Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.”
― Colonel Lewis "Chesty" Puller, USMC, Chosin Reservoir, 1950

It is widely regarded as a phrase from the Korean War: bug out. When a position was untenable, the soldiers would be told to bug out, meaning to immediately remove to a designated safer area. In some cases that meant retreat, in others it meant movement to another location not to the rear. Do you have three bug out locations? Or, where do you plan to go when the faecal material hits the rotary air circuation device?

Why should you have three bug out locations? Well, gosh, do you have any idea where the enemies of freedom are going to be when they get around to attacking you where you are? Consider the possibility that they come at you from the north. But you only had the one bug out location, and it involved heading north. Whoops.

Your freedom, your family, and your life may depend on knowing where you are going to go, being prepared to get there, and being in possession of every possible resource both on the trip and at the destination. Which means preparing, it means prepping. And, since we are still currently not in the hot war phase of what's going on, if you haven't figured out where to go, and where else to go, and where else to go in case both those options are precluded, then you may want to get on this matter right away.

Moving About

At the end of August, God told me to give notice at the place where I was living in Ohio. At the end of September and in the first days of October, I moved the things that were in that house into storage and turned in the keys. For a time I was in West Monroe, Lousiana, then Cuba, Missouri, then near Spavinaw, Oklahoma, and currently I'm in Baldwin City, Kansas.

Over the last six decades, I've been a lot of places. I don't remember Daly City, California, but I do remember Colonie, New York; St. Louis and St. James, Missouri; the Meramec Caverns; the road to Alaska from Lawrence, Kansas; travels to Hawai'i, Taiwan, Japan, Macau, Hong Kong; a train ride to San Francisco in 1969 before Nixon destroyed the passenger rail industry; driving through or (in most cases) living in every state in the Union; travels in Mexico, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Extensive travels on several occasions into and through Canada.

So if you need to have some idea of where to go, I'm happy to provide discussion and advice. Also, I know people in a lot of places, some of whom have land, and some of those who are wanting to build freedom communities on their land, especially in Canada, Texas, Oklahoma, and Belize. There are a great many billions of people on this planet, and the evil oligarchs are only a few hundred persons. If you are reasonably selective and patient, you can find good places to go and good people to be amongst.

What to Look For

If you want to understand what is "the good " in terrain features and locations, you may want to spend some time studying military history, as I have done since 1984 with great vigour and deliberation, and which I did in a war gaming context from the middle 1970s. Lots of military miniatures, lots of multi-sided dice, lots of board games about places like Remagen and Arnhem.

Terrain features like mountains and swamps are extremely difficult to move through and offer enormous opportunities for getting out of sight in caves and under foliage, where movement is fast and easy for those who know the paths and the byways, and very difficult for those who just showed up on orders to invade. So if you are interested in surviving what is ahead, get familiar with people and places in the hills and hollers, in the swamps and bottom lands, where it isn't so easy to move tanks and entire armies.

What about big cities? Yes, there are ways of hiding out in big cities. If you have never walked in the subway tunnels in New York, you've been missing out on a very noisome and disgusting experience. Decades of coal dust and more decades of urination and defecation have made those tunnels really stink. The subway maps are only useful to some extent, in that there are closed stations that aren't on those maps, and entire tunnels that were meant to move the wealthy from their homes in Manhattan to other locations. Some tunnels are very deep, and some of these are intermittently flooded. People live down there.

During a war, one of the most unusual aspects of terrain is a bombed out city. For example, consider the 1942 attack by Germany on the city of Stalingrad. The combined arms approach to warfare, third generation warfare strategies and tactics, was well understood by the German military leaders at the time. But, they made a really big mistake. They sent their air force over the city to bomb it into ruins.

Now, that was a tactic of terror, meant to cause the opposing forces and civilian population to flee, and to kill many of them. But it was an enormous error because it put masses of masonry and debris all over the streets, effectively building barricades for the enemy to hide behind. Stalingrad became difficult to navigate with tanks and armoured cars and became a sniper's delight.

On the other side of the river from Stalingrad are enormous marshes and swamps. Terrain that could be navigated on roads, and which provided hiding places when German air units tried to strafe and destroy supply columns and troop columns. Stalingrad is not a place I would have wanted to be during the war, but it was nearly impossible to conquer once it was bombed repeatedly.

