Survival Retreat Safe Distance From City
July 26, 2010, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
While determining an ideal location for a survival retreat or bug-out-location, a location that perhaps you will use as a vacation spot / insurance policy, or maybe a location where you will live full time, you should consider the distance from a dense population area or city. In the event of a terrible disaster, there will be hordes of people trying to escape the city centers which will have become very dangerous from the lack of working infrastructure, food, water, and fuel.
Determine how far the roving hordes will get during their desperate escape from the city
The average fuel economy (miles per gallon) of a vehicle varies of course, depending on factors including vehicle and engine size, its vintage, and whether city or highway driving. In the U.S. the current 2010 ‘CAFE’ standard for new passenger vehicles is 27.5 mpg and 23.5 mpg for light trucks (GVWR less than 8,500 pounds). Not everyone has a new car. A number of years ago a study was performed that determined 60 percent of vehicles in the U.S. were older than seven years. 10 years ago the standards were 27.5 and 20.7 mpg. For the sake of determining the average fuel economy of all vehicles on the road today, factoring in highway and city mileage, my instinct tells me it may be somewhere around 20 miles per gallon, maybe slightly less. Lets use 20 mpg for this example.
The average fuel tank size of passenger vehicles, SUV’s, and trucks range in size from 10-13 gallons for compact-size, 15-18 gallons for mid-size, 18-20 for full-size, to as high as 30 gallons for large vehicles and trucks. I believe that the average fuel tanks size of all vehicles on the road today is probably about 18 gallons.
Although your vehicle may vary from this average (plug in your own numbers), the average maximum range of all vehicles on the road at any given moment based on a full tank of gas is probably about 360 miles (20 mpg x 18 gallons). Problem is, not everyone has a full tank of gas at all times and in fact, many people don’t add fuel until the tank is fairly low (and many people don’t fill the tank at that point either). Averaging all vehicles on the road, I believe that the amount of fuel in the tank at any one time is probably less than half a tank (I would bet one-third of a tank), but for this exercise lets use half a tank. This then changes the average maximum range of all vehicles on the road at any given time to be about 180 miles.
When the hordes evacuate the cities, at best, on average, most won’t get beyond 180 miles. In fact, the average range will be less than that because most people will leave too late and will be caught in slow traffic. The traffic will quickly become heavy and the highways may even become impassible. Just imagine the scenario of heavy traffic, then factor in the vehicles that begin running out of gas which will further clog the highways. People will be getting off exits in search of fuel, which may not be available at all. If there is no electrical power, the fuel cannot be pumped. Even with power, gas stations will run dry quickly. Most people will not have thought about carrying extra fuel.
If this is a horrific disaster such as wide regional or national power grid failure from an EMP weapon, or X-class solar flare, and if the power has already been down for days with no near term hope of restoration, there will be lots of starving, thirsty, and desperate people, some of whom will have turned to violent measures to re-supply. These desperate-turned-violent people combined with the already existing underground of ‘bad’ people, will begin to take advantage of the disaster and will set up road blocks and ambushes (amongst other things) to loot you of your supplies. Once this begins to happen, which may be within a few days (store looting will begin almost immediately) of the disaster, the progress of the exiting hordes will slow to a crawl.
So, how far from a major city or dense population area should your survival retreat or bug out location be so that you are safely outside the roving horde zone? This will depend on your risk tolerance level, but in my estimation, 150 miles or more seems reasonable. In normal times, this is about a 2 hour drive by highway and wouldn’t be too terribly difficult a trek.
An exception to this minimum distance may be an area which is fairly difficult to get to. For example, maybe there are no highways reaching from the nearest city to your area, and travel is strictly by lesser roads. The hordes will mistakenly and automatically take to the highways and head in whatever direction that they lead. This may provide some layer of insurance while living closer than 150 miles to the city, but keep in mind that eventually, some will make it your way.
The smarter people will travel by way of smaller roads off of the mainstream normal routes. They will have kept their fuel tanks closer to full than empty and will have extra fuel on board. This brings up the perfect time to point out that you should pre-plan your escape route, and ideally have several optional routes pre-planned (with a planned and proven destination in mind!).
Another exception may be due to the population of the city in question. There are 276 cities in the U.S. with populations greater than 100,000 people. 60 percent of those cities fall between 100,000 and 200,000 people. While this is not a small number of people, it pales in comparison to the 10 most populous cities, all with populations between 1 million and more than 8 million people. You may want to be much further away than 150 miles from the 8 million+ in New York City (for many reasons), while you may be perfectly Okay with being closer than 150 miles from the 138,000 in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Here is a map that I put together of the northwest USA which highlights the areas surrounding 300 miles (150 mile radius) of cities with a population of more than 100,000 people. It is interesting to see the safer survival regions. Keep in mind that this does not take into account highway locations or geographical impediments, which would change the probabilities of the direction of exodus. I plan to build a larger map to include the rest of the USA as I have time. I suspect that there will not be much east of the Mississippi that will be safe outside a population perimeter. We’ll see…
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