Knowing that you need to grab your bug out bag and go is one thing. Having a place to meet already laid out is another thing. You should prepare diligently for both.
When you create a plan, you have to know where you’re headed. With a meet-up plan, you need a first destination or what’s commonly referred to as a rally point. This is the point where everyone will gather together.
This is an important part of the plan because when a SHTF situation happens, you and your loved ones could be separated. You need to know how to find each other again.
Knowing this will help to cut out the confusion of where to go. If you watch the news at all, you can see the importance of this in events that have happened in third world countries.
Entire families have had to flee for their lives from natural catastrophes and man-made violence. On the journey to safety, the families became separated in the chaos.
Children were parted from parents. Brothers and sisters were separated. To keep your family whole, you need to have that rally point. Even if the unthinkable stress happens that you lose touch, having a rally point can make this a temporary thing rather than a longer, more frightening one.
You need to know how you’re going to get there. Most people plan to take the family car or a Jeep. But if you take another means of transportation to work, such as carpooling with someone else or you take a train, you’ll end up stuck. You need to have a clear method of how you’re going to bug out.
So your plan might be something like if you’re home, you’ll take the Jeep – or some car that can go off road if necessary. If you’re at work, you’ll take the train. Just know what you’ll do in the event that your first method of transportation becomes unavailable.
Having a plan of knowing where to go and how to get there is a good idea. But not ever going over that plan and doing a test run is a bad idea. Just like a fire drill, a bug out plan should be practiced.
When you practice a bug out plan, you’ll be able to see potential areas that could be a problem for you or your family. You’ll want to work these out before you actually need to use the plan.
While you’re working out your meet-up plan, make sure that you cover communication. Many people believe that having a cell phone is all they need to have but in the event of a SHTF occurrence, your cell phone could fail you.
You might have trouble getting a call through because there are too many people calling and the system gets overloaded. Make sure that you have a secondary way in place to communicate with your family members.
You can use multi channel walkie-talkies. You want to look for the ones that have long range capabilities. You also want to make sure that you have a handheld scanner.
These devices can let you be aware of what’s going on as you’re trying to get to the rally point. For example, if a road is blocked, you’ll be able to get this information and choose another route.
These handheld scanners also have the ability to provide you with the weather as well as any alerts for your area. With your rally point, you need a backup rally point in case the first one is blocked off or inaccessible.
When you and your loved ones meet at the rally point, you can go from there to wherever your destination is. Just like having a second rally point is important, so is having a second destination. This is simply a smart way of having a plan B in case your plan A doesn’t work out.
