Prepper House Hunting by Mrs. AK for Survival Blog
After two years spent traveling and volunteering both in the US and overseas, I’m now back in the US and looking for a place to settle down again. For someone who’s definitely oriented towards a preparedness lifestyle, living out of suitcases with no garden and minimal ability to stockpile food, water et cetera for two plus years has been an eye opening experience. After spending many years on my off-grid farm with photovoltaics (PV) and wind, a gravity fed spring, wood heat, an orchard, greenhouses etc. there has definitely been some discomfort associated with having left (and sold) that tie to security and knowing that if the Schumer Hits The Fan (SHTF), I was mostly on my own, often overseas where I couldn’t even easily understand the radio broadcasts!
But now that I’m back, I thought I’d share my thinking about where I’m hoping to resettle and what I’m looking for. Although the exact specifics may differ for others, I hope that my thought process while considering where I might want to live will be useful to other readers of this site.
I’ve lived in Vermont for a long time. Other than our winters–which are just too long–I really love it here for many reasons including our low population numbers and density, beautiful landscapes, local food production and the presence of people who still know how to do real work with real tools and not just a computer mouse. Living somewhere that when a tree comes down across the road someone is likely to come along soon with their chainsaw and quickly reopen the road and not just wait for someone in an “official “capacity to arrive and take care of it is something that I value. That said, we also are increasingly being overrun by people with super liberal/progressive political beliefs that I abhor. We do still have a decent gun culture and laws though, despite the influx of others that demonize all guns and gun owners.
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WHERE TO RELOCATE?
I have heard good things about life in the western parts of the country such as Idaho, Montana etc. but I’ve spent my whole life on the East coast. For better or worse, this is the area I know people, have family and friends etc. I also recently considered settling in western North Carolina or maybe the central or western parts of Virginia as the winters are definitely milder there yet summer isn’t as unbearable as further south or on the coast. I spent some time in North Carolina and was intrigued as there is even a “preparedness” store, a Prepper “camp” etc. so there was definitely a segment of the population that shared my beliefs. However, I still came back to the same thing, that I had no family or good friends there and found that lack to be a huge concern.
I’ve read recommendations on looking for places to settle with preparedness in mind but I also needed to weigh proximity to people I can count on, employment options and knowledge of the local climate and cities/towns. I decided that ultimately I was better off settling down again where I was familiar with my surroundings and not too far from family and friends. And yes, I know I will still hate our endless winters (and “progressive” politicians) but this may also serve to keep too many from coming here either to live or in the event of disaster(the weather, not the politicians alas).
There are also many who espouse and write about settling down where they can live their daily lives with proximity to employment etc but having a “retreat” to bug out to if times get tough. That really isn’t an option for me due to the costs involved. Having spent my life mostly doing work that “did good” rather than “paid good”, and raising a child on my own to boot, I’m definitely limited by what I can afford. Sadly, due to a significant uptick in home prices here, I couldn’t even afford my former farm if it were to become available to re-purchase! So with this in mind, I knew I’d be looking to find a place that would allow me to live out my ordinary daily life with access to employment, stores, etc. yet also function to provide for me and my young adult son if times got tough. This definitely meant I was going to need to make a lot of compromises.
