What would there be to come back to?

[lonewolf]

if things are that serious I have to bug out I wont be coming back, i'll make a new life for myself at my BOL.

[grenfell]

bugging out with out having a pre organised BOL is not bugging out.......its being a refugee.

I suspect that most , myself included , don't have a pre organised BOL so would become at best well stocked refugees and a BOL needs in my eyes to be virtually a second home especially if returning to your original home is off the cards. So in reality for the majority returning would seem to be the only real option as staying at a place you have escaped to as either a refugee or just a bod with a BOB would be untenable in the long term. Assuming there hasn't been a huge die off places people have fled to would become rapidly spoiled and depleted of resources and there would be a great deal of resentment from the locals.
I really favour staying put if at all possible, bugging out as a last option and work on the assumption that I would need to return and anything I hadn't removed , hidden or buried would be likely to be gone or severly damaged.

[lonewolf]

most people will be bugging IN, that is everyone's plan A, its where all our stores are and where we feel most comfortable-right?? however, if things have got so bad that we are all bugging out, nobody is coming back-ever.

[grenfell]

I don't know about never, ever coming back. If we all bug out , and by all we could include the country's whole urban population both prepared and unprepared would we just be shifting the problem from one place to another unless there is a major die off? Besides when things calm down repopulating the evactuated areas has to be a viable propersition. Even returning to scavenge deserted towns makes perfect sense unless some sort of pandemic has left the streets piled high with rotting corpses.
Historically refugees have always returned or at best areas have been reoccupied.

[lonewolf]

no, as I've said before, I really don't envisage the entire population of the UK becoming refugee's and taking to the roads. as preppers we almost have "insider" knowledge and are preparing for an event-the vast majority are not! most of the "general public" will remain in their homes and wait for TPTB to come and save them, by the time they realise that that help is not coming its already too late. I believe there would be a large die off of the general unprepared public due to starvation, disease and lack of resources, some looting would occur in the big cities but by the time most people think of it the shops would already be empty, the supermarkets have a "just in time" delivery system and without those deliveries we are "3 days from anarchy".

[grenfell]

If there's a large die off , which I could see happening if things went the way you suggest , wouldn't that make returning a more likely scenario ? Ok , maybe not the big cities for habitation but smaller more rural towns and villages would become almost prime real estate with a lower population and maybe at least some infer structure still intact. Abandoned cities could be revisited if only to harvest materials and resources.
I always like to look for historical precedents to see how things may go in the future. The type of event that would induce a bug out or evacuation would have to be a sudden and very serious event such as tidal wave, earthquake , volcano , invasion or war, fire or chemical spill. Coming up with an event that would preclude any return is perhaps rarer. People return after war or natural disaster , it seems to be in our nature to rebuild eventually at least. If we never returned to anywhere something bad has happened the human race would be struggling to find somewhere to live now.
There are some cities that have been abandoned or largely abandoned because of economic reasons for example Gary Indiana although people could return if they wish. Places people don't return to are rare , Chernobyl is one and Fukushima is becoming another and we can see the common factor there.
I've said in other posts I worry more that we are in for a slower crash rather than a sudden SHTF caused by a number of factors , economic failure , peak oil , and food and energy crisis all adding together. Unfortunately I can't see bugging out being a great help in that scenario.

[lonewolf]

your quite right, most people will bug IN, I see a bug out as plan B, in cases of fire, flooding, death and disease, in which case I don't see a return anytime soon if ever.

[grenfell]

Disease is an odd one I'd almost deliberately left out as it can have both results. People do flee but then again there are examples of whole villages such as Eyam in Derbyshire that went into voluntary quarantine in the seventeenth century because of the plague, perhaps the ultimate bug in.
Let's hope it's all conjecture.

[lonewolf]

Let's hope it's all conjecture.

that's all it can ever be, best guess, until it happens for real. I don't think you can equate the 17th Century with how people will act in the 21st. most people cannot think for themselves in an emergency situation and just go to pieces and panic. the second thing they do is blame the government.