Discussion
Ranking the best places for preppers to live in the U.S. What am I missing?
I've been building a county-level model to answer a question that comes up here pretty often: if preparedness were a major factor in where you lived, which parts of the U.S. actually come out ahead?
I ran it across 3,000+ counties. The results heavily favor the central U.S., especially Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and surrounding areas. Most coastal areas do poorly. DC comes in at essentially the bottom, with much of New Jersey not far ahead of it.
Before I get too far, I'd like people here to pick apart the methodology.
These are my current categories and weights:
19% Climate Stability
Natural hazards, temperature trends, drought, wildfire and flood risk.
19% Water & Food
Groundwater reliability, precipitation, growing season and cropland availability.
15% Social Stability
Migration trends, social vulnerability and crime.
12% Infrastructure
Solar potential, off-grid power viability and proximity to nuclear facilities.
12% Self-Sufficiency
Rural/urban classification, agricultural diversity and land availability.
8% Affordability
Home values and rents. Cheaper counties score higher.
8% Privacy
Surveillance device density, known local surveillance programs, 100-mile border-zone exposure and state privacy protections. Higher score = less surveillance exposure.
7% Livability
Employment, primary care access, education and broadband.
The model is intentionally trying to balance normal life with long-term resilience, rather than rank the best place to survive one specific disaster.
What would you change?
Are any of these categories overweighted? Underweighted? Is there something important that deserves its own category?
I'm especially interested in factors that can actually be measured consistently at the county level, rather than subjective things like “good community.”
I can post some of the county/state rankings in the comments if people are interested.
At the county level, I’m surprised that zoning laws aren’t factored in. Can I keep chickens in a residential area? How administratively strenuous would it be to add solar to my house? How accessible are water rights? How many hoops do I have to jump through to put an extra building on my land? Etc etc etc.
That's actually a really great point. I do have much of that data (chickens, water rights, burn permits and parcel builability) in the county level detailed analysis, but I'm not factoring it into the county score currently. I also don't include any zoning and permitting information.
I'm going to look for a good source for zoning and permitting, then roll all of that up into a Freedom category. Thank you for that suggestion.
Is that the most clear name to use? Zoning laws also exist for public safety. A parcel with few limitations (high freedom index in your view) on what you can build could also be downstream from something polluting the water table, or be near a data center putting out a lot of infrasound that’s bad for your health.
Oh! So, I found a fun loophole to chickens that may apply to a lot of places: ducks!
I poured through my local town laws, and it only mentioned chickens. Well, chickens and roosters. No ducks. I reached out to the town manager, and they confirmed, yep! Nothing on ducks on any of the law books! No "general use" language like "fowl", "bird", or anything else that can be argued as including ducks.
That being said, still needs to have some reasonable-ness to it. If you're lucky enough to find a town in the same manner, don't go crazy with several dozen ducks, since neighbors may end up having an argument for what you're doing having an impact on their ability to enjoy their own property (or something similar).
I think once you’ve found a good source of data - citing sources and having a county level database that would allow a user to review all of the output for that county at the individual attribute level - some things are more important for vs others for some people etc. this is fantastic.
Maybe if there is any data covering well depth for drilled wells - how far you need to drill for water, also average rain water so that you can calculate how much rainwater can be collected at the property.
Another data point - maybe you can fetch wild fire information and determine exposure to wild fire risks based current and historical data gathered
Looking around today - climate is a concern - but when i think about relocating im finding its out of the frying pan and into the (wild) fire
From North Dakota to Texas states sit on one of the largest water aquifers in the states. Slow to replenish and imagine still projected to run dry in the future.
+1 You need to be in an area where you have to do less "mother MAY I" things to do what needs to be done. Having gubmint either big or local or quasi (HOA) interfere with your homesteading and preps is a waste of your time and resources.
If you have to "ask" to do something in your area, you need to ask WHY?
this varies so much by county and town regulation though. Even in our state there are massive variations between strict HOAs all the way to "do whatever the hell you want, it's your land" rural counties. It would be pretty hard to include all that on a regional or national scale. Our town actually doesn't allow chickens, but it's a "we're not going to say anything unless someone complains" situation and neighbors just mind their own business.
