, pulling a camper.
Sometimes it’s actually better to hunker down where you are and look deserted. Break a few windows and throw some trash around your house, then sit tight until travel is safe. I know that the people across the street are armed to the hilt and duck hunters. They are accurate. We will team up with them.
I’m putting together some maps to get to places where we can sit for a day, if need be. If we travel at night our odds of getting anywhere are better. At that point, we will have three drivers and four people. We can sleep in shifts.
The ideal bug-out location is where you can live contentedly during normal times, and do little different upon TEOTWAWKI. “Bugging out” is best done in calm times, not when everyone else is attempting the same thing in a mass panic. Survivalism/prepping is best a way of life, not a contingency plan.
I like recounting this as an example:
When the potential severity of the “Y2K Bug” was looming, I explained to my father in great detail what could go wrong (societal collapse, etc.). He understood, agreed, shrugged, and replied “so I’ll throw another log on the fire and go back to my book.” Indeed, short of reading by candle light and hand-pumping the well, his life would change little in a “bug-out” situation.
The #1 rule of self-defense, a rule rarely discussed, is “don’t be there”. Ditto “bugging out”: on the whole, don’t be anywhere you’ll need to bug out of in a crisis. Life will change enough in such a scenario; minimize that change.