Similarly, I would not recommend moving to a big city at this time, but, rather, to move away, uphill, and into the countryside. But if you happen to live in one and cannot relocate, or if you have friends or family who do, then research the underground aspects of that city. There are tunnels under Houston, which is only about 50 feet above sea level. There are tunnels for storm sewage and for human sewage all over the place. Get to know that terrain, because it could save your life.

In Warsaw, 19 April 1943, the Jews trapped by the Germans in the ghetto there rose up and fought back. They had captured a few weapons in the preceding weeks, they knew the ghetto was going to be liquidated, and so they fought. Thousands escaped through the tunnels under the city. The Germans eventually flooded the tunnels with water, and many escaped by swimming. Then the Germans added diesel fuel and lit up the tunnels, and that cut off escape. But, remember there was not going to be any mercy for Jewish partisans surrendering to German soldiers in 1943. Few did.

I'd also like to mention Sobibor. Of the roughly 1,300 who were in that camp at the time of the escape, about 800 tried to leave, 500 stayed behind. Every single one of the 500 were executed, the camp was demolished, and the Germans planted trees where it had stood. Many of the 800 died trying to escape over the fences and through the mine fields, but hundreds survived to the end of the war. So, think about what it would be like to escape from a death camp. Because death camps are coming, along both coasts and near major cities.

The best way to escape a death camp is never to be captured and put in one.

Fixed Fortifications

Which means that wherever you are, whatever your situation, no matter how well situated your home, no matter how well provisioned, you have to consider the possibility that an overwhelming force is going to come against you. Yes, you can stand and fight to the end. If you are dependent on medicines or mechanisms for your survival, if you are going to need kidney dialysis or liver dialysis, or medications they aren't going to offer in a death camp and you won't have access to away from home, if you expect to be dead any way, consider taking out the enemies of freedom who come in range, and consider blowing up what you'd otherwise leave behind such as supplies and equipment.

But if you have family to protect, if you have a place to go, you should make plans to bug out. Fixed fortifications, as General Patton noted some decades ago, are monuments to the stupidity of mankind. Every ocean has been crossed. The coldest places on Earth have been traversed, the deepest depths of the ocean, the highest mountains, and even the Moon has been reached by mankind. There are those who believe Mars as well, both in the ancient past and more recently, but those are stories for another time.

The concepts of 4th Generational Warfare (4GW) are not very difficult to understand. Small units which are highly mobile and take advantage of terrain features like mountains, ridges, caves, and swamps can evade capture, relocate, and fight again another day. Keeping your ability to fight intact means being willing to abandon territory for a while and return to it later.

Such tactics have been used before. Washington retreated from a great many battles before he attacked the British and Hessians by crossing the Delaware. Sam Houston did not take his army to the Alamo, but retreated from Generalissimo Santa Anna again and again until he found the "killing ground" he wanted at San Jacinto. Henry V carefully chose the ground for the battle of Agincourt. If you don't have overwhelming numbers and if your philosophy doesn't allow you to send waves of troops to throw themselves at the enemy (which, by the way, rarely works at all), then you need to choose the time, the place, and the rules of engagement for battle. And that means mobility, not fortifications.

No matter how cool the place is that you are willing to die for, the other side is willing to kill you to capture it. And, remember, they hate you for your freedom, for your temerity, for your unwillingness to bow and scrape and bend the knee and take their toxic concoction, and be marked by their beastly system. So, if you want to be free, if you want to come through this conflict, if you want to emerge in July 2023 knowing that the worst is over, do some serious thinking about where to go when the sh!t hits the fan.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome when and where you can. Bug out when needed.

 

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, actor, and director. He is the vision director of HoustonSpaceSociety.net You can find him on Twitter.com/planetaryjim as well as Pocket.app and Flote.app also as planetaryjim. He appreciates any support you can provide as times are very difficult. See the Paypal link on this page. Or email your humble author to offer other choices. Visit IglooLuau.com for more information. Those seeking a multi-jurisdiction multi-hop VPN for communications privacy please visit https://secure.cryptohippie.com/houstonspacesociety.php For those seeking colloidal silver try ppmSilver.com/Jim Ask Jim about CryptoWealth. Coming soon: FreedomLandDAO dot com - not yet hosted. Just arrived: FreedomDeFiSoftware.com