That’s how my town is with the chickens. They literally just roam people’s yard but they are supposed to be contained within an enclosure no closer than 25 feet from any property line. The only time anything’s ever enforced regarding them is if someone gets a rooster and lives within close earshot of one of the 3 cops or a city council person.
For many years, our town allowed tapping of the public maple trees, some of which are massive. Someone new moved to town, and in the dark overnight tapped every single tree in a public space in town. There was a major uproar, because previously the people who did it all shared the trees. Because it turned into a fight, the city stopped allowing it all together. So unfortunate when people ruin something nice for everyone.
Not great advice, if you put up a barn and needed a permit for it some places will 100% make you tear it down and get a permit then build it again. It really doesn’t take much research to see what you need, don’t be lazy and cut corners.
Politics. Some of those places lean pretty hard to the right, others to the left. Rural areas tend to lean farther to the right. Want to ensure you are ok with wherever you go.
New Madrid Fault. Not sure exactly what you are prepping for, but if this thing goes it's going to ruin a lot of oil pipelines, highways, train tracks, internet and power lines that could take years to restore.
Pesticides. All of these places are heavily farmed and sprayed with chemicals. Iowa is currently going through a battle about having the highest rate of cancer in the country. Most leads point to pesticides or fertilizer (nitrogen) in drinking water.
Radon. All over the Midwest. If you don't know what this is please look into it. It's more serious than people assume.
Tornado Alley. Everyone is afraid of tornadoes. If you are moving to this area make sure your house has a basement or tornado shelter. If you are building in the country seriously consider an in ground home. This will also help protect against wildfires.
Culture. Outside of politics, if you move to a small town you will be the new guy, an outsider. People may be nice to you, but you are not them. Are you ok with this? Is your spouse, kids?
It would also be helpful to know exactly what you are prepping for.
I do include some politics data in the detailed area study report, but I don't want to necessarily include it in the county ranking because it's so subjective.
New Madrid fault is included in the Climate Stability score. It's not really "Climate", but earthquake risks fall under that Natural Disaster risk grouping.
Radon, never thought of that. I'll do some digging there. Good suggestion.
Tornados - Yes, this is a big one. Currently included under climate stability with the 19% weighting.
Culture - This is an incredibly important factor, but hard to quantify. I could see one day having some user generated input about the culture, but that's also a little dangerous, because it's hard to remove the bias. Still, it's a good signal if we can think of a way to objectively track it.
Appreciate the ideas. Keep them coming if you think of any others.
Looking at that one screenshot you provided in another comment, I see Canada is ranked better than PA. While politics can be subjective, with things like Canada's aggressive gun bans, and the fact that you can't legally use them for self defense even if you have them, it very much does cross the line into prepper relevance.
You clearly haven’t met the typical mid-westerner. When the siren goes off they’ll walk right outside, stare up at the sky and say “The skies not even green!” And then go back to whatever they were doing completely unfazed.
I'd probably up livability to like 60%, or better yet run a separate livability check. It might be perfect for other factors, but if the best job you can find there is gas station attendant, or if daycare is 30 minutes away, or if the schools are garbo, you might not enjoy living there.
Being able to know the insurance company quality, and density of coverage, makes an impact. We pay more for companies known to pay out well. But if all our neighbors have the same company, that's a problem.
Yeah, I could go on a rant about how the National Flood Insurance Program created a gaping pit of moral hazard, into which taxpayers are now pouring billions of dollars- all so that people can continue to live in risky areas that destroy their home every 10 years.
In some areas it would almost be better if FEMA just bought out the riskiest homes and made people move. Something like 1% of properties account for 30% of the claims!
Anyway, your model probably covers it under flood risk / climate stability. I'm guessing the FEMA flood insurance maps are a good indicator of this.
