Referencing back to this post about escaping, let’s look at this tip more in depth:

You know that you want/need to escape the city when a huge bug-out type event occurs. What direction do you go? How do you get to your final destination? What plans are needed and how can we plot these in the most efficient and easy way possible?

Answer? Modern technology is your friend and humans are overall predictable in an unpredictable kind of way.

Here are the things I cannot predict:

• Where people will be bugging out to
• How many will stay in the city
• The exact plan the state/federal government will enact to contain the situation (will depend upon the situation)

Assumptions we can make:

• Humans are creatures of habit
  • Everyone without an emergency plan are going to follow the basic hierarchy of needs and seek out necessities first
  • They will stick to known roads unless they are shut down completely, but even then they may stay stick it out in traffic
  • Many will just go home and try to wait out whatever event (I believe cities are death-traps in most large-scale catastrophes)
• Phones/Internet may all be down (not only due to the event, the number of people attempting to call/text might overload towers and networks

What this means for us:

• We want to be OUT of the city as quick as possible, even if this means that we first head in the opposite direction of our end-point
• We want to avoid major routes and highways, please don’t get on the highway…really
  • The only caveat is if you’ve caught all of this VERY early and know beforehand
  • If the highway is clear then it could greatly increase your speed of getting out of major areas, but if it clogs you have to be prepared to jump the median or shoulders and get off quickly
• We should assume that we will not have cell reception in a disaster scenario and we may have no way to navigate digitally
  • Everyone using phones at once will overload the network or the state/government might shut towers down on their own OR there might be zero power for said towers

What should we know to start planning our bug-out:

• Most used highways
• Most popular big-box stores or grocers that will be hit-up for water/food right as disaster approaches or strikes
• Highway routes with the least amount of side barriers (for easy exit upon a jam)
• Back roads that still lead out of the city
• 2-3 alternate routes that may take longer but achieve the same goal

Example Planning Process:

To start with, pull up Google Maps.

Let’s say I live at: 2929 Kings Rd, Dallas, TX 75219:

Let’s zoom out and get a lay of the land:

What I Notice:

Right away I see that at this time (9:32AM) there are a few nearly blocked areas in typical traffic. If you do not have traffic visible, you will have to enable that layer. In Chrome on the desktop version at least, there is a button looking like 3 horizontal stacked lines on the far left. This opens a menu to turn on the Traffic layer for Google Maps.

In the version of Google Maps (as I write this), you can click “Live Traffic” located at the bottom of the screen and select typical traffic for a given day and time. In most cities, I would check 7:00AM-8:00AM and then 5:00PM-5:30PM but you likely know the rush hours for your town.

Rush Hour:

Rush Hour:

So we see during rush-hour, everyone is rushing home. If this “event” or announcement happens in the middle of the day, which seems likely to me, this is the route all the unprepared people are going to be taking to get to their houses. So if you are at your place of business normally during the day, I would use that as my starting point and plan from there. Zoom in and out across your normal routes and find the bottlenecks. If the highways ARE open, you’ll need to know where the stopping points are so you can jump off an exit and take side streets etc. to your destination.

Search for “Grocery” in the Area:

I would next search for “Grocery” in that area near your house and business both. I would look at traffic around those stores on Saturday/Sunday when most people are shopping to help determine the most used but Walmart, Kroger, Aldi or whatever else is in your area that you know by name will be the prime suspects here. See if there are routes that cut under or through the main routes but do not travel ALONG those main roads. Congestion can cost valuable time.

Use the “Get Directions” Feature of Google Maps:

This feature allows you to set Departure Time. I would again set it to rush hour and check travel time to the closest rural area. This is the most important point to make in my eyes, it doesn’t matter if this is “out of the way” of your destination. Not really. If your bug out cabin or wooded area that you’ve chosen is north towards Oklahoma? Great! You can’t get there if you get stuck in traffic with any number of other things happening while still stuck in the city. If I was at the location mentioned above, I would shoot straight east towards Terrell:

Travel Time:

I have the above directions set to depart at a rush hour for the area of Dallas. I have marked to avoid highways completely. Again, if a highway is open and you know the exit points then feel free to use them on the way out. I would be VERY hesitant however to get my vehicle onto a roadway with 1000 other drivers who are rushed, scared, and not thinking about anything but moving their families somewhere safe. Panic people are not safe people to be around especially if they each are in their own 2 ton death machine. You also do not want to be trapped in by concrete barriers and “roadblocks”.

The time above is estimating 1-2 hours taking the back roads and mostly avoiding major stores near “our house” but in the type of event we are discussing, it is likely that EVERYONE is driving less than “legal” and I’m guessing that if you possess the skill to do so… you will exit the city much quicker than what Google considers “normal”.

Thoughts on Planning and Extra Tips:

• If you have to pick up children/wife then your plan will require more routes and backup route planning. I would drill (legal driving of course) the routes a few times to get an idea of where you can go if one is blocked suddenly.
  • Work with your children as to how these kind of plans will work. I would use a keyword often throughout explanations. Give them simple steps to remember including plenty of instruction to “stay calm”. When you use the keyword later in a quick text or call, they will know the event is that level of seriousness and are more apt to jump into following life-saving directions.
• Do not stop for anyone else. Your priority is yourself and getting out. If pedestrians block the road way, move slower if you want but if they are showing any signs of violence towards cars, plow ahead. It is not your problem that they decided to stand in a roadway in the middle of a disaster and if they are not getting out of the way… you do NOT want to be the car in the middle of that!
• Every city should have routes that are clearer overall. In Dallas for instance, nearly every rush hour simulation leaves the South-East corner as the best option. If you are located in the North-West however, you will obviously have an easier time take a few streets under the highway and northward into rural towns and old dirt roads. Just get out quickly and THEN take your route to the final destination until it all blows over.
• Every city is slightly different. Every family is different. Think of anything important you might need in an emergency bag. A small 72-hour “walkout” bag should be in the car at all times. If you are at home or have time to swing by, you should have a larger bag waiting there. Preferably your end location is stocked but if you are broke enough (as I am when I write this), you will need to rely on any survival skills you’ve learned so far and the basic supplies that you can fit in the car. If you have family in the country or rural areas, even better. Meet there.

That’s most of what I have been able to logic out for these kinds of scenarios. It seems simple, but I think the biggest point here is planning. Planning, and avoiding death-traps.

Hopefully helpful, let me know some of your own tips or thoughts on the escape below!

– Matthew Pizgatti