This Week Bug-Out Practice Run

By Wendell

We had some bad weather that came thru East Texas and most of Louisiana this past Tuesday night (11/23/2004), to include several tornados ripping thru several areas of the state. Myself and a friend had decided earlier that right after the Thanksgiving Meal we would go make a long weekend at our "bug-out" retreat to finish building our chicken house and catch up on some "odds & ends".

Since I don't watch hardly any TV I really didn't hear what the weather did on Tuesday night across the state. So we left as planned, and once we was within about 10-15 miles we seen one of the small communities hit pretty hard by a apparent tornado.

A few houses damaged, and a lot of large trees snapped like tooth picks. Once we got with a few miles of our location there was some major tree damage. For about 100 yd, it look like artillery was fired about 40 ft high. These trees once stood 80-100 ft. high. Several more "houses/camps" hit.

So we was starting to wonder what we would find at our place. We continue down the road to only find a large tree had fell across it. We're still about 1 mile away from the location.

Needless to say our vehicles couldn't cross, so we off loaded the 4-wheeler and cut a new path thru the woods to get passed the fallen tree. Went got the chain saw and a axe. Our daylight was rapidly ending, so it put pressure for us to work in a hurry. The whole time I'm thinking, what if this was the "real thing", us bugging out.

Now we had to contend not only with any "bad guys", but with bad weather and the effects of a natural disaster. So anyway, the "TEST" was on.

We cleared the road, loaded the 4 wheeler back up and headed to the camp. I was very thankful to God he allowed our retreats to be unharmed.

So now it's about dark and we had to deal with no electrical power, in setting up the place for the night. Thankful again, it was a full moon.

Since we had propane stove/hot water heater, all we was missing was our lighting...and of course no TV/DVD???? ha ha! We had to deal with the once frozen food in the freezer and the stuff in the refrigerator. It was also about supper time.

My point here is a lot of stuff had to be dealt with all at the same time. Pulling out the oil lamps for lighting, etc., etc. It made for a cozy night once we got everything together. A good practice run.

Since my solar panels are not in place (good thing w/ the high winds) and my battery bank not hooked up, (which they will be soon for back up power charging off the inverter/power grid for the next time.) that will be one factor I will not hopefully have to deal with.

I found out that "Lighting" in general is my greatest weakness to date. And my shopping spree yesterday solved most of that. My local Wal-Mart doesn't have any lamp oil left........ha ha!!

So you have to test your stuff. Assume there will be other obstacles/etc. you have to over come that you never thought of.




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