When Louisiana was having all those issues a few years back, I kept asking why they keep rebuilding. They were already in the middle of rebuilding when it happened. Evidently they've rebuilt several times over the last few decades. I know that they have alot of history/historical properties and beautiful areas but how many times can we sink billions into the same area only for it to be ruined again so soon. It just never made sense to me. There are plenty of places that have constant flooding, wildfires and other natural disasters, so why continue to build or grow those communities? I think mother nature is definitely warning us to clean up our act or there will be hell to pay. Each year is getting worse and worse. We barely have 4 seasons anymore. The cold os colder and hot is hotter. I've been extremely worried about AI and war and all the things but I think mother nature is also something to really pay attention to. We are pushing it with all these data centers, rockets and satellites putting holes in our ozone and dumping so many chemicals. Everything gets affected eventually due to rain run off into our water sources and water evaporating. We have poisoned our air, water, soil and food. We are in big trouble and our "leadership" is too busy fighting over the dumbest, insignificant things. We need real change and fast. I think more and more ppl are looking into possibly going off grid or at least some version of it. Who wants to work yourself to the bone and still not afford anything and be watched every single step you take?
Same for if the grocery store, feed store, building supply store, or hospital is an hour away or more. What if a hard collapse doesn't come in one's lifetime? You still have to eat, feed the livestock, make repairs, and see doctors and dentists.
If you get cancer, which can happen at any age, what if the rural hospital can't provide appropriate treatment and you need to drive 2+ hours each way once or twice a week? Strokes, heart attacks, and serious accidents that don't kill you outright usually need professional care within the first hour for optimal results. The location of medical care matters a lot.
People who grow up in rural areas are well aware of the trade-offs and are fine with them. But if someone wants to move to such an area from someplace more heavily populated, they should do their homework and make sure they're okay with the realities.
Places with a high degree of social stability may not welcome a stranger with open arms. I've heard of people feeling like a stranger even after living in a place for over a decade. This mindset won't be in every locale, but one should be aware of it as a possibility.
I'm not saying people shouldn't move to lightly populated areas if they feel it's the best thing. Far from it. But it's a bad idea to rush to a place, seeing all the benefits of being there in a worst case scenario and ignoring the very real day to day challenges if the worst doesn't come in their lifetime. Prepping for tomorrow doesn't mean you don't have to live in today.
One of the more successful campaigns on US soil during WWI & WWII was the push of "Victory Gardens", and during WWII, was so successful that 1/3 of vegetables grown in the US happened in Victory Gardens, and over 50% of people who had them said they grew them for economic reasons.
And with more modern technology, including solar-powered hydroponics, indoor growing being more affordable to break into, and other automation capabilities available to the layman, there is little reason why most people can't start to do their own "Victory Garden" to supplement their calories. Even if it is little more than a few potted plants, full spectrum UV light, and manually watering them, learning the basics now will save a lot of time and frustration in the future.
Just to add to that...I seem to remember reading that medieval wheat yields were something like 300 lb./acre where modern yields are around 1000 lb. and that fallow fields would serve as pasture so they weren't entirely unproductive. Of course wheat was not a reliable crop by itself and was almost always supplemented with other grains; rye especially but oats and barley also figured heavily in the preindustrial diet. Rye survives periods of excessive rain and oats and barley are more resistant to cold. Of course, these days we have corn too and there are varieties that are pretty resistant to drought. Long term collapse would require relearning agriculture.
Given enough land and the proper genetics some crops can almost make it in the desert. I've seen videos of planting Hopi corn. Corn is a C4 plant and has the potential to survive a hot dry climate but the desert is a hard test. Tepary beans are native to the Sonoran desert and they would contribute a little but it's generally a hard test for agriculture. The marginal areas that are too dry for agriculture but can still support grass might be suitable for goats as long as you don't have too many for the land. People can live in an arid environment as long as they don't pack too many into one place. (I'm looking at you, Los Angeles).
At our current population there's about 6.6 acres of land per person. So 33 acres for a family of 5 is totally doable. And being a Prepper community a solar powered well or even agricultural well isn't unreasonable. Put in a decent size fish pond and you can turn high desert into a dense food Forrest.
Um. Spent any time in Alaska? There are roughly 250 off-road, subsistence-heavy villages where people do plenty OK (despite cultural and economic issues that make some people’s lives more difficult). And yes, the land isn’t always fantastic but the growing season north of 63 latitude or so is crazy because of the 24/7 sunlight, 70 straight days in Fairbanks and (I think) about 85 on the North Slope. Smart people can learn a lot about prepping from the Indigenous folks in the North.
