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Letter Re: Choosing Between Roughly Comparable Retreat Locations

Dear Jim,
Thank you for the web site, it has been a great source of info. I first read your novel ["Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse"] in the 4th quarter of 1999. It was very helpful for preparedness for Y2K. I read it again 1st quarter 2008 and am now re-reading with the high lighter and pen. For the folks who have not read your book, they are missing one of the best preparedness manuals out there.

I have never been a Boy Scout, but my personal creed has always been to be prepared. If you have any skills at all, then there is nothing worse then being in a situation and not having the "stuff" to resolve your problem. If you are mechanical, then you need to have some basic tools with you, etc. etc. People who do not know how to use something don't see the need to have it. It's like caring a gun, people think it's extreme or crazy to carry it, but I ask do they have a cell phone? Why? because they may "need" it, well better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it. Pretty basic stuff huh?

After reading your novel, I realized how unprepared I and my family were, as well as how vulnerable we were in the location we lived. I was born and raised in the Northeast.

A few years ago, we moved to the Southeast, to the "area" you recommended to another blog reader last month as one of the places to go to this side of the Mississippi if you couldn't go further West.

Prior to moving, compared to my neighbors and guys at church, I would have been labeled pretty handy, can fix and paint cars, gas and arc weld, build, etc. After getting to know the boys down here, they all can do this stuff, most of the fellows from church have built their own homes, can do car repair, lots have restored cars and trucks, operate heavy equipment, etc.

My question is this, three of my best friends down here have very similar set-ups like mine. Private homes and land, 25 to 50 plus acres, all very keen on being prepared, lots of good guns, grub, etc. Three of the four have read your book, and the one who has not has been well briefed.

Our location to each other is about two miles apart from one another, each. We are not on the same country road, but the first guy is two miles to the next guy, then four miles to the next guy, etc. All of our homes are up on a hill, private, defendable, but all are wood-frame built homes. No brick or stone, dumb, dumb, dumb!!!

Each guy and his family could hold down the fort from a few trouble makers, but if a few pick up truck loads of the bad guys came at us the same time, it would be tougher, plus not any of us has large enough families to handle security patrols and the like.

If it were only me in a good spot or one of the other guy's had a great set up, it would be easy, we all just hunker down here or there, but with four great retreats, and like minded people, what is a guy to do with these options?

I know I have not covered all the other possibilities, like heat, water, fuel, wood, food, but they are all pretty equal, like I mentioned earlier, these guy's are pretty handy, so they all have a lot of "stuff".
I would like to hear your opinion or the opinions of others.

OBTW, we have done business with some of your sponsors and I bought the "Rawles Gets You Ready" preparedness course. This is a "must have", even for us people who think that we know a bunch!
Thank you, - E.G.

JWR Replies: I think that you should plan to co-locate at a property that has a shallow well (that can be hand-pumped), and that is the most defendable. (Advantageous terrain, clear fields of fire, and so forth.) As I often tell my consulting clients, "Just think medieval": If you were going to pick a particular parcel of land--not pick an existing house, based on its attributes--then where, in your darkest imaginings, would you someday build a castle? That, then, is the property you should pick.

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