City, Suburbia or Countryside?

[mollypup]

What situation are you living in (city, suburbs or countryside) and do you feel safe enough if serious SHTF? It could be any large disaster/catastrophe such as EMP, economic collapse, pandemic, volcanic, or nuclear.

I live in the suburbs and don't feel safe enough (if that's even possible) but actually would prefer to be here as opposed to the other two options.

[Foulball]

The bad:
I live within 3 miles of Disneyland. Safe? Hardly.
I live in a barrio. Safe? Nope.
Multiple competing gangs nearby? Yup
I live in an area that has 12 million+ people within 50 miles. (Los Angeles and Orange Counties) If you've ever been to southern California you've noticed that the cities all run together, no noticeable change from one to the next.

The good:
The overwhelming amount of people that I know are hardworking and honest.
Since the area I live in is poorer, they see the economic situation without blinders.
We know where the good deals are on food & household items.
Almost every house in my neighborhood has some sort of fruit tree or garden and a few have chickens.
The gangs leave regular joes alone for the most part.

Bottom line:
While not ideal, and I would like to move to an area where there are way less people, my wife will not move. So, I'm making the best of the situation at hand. One of the good things about living in the middle of the pit is that there are shipping hubs nearby. If SHTF there are literally millions and millions of square feet of warehouses full of crap within walking distance.

:cool:

[helomech]

Country, and yes I feel safe here in most situations. Nearest neighbor is about 3-4 miles away. Nearest town is only 300 people. To get to a town with over 20k people you have to leave the county and drive for about a hour and a half. We are almost to producing all our food, as soon as the aquaponics system is up and running we will be in real good shape, and it is my #1 priority.

[The Stig]

We're in a touch of an odd situations.

I like to call this "rural Mississippi" but the reality is we're in one of the two sub-divisions in the county (100ish homes) and are 10 minutes from a town of 6,000 people. That said, there's only random sporadic homes outside our sub-division and it's a lowly populated county.

Short term events I can see the folks in the sub-division banding together to help each other out, etc.

Long term? Hard to say. Out of 100 homes there's going to be someone who gets desperate, decides they want my stuff, or generally just snaps. Prob could stand to be a touch more isolated for a full-blown, total meltdown sorta deal.

[realist]

I decided to move from Southeast San Diego when I came out to find my neighbor upset in the parking lot. His car windows had been shot out. When I asked him where it happened he said, "Here, last night and I was in it." I was also working in the ghetto at the time, when I decided to move. Then I moved up to the rural wine country of California. Talk about night and day. I have a nice piece of property and good neighbors that look out for each other. I realize that things can change rapidly and plans need to be made. The nearby city is about 100K in population so if it were to hit the fan I think I would head north. It is for this reason that I have a plan B and a nice BOL. Right now it will be a vacation cabin that we can all go to on weekends. It is too far out for the wife and I to move to permanent unless I wanted to move by myself.....

[GunnerMax]

I live in the suburbs, and I do not feel safe even if the neighbors party. But, on our budget, the age of houses around here, our not so good credit, and the distance to both of our jobs, we will be staying in the crappy apartment...

[Katrina]

in suburb, 10 minutes from downtown and gangs. Don't know more than 2-3 neighbors around me. Most won't talk to us or acknowledge we are here. Plus I suspect being the first house going into subdivision, we'll probably get hit first unless I can either move the house (not a possibility) or make house look so bad no one will come near it. No I do not feel safe here.

[bacpacker]

We live in the country although we are only 6-7 miles from the nearest town. I have some good neighbors nearby, but down the road is a bunch of illegals and some meth heads that come and go. One of my biggest worries is the 800 or so homes that are down the road past us. They have all been built since we built our place. Almost all of them are $400k+ houses, well when they were built, and I have little doubt that very few of them prepare for much of anything other than hosting parties and playing on the lake. Coming by our place is one of only 3 ways out for them. I'm probably more worried about them than I am the city folks coming out here.
I've been looking for a BOL/BIL for several years and still haven't found what we are looking for. Not to mention a double or tripling of my drive to work.

[Alas Babylon]

It used to be country: 5 acre per dwelling ag zoning. lots of farms around me, mainly goats, cows, and horses. Only know a few neighbors. guy across the street is a prepper and we get along great. weekend mornings sound like a day at the range: the neighborhood is well armed.
Now we are in tansition -the two lane "highway" 2 miles down at the end of the road is being turned into 6 lanes, and Orlando keeps spreading closer and closer. It was great when we moved in many years ago, and even though the area I live in is still rural, the development just 5 -10 miles away is frightening. Much like Bacpacker said, high end homes and lots of clueless people. Our only hope in SHTF would be for all in our rural community to band together and block off the two roads into our area.