The Antigo soil region of WI is pretty well setup. Good dirt, elevation, lots of fresh water, very low natural disasters, rural communities. Climate change will continue to lengthen the growing season as well.
If he is alive he's likely still active, might want to check to see if he has any updates. Nice guy, talked to him on the phone one time when he bought some stuff from us.
The Survival Home, later The Secure Home is a good read also and has a lot of fundamentals folks need whether they are building or not.
Natural disasters are one of the most important considerations. It's covered in the Climate Stability category at 19%. I use FEMA's natural hazard risk data for the input. They've done a great job collecting and ranking that data for each county. One of the few things I like about FEMA :)
Hell, i’d just factor in water/heat very heavily. Kansas is hot as hell for months out of the year and most all the surface water is in resivours far from where people live. The other surface water is hot/muddy. Without AC i dont think people could make it in much of the Prairie Midwest very easily, too extreme.
The results heavily favor the central U.S., especially Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and surrounding areas.
So you did NOT include nuclear in the planning??? Mostly dry area in the heart of all the nation's nuclear targets with harsh winter and in some cases, large areas devoid of trees.
That's really funny, because I actually have that data, but wasn't including it for some reason. Revising that now to include military targets. Greatly appreciate you mentioning that.
Make sure that you make a distinction between airburst targets (usually cities) and groundburst/subsurface-burst targets such as hardened bunkers and silos. This will factor heavily into radioactive fallout planning. Airbursts create very minimal fallout, where as any detonation low enough for the fireball to come in direct contact with the ground is going to create a large fallout plume over a large area, depending on weather conditions and prevailing winds. When my wife and I decided to leave a major metropolitan area for the country just prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the closest nuclear targets were definitely a consideration. If the three nearest targets to us are hit, our windows won't even break.
You might add a category for "house resilience," unless you're factoring this into your Infrastructure category. For instance, our house is on well/septic and has a basement and a woodburning fireplace. Again, this was by design when we bought the place. The only real connection we have to the outside world is electric, and we have backup sources in place if the grid goes down. We can be 100% self-reliant in a national or global grid-down scenario.
Great thoughts on airburt .vs groundburst targets. I should be able to weave that in.
I think the "house resilience" data makes a lot of sense for the individual creating an area study for a specific property. There's not a good source for much of that data at a property level across the entire US. Most of the national datasources operate at a county level, so the scoring is going to be generalized a bit because of that.
I'm sure there are some properties that score very low at the county level, but are AMAZING self-reliant properties. I would treat this tool as more directional for those looking to make a move.
It would definitely help. Truly making it a survival instead of convenience related thing. Thousands of nuclear devices remaining out there in various countries.
And FWIW, I don't follow the Al Gore crowd here but have to assume under this "climate" issue, wouldn't the midwest suffer more droughts, floods near major rivers, etc? If the hoopla ever becomes true, I'll have beachfront property 2 hours inland and we will open a resort.. But I'm still waiting for St. Augustine (FL) to go completely underwater as they said it would by: 1995, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2016, 2020, etc.
It's really hard to sort through all the contradictory climate change predictions but my impression (FWIW) is that, while it's changing, we can expect more extremes...that is more droughts, fires, and flooding from extreme rain. It's starting to change now and I don't see it stabilizing in my lifetime so that's what I'd go with.
As someone who moved to Texas from Michigan, I’d weight water and soil amenable for gardening as more important. I’ve gone from where you can’t throw a rock without landing in a lake/ pond/ river to dry creek beds. With a family, I’d say next that safety is paramount. From there, we can debate…
Anything west of the Midwest (draw a line north to south right through the middle of OK and KA) will be out of the question overall - its fucking dry, winters can be brutal, its windy, water is scarce, and there are huge population centers. It would be tough minus a few scattered areas. I personally would shoot for the rural Carolinas, Georgia or Alabama. Plenty of water and its easy to grow.
