Bugout to American Redoubt Timed Perfectly for CoronaVirus

Why the American Redoubt has been on my Radar for a Decade

Part 4

COVID-19 is Doubling Every 1.8 Days

In my half-century, I've seen a few health scares come and go: SARS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu and now Covid-19. Add to that some serious recessions, 9/11,  and a handful of major natural disasters and it became clear to me that preparedness was no joking matter.

If I were single it might be a different story. I remember about 15 years ago, I was discussing disaster preparedness with a police-officer-turned-healthcare-worker friend of mine. I asked him what he would do in an SHTF scenario.

He was single at the time.

His answer: "Come to your house because you have stuff saved up."

He has since become very involved in prepping and has done an admirable job becoming prepared on his own. He is also now married and has a family that tends to add urgency to this kind of thing.

 I started my family in 1996 and it wasn't too long after that where I started thinking about becoming self-sufficient. It was a little more than a decade later, in 2010, that I started putting what I learned into practice and writing about it on this very blog.

Preppers are Tin-Foil-Hat Wearing Loonies

Remember the hype around 2009 that tracked and mocked the "Prepper Movement?" The Doomsday Prepper show went on the air and many people started to take notice. 

I got the same treatment as a kid when I was in Cub Scouts. The snotty kids in the Catholic school I attended made fun of Scouts and I didn't understand it then. 

But I do now. 

People mock what they don't understand. Things that are different from what they perceive as normal become fodder for ridicule.  Often times it stems from pure ignorance on the subject matter.

These same mockers are the people who have zero food storage and think they can visit their local Walmart when a disaster hits. 

The Bible actually talks about this in the story about the Sermon on the Mount. Out of the thousands of people that listened to the talk, some mocked and laughed... and some were perplexed. The rest believed. There will always be mockers and laughers and the perplexed. As explained by the late Jim Rohn (YouTube video link).

Regardless, I have always seen prepping as a sort of strategic game. Can I be prepared enough to get my family through a tough spot if it ever comes up?

Prepping Brings Peace of Mind

Once I secured several years of food preps and water filtration, I set my sights on skills. I don't need to review them, I've posted about most of them on this blog. 

But one strategic part of this "game" is location. That's where this post ties into my series on Getting Out of Dodge. 

When I lived near Phoenix, Arizona there was no chance of escaping many of the issues that could confront my family in an emergency. 

But systematically I have moved my family closer and closer to the center of the American Redoubt.

And the Covid-19 is a perfect example of why location matters. When it goes gangbusters, which is probably this month, we will see some large-scale problems. 

If I were still near Phoenix, supplies would be dried up. There already were limited water resources... it's the freekin' desert.  And the greatly overpopulated cities would be presenting numerous problems.

And point-of-fact, my mom is still living there. I have to figure out the trigger point that says it is time for her to drive to my location for caregiving. 

Now, and at my prior south Idaho location, the population is sparse. The town of 2600 (both locations are the same size) is a bit removed from large cities. 

My new location even has a local hospital which is very uncommon for such a small town. 

Why Am I Bringing All This Up?

Because regardless of how Covid-19 plays out, I have a much better chance of survival than most of the country. More importantly, so does my family. 

So stay vigilant my friends. Watch the news and always take it with a grain of salt. Keep your preps up and keep adding to them. 

Looks like we could be in for a bumpy ride. 

Covid-19 Data I am Tracking

SARS was the trial run. It originated in China around 2002. It swiftly spread to other Asian countries, with a few cases elsewhere. 

Isolation seemed to cease the advancement in 2003. Of the 8100-ish cases reported, there were 774 deaths. 

That's a 1 in 10 kill ratio. Or 0.1 which is 10% for you folks in Rio Linda, as Rush used to say.

BTW, the 2004 SARS outbreak was linked to a lab in China. Sound familiar? China is 0 for 2. 

Now we have the Covid-19 coming out of a lab in China. Efforts to contain it have failed.

The positive is that it doesn't appear to have that high of a death ratio but it has the potential to infect a much higher number of people. 

I found a study, and it looks pretty sound, that says Covid-19 has an average of 0.05% death rate. I say that because the WHO is only showing a 0.037% death rate on their website. 

No matter how you look at it, it isn't good.