A. Bridger – Page 2 – Prepping Prepper

Continuing the theme of bug out preparations, this is my navigational plan for traveling the 1,300 odd miles from where I’m living in to my parents rural farm, the “bug out retreat,” should TEOTWAWKI occur. As mentioned before, a map of population density by county is helpful for seeing how the eastern half of the U.S. is very densely populated. If things are getting chaotic while bugging out, Interstate highways and other main roads may not be clear, and detours could add a couple hundred more miles. Having a way of finding where you are and good maps is critical. The best case is to just take Interstates most of the way and then take the local roads I know. If I recognized early on that it was time to bug out and only had a couple hundred miles to go, this would probably work just fine. But if late in leaving, and due to the time it would take to get there non-stop (about 22-24 hours, including pit stops), it’s unlikely the path will be that easy. My main navigational aid while driving is a run-of-the-mill GPS. I have a Magellan but any inexpensive unit ought to do for basic navigation along main roads. While these are GPS units are great for getting you from point A to point B after you’ve told it where to take you, with main roads potentially closed it’s perhaps better to put small segments of the overall trip in at a time so you can control your route and avoid potential bottlenecks, roadblocks, etc. Good maps of every state you might need to go through are called for. Enter DeLorme. Most U.S. road atlases aren’t going to offer the level of back roads detail required, but DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteers do. These products regularly receive high marks from those who travel a lot, and are also called out in Bug Out by Scott Williams. I used online mapping tools to identify the three most likely Interstate routes I would take, and purchased the Atlas & Gazetteer for each state I would or might pass through. At about $20 this came to nearly $300. I’m now in the process of using highlighters to clearly mark the Interstate routes I might take, and different colored highlighters to mark secondary highways, state roads, etc., for alternate routes. This is time consuming and I won’t be done for awhile yet, but when done will provide me with all the maps I should need while bugging out, already marked (in plastic and stowed in my truck toolbox). If getting off main routes, I would enter segments from my maps for the GPS to guide me. Some GPS units can route multi-point trips as well. Some GPS units also require a street address (or GPS coordinates) for the destination. To make this process faster, I plan on finding specific addresses (perhaps gas stations, sporting goods stores, etc.) and putting them on Post-It notes in the maps along the routes highlighted. Planning now will make things smoother then. While those maps are outstanding, should my family and I have to abandon our Bug Out Vehicle (BoV) for any reason, I probably could not carry those paper maps due to space and weight constraints. And a GPS for vehicle navigation would require recharging soon, aside from not having the detail needed. Bugging out on foot is definitely something to avoid, but if it is necessary we will need to navigate (map and compass are nice, but probably not most useful in our case). I’ve opted for another DeLorme product; the Earthmate PN-60 GPS. Look for it on sale around $300-350 – well worth it. The PN-60 gets high marks for being rugged and a good battery life (much improved from the PN-40, which I upgraded from), but the primary reason I chose this GPS is that DeLorme includes DVDs with coverage of all of North America. The 3.5GB of built-in storage isn’t enough for all the states I need to add, but it can also take an SD card of up to 32GB, which will take all the maps included. These are the same detailed maps as the Atlas & Gazetteer series, but on the GPS. With a yearly subscription of $30 you can download additional maps for the PN-60 (or any PN series GPS), including satellite imagery. Even if you live in or very near your retreat, a bug out plan is needed in the event that location has to be vacated, for whatever reason. Having good local maps and a backup GPS is something I recommend. Bugout Navigation Roundtable Discussion Worth remembering that in a true state of emergency it’s not unlikely that the GPS signals would be encrypted, they are after all still Military hardware, and there are caveats in all GPS agreements that the service can be withdrawn. A good old-fashioned compass never hurts. If TSHTF and you need to bug out 1400 miles from the East Coast it’ll likely be like a sequel to The Road… hard trip indeed. Via con Dios, mi amigo. I agree with Neil. Can’t count on GPS. Even in good times GPS will take you odd ways and sometimes in circles unless you are really familiar with the roads already. Gents, While I do carry a couple of compasses, I don’t think it very likely that the govt would resume “selective availability” for GPS or go encrypted. Why? The vast majority of GPS units used by our military worldwide are not capable of using encryption – too expensive. Talking about average troops, not for precision targeting applications. Going encrypted would literally deny GPS to most of the military. Additionally, I don’t think police/emergency units in the U.S. have encrypted units, either. Possible but not probable. Not encryption but offset/scrambling. Military GPS receivers aren’t off the shelf even if they are made by Garmin and Trimble. They have more precision and software to adjust for the offsets. Far better than civilian units can. That’s how they can drop a bomb from 20,000 feet down a rabbit hole. There are two GPS encodings, one for public encoding (C/A) with less precision, and an encrypted encoding used by U.S. and allied forces (P, Y when encrypted). The encrypted devices are used in targeting, precision bombing, etc. That is a tiny minority of GPS units used by the military, most are commercial off-the-shelf units (COTS). The military uses jamming (does not affect their specialized receivers, which are used for those operations) when then want to deny GPS receivers in a specific area. Probably some federal LE have similar units, but the VAST majority of LE nation wide that use GPS do not. I’ll stand by the assertion that denying civilian GPS receivers will in fact cripple the vast majority of military users and almost all LE/emergency responders who use GPS. Therefore, while it’s possible for the government to do so, I do not believe it is very probable. I am much more worried about solar activity (flares, etc.) causing issues for satellites, or foreign intel services hacking/disabling, than our govt turning it off for civs. I really doubt the government would shut down GPS as every thing from my phone to school buses and long haul trucks have GPS chips in them these days. That really would cause a SHTF event. GPS and RFID tags are even used to help keep track of where some