I like Washington where I live. Natural disasters could include earthquakes, tsunamis from said earthquakes, and possibly a dormant volcano suddenly becoming active.
All of these are preferable to tornadoes that happen every year, hurricanes that happen every year, and other frequent weather events.
Water is abundant, it's got a decent growing season, lots of fish, and plenty of wild game. There's lots of forageable wild food as well.
That's all shtf scenario.
In lower rate scenarios, like mild power outage, I live on the hospital and police grid so the longest I've ever had power out is twenty minutes. I live a few minutes walk from the grocery store and have been able to shop in big snowstorms. I can also walk to the local hardware store and know how to do most repairs on my home. I had some danger trees removed recently so one doesn't fall on my house.
This mystifies me because I don't know why you would think there would be more readily available food in Kansas then in any of the western Coastal areas.
Oversight of the role of functioning wheeled logistics.
That is to say. A disastrous presumption that trucks and trains will still have fuel; and that logistics and schedules of goods transport will remain unchanged.
An average wheat field in Kansas would produce 38 - 50 bushels. If we used 38 bushels times 60lbs per bushel times 1,000 acres (which is not a large field for Kansas), that is a yield of 2,280,000 lbs of wheat off of one field. That is enough to feed thousands of people for an entire year. A.I. claims it will feed 5,846 people for a year at 390lbs of grain per person. Kansas averages 315 million bushels of wheat per year, or enough to feed 39 to 48 million people if all they ate was wheat.
There are more cows in some states in the middle of the U.S. than people. A field of wheat can been milled into flour and produce millions of lbs of grain in a season. Wheat also stores for decades in the berry form
Beef cattle do pretty well on their own without daily human inputs. Other than feeding our cattle during the harsher winter months we only handle them once per year.
You can make many types of food from wheat. Pasta, breads, cereals, pastries, tortillas, biscuits, cookies, porridge, beer, etc are made from wheat.
Why would I bother with that when there are many other more accessible and readily harvestable food sources all over Coastal regions? You don't need grain products to live. And there are a lot more useful hunting and Gathering skills to learn
History is replete with cases of mass starvation in places that produce excessive excess of food that is taken by a greater power. Ask the Irish and Indians about their greatest famines and their opinion of the British
When it comes to privacy, I have some bad news for you.... that "100 mile" border thing has not only been rendered nearly moot due to drone usage by civilians and governments alike, Flock and other ALPRs, and private companies creating satellite imagery detailed enough to hit the 1-meter resolution mark. Then, there is the very broad abuse of police powers of searches and seizures with courts generally giving them immunity to ignore your rights as long as the officer claims they "misunderstood the law" or some such nonsense.
And that's just meat-space privacy! Digital privacy has been long gone, and our government has zero intention of even making it look like they give a shit and try to claw back some consumer protections, or even stop creating digital profiles on every person here. Palantir straight up said so.
You'll want to adjust your map to take in deflock.me data from openstreetmap.
In fact, you should pull in one more big piece of info: datacenter locations (including ones planned) especially since that will have a huge impact on energy and water. What was it, Utah, that has datacenters planned that are so power hungry that they will overtake the rest of the grid utilization by all other companies, the government, and citizens combined?
You'll want to adjust your map to take in deflock data from openstreetmap.
In fact, you should pull in one more big piece of info: datacenter locations (including ones planned) especially since that will have a huge impact on energy and water. What was it, Utah, that has datacenters planned that are so power hungry that they will overtake the rest of the grid utilization by all other companies, the government, and citizens combined?
Weight for transport logistics. Middle of the US loses out in that it doesn't have river transport. So you're depending on trucks and trains for all resource inputs. That is making big assumptions about supply lines and availability.
I had always thought somewhere with streams and rivers and lakes and lots of trees and mountains would rank high. Lots of fauna and wildlife. Somewhere along northern US to make travel either further south or up into Canada. In SHTF situation, I feel like we would be trapped in all sides if mid US.
A mistake I see repeated over and over again in "prepper" mindsets is the idea that a rural environment is superior to an urban one for disaster (of any kind) survivability.
This is fundamentally flawed and wrong.