[Twitchy]

We are currently in suburbia however we will soon be out of it into the country side... thank god... We have rough neighbors in the area so i am leery of staying here if anything was to happen... We are looking at several acres a ways out in the sticks and that eases me a bit.. should be in there within a year or so... Once I get a place of my own, I'll be out in the country for sure...

[LUNCHBOX]

I don't look at it as being safe here since we don't have the numbers. Like most I'm out of town but not what I would consider country. The people in my area are older for the most part so its not them I worry about so much. I also don't plan on waiting for the towns people to make it out this way...bug-out. I feel it would be around a couple to three weeks for those s-bags to move out to our AO, by then I don't plan on being here. I have a BOL area farther out that I will hold up in to give some others time to meet up with me (it is more defendable) before I/we move out for our primary BOL.

[piranha2]

The woods - if it ain't nuclear. If it is, I will be too close to care.

[Stormfeather]

Pretty much country for me, We live on on the edge of a small town population about 5500, one of the bigger towns in the county. We have a military installation 7 miles down the rural highway from us. Dont really know the neighbors, but do know they are stuck up prisses. Apparently Im "that guy" in the neighborhood since im a blue collar military guy and not a working professional. All in all, Im waiting for SHTF so they can all die off and I can claim the hilltop! No real issues with gangs, town has started to have a meth/heroin problem, but the local cops are pretty good about being proactive, so cant complain there. All in all, would love to be more in the country, but am ok with where I am as well.

[msomnipotent]

I live in a large suburb. I think it has around 140,000 people. I don't feel safe at all. Bad location, bad neighbors, and too many terrorist attractions too close to me.

[mitunnelrat]

I'm in the country, and overall I'm pretty comfortable with it. The nearest city is 20 miles away. It and its surrounding area has a population of roughly 30,000. From the looks of things I can't get much further than I am from a population that size, especially if I want to keep a half decent hospital in near proximity. I'm enough of a klutz that's almost a necessity.

The nearest major population center is just about 50 miles away, and Detroit is another 20 miles beyond that. I'm getting into something over 1 million people in that area though, and if they head north it could be something of a problem. Still not my greatest concern though.

For the immediate area, its a population of roughly 3,500. The unemployment rate here is slightly higher than the state average, and as such I'm not surprised by the number of petty crimes here each year, which looks to average around 5,000 incidents involving theft/ burglary. Major crime statistics are low. I think the worst year showed 5, and there's only been 1 murder in the past 10 years. I still keep my doors locked.

My stretch of road only has a few houses on it, and everyone gets along well, though I pretty much only know the people next door now, and have my whole life. I was best friends with their son for a long time. He just moved in a few houses down, which is his cousin's place, and if anything were to pop I think he'd be knocking on my door. We still get along ok, now, but it was pretty rough for a while, and since he knows so much about me BOL plans have become a higher priority. That's the worst of it for me though. Most folks seem to be hard working and easy to get along with, and the communities near me are pretty tight knit.

I like that I can walk out of my front door and take a leak if I want, or out the back and do some recreational shooting. I don't have enough of a backstop - yet - to get into anything too serious there. Its my dad's house so "improvements" like that take some time to get approved and planned out. The other major change there will be a garden. That'll probably come next year.

If I were to move it'd be further north, up into the northern part of the lower peninsula. I need to get up to the area I'm thinking and check it out this year, then decide if its something I want to do. I have it pretty good where I'm at.

[rice paddy daddy]

Our place is on a dead end dirt road six miles outside a one stoplight town of 2,000. We are out beyond cell phone or cable TV service.
Things like Walmart, civilization, Home Depot, civilization, restaraunts, civilization, plus most of the population are on the other side of the county, 35 miles or more away.
The nearest mall is in the next county, 50+ miles one way.
Cows make the best neighbors. And you don't have to worry about them packing an AK or robbing you blind.
We had an opportunity to move here almost twenty years ago from my childhood home, Palm Beach County, which had turned from paradise into a paved over, crime infested, drug riddled suburb of New York.
Thank you, Lord Jesus!

[wingnutx]

I live in central Phoenix, which is sort of like Los Angeles, i.e. a giant semi-suburb.

I feel safe enough for the most part. If we lost the grid here in summertime then people would go apeshit, but I can hunker down while most of them turn into beef jerky. I am well stocked and low profile.

Getting out of this valley would be difficult, given the limited routes and the huge number of people we have here. I recently purchased 36 acres of woodland up north, but there's nothing on the property yet. It's a 3 hour drive and would be a hell of a walk.