patients and equipment are located in hospitals. I do a lot of rambling around in out of the way places in Washington State and I run into more and more people with GPS units that are completely lost. Mostly, it seems like the maps the GPS units are running don’t match up with the reality on the ground. and people don’t have backup maps or don’t know how to read the maps they have. The last folks I ran into had a GPS unit that was telling them that entrance gates into the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge were actually roads. I managed not to laugh while explaining to them that they were about 60 miles off course. I’d be more worried about a GPS failure myself. GPS can get buggy at times, is easy to jam, and even when running “normally” is pretty easy to block. For example, when the U-2 is spinning up before a mission it’s under a cover, nothing fancy, but enough to block GPS, so to allow the system to time-in before taxi (and all the other systems that need that data) a repeater hood is set on it, with an antenna outside. Similarly, all US combat aircraft have backups to GPS, such as inertial nav systems using gyros and radio direction finding equipment. Additionally pilots are kept current in good ol’ fashioned VFR techniques (a.k.a. “pilotage”). While everything Uncle Sam does can’t necessarily be taken as gospel, when it comes to the military, if there is one thing it knows, it’s not putting all its eggs in one basket. When the TSHTF, it would be wise to follow suit. My solution is simple, I have GPS in the Jeeps, hand-held water-proof GPS units loaded with topo maps for the bags, and road, and topo maps for the areas I may end up in along with good compasses for each member of the family. The sport of orienteering and the game of GeoCaching keeps everyone in the clan well practiced with both. “When in doubt, know the way out.” If bugging out on foot, you’re right, we’d likely be toast (I could probably make it alone, but will go down with the family if that’s the way it goes). In a BoV, good chances of making it assuming fuel is available. I keep a lot of cash on hand so could pay a premium per gallon of gas if needed. Or in silver or ammo. I wonder if those folks just have older GPS units with out of date maps? Mine is a couple years old and is out of date for several intersections in Northern Virginia due to all he road construction and upgrades. One nice thing about the PN-60 (and earlier PN-40) is that it can be used as a road nav GPS and a hand held with topo maps. The gazetteer maps recommended in the main post might be able to be used for land nav w/compass, but it depends on there being recognizable landmarks to triangulate with. Could have been out of date stuff. Thinking about it, something like an entrance gate with a gps coordinate might have not gotten sifted out until someone reported that it wasn’t a road. Maybe there was a jeep trail there back in the day or something. While shutting down GPS is unlikely, allowing the system to fall apart is more possible. The GPS constellation requires constant support and trouble shooting. If something were to happen to the ground based infrastructure that supports the GPS system the whole thing would collapse quickly. I agree that the likely hood of having the GPS system intentionally “shut down” (for all intensive purposes) is slim, there is always the chance of something going wrong and not having access (i.e. others jamming/destroying the system, natural disaster, or infrastructure breakdown, all previously mentioned). The maps are a great idea, as is the idea of several compasses. One thing to remember, orienteering, much like firearms proficiency is a perishable skill meaning that you have to practice to keep your skills sharp. Another important note is that the standard road atlas may not be enough if you need to leave your BOV, personally I have a US road atlas and TOPO maps for each location I might need to go through (probably will have to go to TN to retrieve family and then head to the mountains of PA). In a SHTF scenario I imagine there will be TONS of people on the roads and they could potentially turn into a very dangerous place. As seen throughout history bandits, thieves, assassins and even armies have used roads to ambush their targets. I know if I need to head out to my destinations on foot, I will more than likely avoid roads like the plauge! In a survival situation, there are just to many variables for me to feel comfortable traveling on foot over roads. There is the potential of having people shooting at you in concealed areas while you are in the open, you could have folks following you off the road in some of the mountainous areas I will have to travel, and as mentioned there could be hundreds or thousands of others walking the roads and I don’t like crowds in every day life! For me, even though I know it will potentially be much harder and slower going, I am hittin’ the back country! It totally depends on the cause of the disaster as to whether or not GPS is available. If the US is under terrorist attack, they are probably gone. If atomic weapons are detonated in an EMP strike, there is a good chance enough of the GPS constellation is damaged that civilian use is impossible. If the GPS system is being used to assist an attack, it is shut down. If the government thinks it is advantageous to have it unavailable for any reason, it is shut down. Remember the area of coverage is selective. I can still have GPS available for military ops in the middle east and not have it available over the US. Even very heavy rain or snow can inhibit GPS functioning. While it is a great aid (Garmin and Magellan make very nice ones) if you don’t know how to use a map and compass, I’d suggest you learn. Older Boy Scout hand books and merit badge books have nice sections on orienteering. Note: if you are worried about the government (maybe just a tad) – that Onstar system in your car has GPS and the Onstar can and does report your position when you make a call. Since the system can be activated without your knowledge, know two things. First, the government can find your vehicle anywhere. Second, no conversation inside your vehicle is secure. If you ever get to the point of NEEDING security, disable the system. Living in California for most of my life, I can tell you bugging out of L.A. of the S.F Bay Area would be a nightmare. I live in Napa, CA and we are close to Hwy 80….so are 14 million others. The real question in bugging out is timing and destination. We have a pace in the Sierras, but that is where everyone will be heading. Every road, Hwy, and by-way will be jam packed. We have a large fresh water supply available close by and a beautiful agricultural area here in the valley. My thoughts is let the hoards pass and with a small and prepared group stay. After all we are talking about roughly 30-35 million trying to blow out of town, same issue on the east coast…too many to soon. If we bugged out, we would take our group to our spot in the Sierras, there is safety in numbers!