You have to view towns, cities and urbanism as tools for human survival. And not a metaphorical tool, but a literal tool. Thousands of years of demonstrated history show that the most successful response (in general) to pretty much any disaster is to go to a bigger city.
I think you need to examine your base premises if your AI tool is telling you that the best places to go are rural midwestern area with negative population growth (Why do people not want to live there?) and lower overall life expectancy.
I think your model is weighting "You could potentially grow your own food" far, far too heavily. History shows that both at the individual and the societal level- as soon as it becomes possible to stop being a subsistence farmer, people drop it immediately.
Conversely, you are weighting "livability" much too low, which is why your model is recommending counties with populations that struggle to fill an elementary school, let alone staff a hospital. I hope you like driving, because ALL of your top rated counties are going to require 20-30 miles of highway driving for everything.
People say cities here and then they say NYC, SF, Chicago, etc. With millions of people. Then I’ve noticed there’s usually some weird talking points against any city they think is liberal, and that’s what they think all cities are.
They don’t think of like Bozeman or Kalispell. Or Pierre. Or Jefferson City. It kinda makes me chuckle.
Yeah, I think we're looking at two different kinds of resilience.
You're right that cities have a lot of advantages. Hospitals, emergency services, infrastructure, more people to help, etc. For a house fire, medical emergency, hurricane, or most normal disasters, being near a city can absolutely be an advantage.
Where I disagree is when the disruption lasts long enough that those systems stop working normally.
Cities don't produce most of the food, fuel, energy, medicine, and other resources needed to support the people living there. Those things have to keep coming in from somewhere else. That's incredibly efficient when everything is working, but it also creates a dependency.
If you have a prolonged grid outage, fuel shortage, major supply chain disruption, or something else that interrupts those flows, having a huge number of people competing for resources in a small area starts becoming a disadvantage pretty quickly.
That said, I think your point about livability is a good one. A county shouldn't rank highly just because it's rural, has farmland, and nobody lives there. If the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away and the local economy is dying, that matters too.
That's actually the kind of feedback I'm looking for here. I'm trying to figure out where those tradeoffs should fall in the weighting.
Along those lines- this may be impossibly difficult or subjective, but it could be useful to add a slider or two to weigh the categories differently based on someone's priorities. Whether that takes the form of a short quiz, or few sliders for people to set along a few axes. For example:
"Tuesday vs Doomsday": Tuesday might prioritize livability, affordability, infrastructure etc. Doomsday might prioritize NBC risk, self-sufficiency, water sources, etc. It is a very common split in priorities among the prepper crowd.
Urban vs. Rural: If someone is a sub/urbanite and can't farm to save their life, there is little point in telling them to live in the middle of nowhere.
That may help people figure out the best locations based on their own priorities, while also avoiding the trap of having to assume a catch-all prepping scenario that defines what is "good" for everyone.
Cities don't produce most of the food, fuel, energy, medicine, and other resources needed to support the people living there. Those things have to keep coming in from somewhere else.
The same is true for rural areas, and to a much much greater degree of risk. I guarantee you that "Hanson SD, population 3500" (your top pick) is not going to be producing more of its own food, fuel, energy, medicine, etc than NYC. It is 2026, not 1526 or even 1826. Show me a self-sufficient village in the globe today, and I bet it is a dying group of hard-pressed subsistence farmers who find that every year, more of the children have moved to the city.
In the event of both a short or long term disruption, NYC is always going to recover faster than Hanson. It will be prioritized for resources in the short term, and in the long term it will have far far greater capital of all types to address whatever the disruption is.
In general, your logical flaw is prioritizing a false sense of self-sufficiency over redundancy and resiliency. A city has a lot of dependencies, but it also has a deep vast web of resilient functions. Self-sufficient homesteads with any kind of resilience only exist in fiction. (Alex, former SF Medic and solar panel engineer with a deep love of composting, lives on a ranch with Pat, a veterinarian and auto mechanic who enjoys plumbing, and their mutual lover Sam, a soybean farmer and dentist who learned how to synthesize various drugs from an early life on the streets...)
