'Bugging out' to your survival retreat has been a staple of prepping since back when it was still called 'survivalism'.
Put into actual use, the cracks in the plan are starting to show.
Marko's town in NH has lots of summer homes around the lake for New Yorkers and New Englanders, and they've filled up. He admitted that he's already looking askance at anything with NY plates on his rare runs into town.
"For now, in the absence of any clear federal guidelines restricting domestic travel, residents in many small towns across the US are drafting their own ad hoc policies for outside visitors. In Skamania County, outside of Portland, there are signs spray-painted with “STAY OUT LOCALS ONLY” posted around town. One resident told me that community members will follow around any car they don’t recognize that enters the neighborhood. (The local hardware store is also offering free toilet paper with the purchase of a firearm.) At a small backwoods inn on the banks of the Rogue River in Oregon, 200 miles from the nearest hospital, the owner told me that even with a “NO VACANCY” sign up, and the restaurant closed down, she still had people knocking on the door, looking for a long-term place to stay.
In Dare County, North Carolina — the Outer Banks — police have set up a checkpoint to turn back anyone, even a second-home owner, who’s not a full-time resident. The tiny island of North Haven, Maine, has banned all visitors, including people who own property, while locals in Vinalhaven tried to forcibly quarantine three people by downing a tree across their street because their car had out-of-state plates. In Marfa, Texas, like dozens of other vacation spots across the country, the local government has requested that all short-term rentals be shut down. But locals I spoke to in Marfa and in towns across the West suspect that people are still renting under the table, or have simply transformed their Airbnbs into three-to-four-month furnished rentals and are listing them on Zillow, Craigslist, and Facebook Community Pages instead."
