Routes over the mountains - escape routes?

[HB of CJ]

I was the not so proud owner of a Honda TL 250. Her nickname was the "SLUG". Weighed about 235 full of gas bone stock. As a project removed 28 pounds from that machine and also turned it into a California street legal duel purpose machine. Total loss head and brake lights. Dry cell. Just fabbed and swapped aluminum parts for steel.

Super Trapp and the usual.

Actually slow handled better than our old heavy Cota 250. Another slug. But our Cota had that two plug hole head. Compression release that was fun to pretend was a Jake Brake coming down long steep hills. But ... that Cota junker would actually start backwards. Fun to drive around backwards at the Trials Meet pits. Figure eights.

Figure eights backwards. Sounded funny. Smoked.

The Honda got 428 chain and sprockets for 530 chain and sprockets? I think. Too long ago. 1979. 17 tooth counter sprocket. Still was lousy as a pure trials bike but did pretty good as a tight woods bike. Easy to re jet/needle that carb for high altitude trail riding. Had that weird gear step trials 5 speed tranny. Slow going. Sadly I sold her.

Long ago, far away. Were we ever that young? Now old and cooted.

 

[Oathkeeper1775]

People traveling by foot, boat, bike, rickshaw, unicycle, or a motorized vehicle of any type, on an unsecured route, in a post shtf scenario would be highly vulnerable to being ambushed; highly vulnerable.

 

[HB of CJ]

Yep. The nasty human condition. Not so much the major horrible event itself, be what that may be, like earthquake, tsunami, wildfire, volcano, asteroid strike, nuke hit, etc, but the people problem during ... and after. Yikes! indeed.

Having been in this prepp thing for 30 years now, it remains to us anyhow that our concerns are about 50-50. Fifty percent getting ready for the physical event itself and the other 50 percent getting ready for the major people problem.

Time related. During the event, 100 percent disaster related. After the disaster, 110% people related. Strange dynamic.

Sad, but there you have it.

 

[The Heretic]

Yes - the more people, the worse travel will be until it gets to be untenable.

Been in a lot of traffic jams - including a six hour commute of less than 25 miles due to less than 10" of snow. With half the people it would have still been a mess. With a quarter of the people it might have been more manageable. It will only be worse in the future.

My main goal is to make it home and then hunker down until all the idiots settle down and the gov. comes along and cleans up the mess, and/or the idiots go back out and cleanup some of the mess they made by crashing/parking their cars where they got them stuck.

Know alternate routes can cut travel times such that you don't spend days stuck in traffic or blocked by obstacles of one kind or another. I know all too well how vulnerable our infrastructure is. Leaving my BOL is a last resort, getting back to it though is a primary goal. While I am a recluse and stay home most of the time, I do get out and about sometimes.

 

[HB of CJ]

Getting over the mountain and through the woods to Grandmothers house we go. Only in our case it right now is that nasty non expected small local wildfire that quickly becomes that runaway monster bearing down on our homes feeding upon its own micro weather patterns.

How fast can this happen? This is the attempted feeble point here. Several years I happened to have the local radio scanner turned on while enjoying lunch with other old coots at our local excellent pizza and beer brewery place. A small spot brush fire call came through.

Believe it or not, that dinky spot fire, through a series of man caused and mother nature fueled, (pun intended) unfortunate events, turned into a three alarm watershed fire response. Everybody went. General alarm including the helos and that big beautiful old DC7.

How long did this take? Fifteen minutes. Yep. Our local world was turned upside down and we heard it all on the scanner. Crews screaming for a rescue. We each had a scanner and we each tuned into a different frequency. Absolute failure of radio protocols.

I hope they made a multi track recording of concurrent real time radio traffic during that first frantic 30 minutes. Be good to play at any good fire academy on the absolute necessity of professional radio procedures and formats. Which is what we did not have at all.

Wow. Radio communication broke down between the responding fire and law enforcement agencies. And they are the professionals. On the civilian citizen level many completely lost it. I actually yelled directly into the face of many people from a two inch distance.

There eyes were round balls. They did not hear me. Completely in absolute panic mode. Then they hopped into their cars and sped home driving at 90 mph on the wrong side of the highway. How nobody was killed doing such remains a miracle to me. And others.

The failed feeble point here? Things can change very quickly in the blink of an eye. And usually change not for the better. Human nature. Crowd dynamics. Human panic modes. Fight or flight. Brain stem stuff. People can and do react very poorly lots of times.

Thus the need to remove the public from your SHTF planning. Or more realistically ... never under estimate the human potential for evil and crazy behavior. The notion of civil good behavior during/after the SHTF will go out the airlock. Use your imagination. We do.

Thus the great need to have several alternative escape or travel routes from places you do not want to be to places were perhaps you do. Like said better before, unless you plan this out beforehand you will not have a prayer of getting through the SHTF. Scary indeed.

Respectfully.