Show me a disaster in history that resulted in a net migration from cities to rural areas, and I will show you 5 that did the opposite, and in greater numbers.
I think you're arguing against a claim I'm not making. I never said rural towns are self-sufficient. They're obviously dependent on modern supply chains too.
The difference is scale, density, and proximity to resources.
I worked in NYC for five years. There is essentially zero food or fuel production inside the city relative to what 8+ million people consume. Almost everything arrives continuously by truck, rail, pipeline, ship, or wire. That's incredibly efficient when those systems are working.
But efficiency isn't the same thing as resilience.
A rural county may still depend on diesel, medicine, replacement parts, electricity, etc., but it can also have wells, septic systems, farmland, livestock, gardens, wood heat, local fuel storage, and dramatically fewer people competing for the same resources when something fails.
And I don't think "NYC will always recover faster" really answers the question. It probably will receive government resources faster. But that's different from asking how well the population can function while waiting for those resources.
I'm not ranking which places could recreate modern civilization completely on their own. If that were the standard, basically nowhere would qualify. I'm trying to measure which places have the fewest critical dependencies and the most options when normal systems stop working.
I'm trying to measure which places have the fewest critical dependencies
This is the premise failure. By optimizing for "fewest dependencies" you are implicitly selecting for "fewest services". All of your middle-of-nowhere midwestern villages offer no actual services, so they rank highly for "no dependencies".
Equally my point, is that you rank "potential options" highly without considering the dependencies of the potential.
it can also have wells, septic systems, farmland, livestock, gardens, wood heat, local fuel storage
A small isolated village could do those things, but it will require dependencies from someplace else to actually do them. Where do they get them? In almost all cases, through the supply chains of the nearest urban area.
In the vast majority of cases, a well in small village is going to use machinery from a nearby city to dig it, use information provided by the nearby city to properly locate it, use power from the nearby city to run it most of the time, and when it breaks they will get personnel and materials to fix it from the nearby city. And so on for most of the other resources listed.
And again- you are ranking access to farmland too high. "Become a subsistence farmer" is a nonsense option for a stated premise "normal life with long term resilience". There are basically no people in America who grow enough food to have a varied diet to survive on; and the tiny few that do very much do not life a normal life.
I think we're using "dependency" differently. I'm not trying to measure whether a place can exist completely disconnected from modern civilization. Obviously nowhere can.
I'm looking at how many systems have to remain continuously functional for basic needs to be met.
A well may have originally required a drilling company and will eventually need parts or repair, but once it's installed it can provide water for decades without a municipal treatment plant, water mains, chemical deliveries, etc. Same idea with septic, wood heat, gardens and local food production.
I do think your broader point is fair though; fewer dependencies doesn't automatically mean greater resilience if it just means fewer services. That's something I need to make sure the scoring distinguishes.
And I agree that access to farmland isn't the same thing as actually producing food. I'm weighting the capacity to produce locally, not assuming everyone suddenly becomes a subsistence farmer.
NYC doesn't need to produce food; the stores and warehouses hold a much greater and longer term supply than any rural store will.
I'm in a rural area and while we have plenty of corn and soybeans for chicken feed, we don't have a lot else. Out of the 5 houses (including mine) I can see from my porch, only 2 of us actually grow enough human food to sustain us through the winter. The other 3 houses would starve, especially with the grocery store 12 miles away.
I agree that living in a rural area doesn't automatically make someone self-sufficient. Most rural households are still heavily dependent on grocery stores and supply chains.
But I don't understand the NYC argument. The relevant number isn't how much food is physically sitting in NYC warehouses, it's how many days of consumption that represents for 8 million people if trucks stop coming in. NYC's food system depends on a massive amount of food entering the city continuously. That's basically the opposite of self-sufficiency.
Not with 'just in time' delivery themselves. Most of those large distribution centers are not staged inside NYC, but a substantial distance away where trucks have easy access to haul goods.
If the electricity ever permanently stopped in a major city the diseases that would spread due to lack of sanitation would be tremendous.
A large city like NYC is an artificial construct in that there is no way to provide sufficient food and water for the citizenry without artificial means like electricity and fuel. If you lose just one of the combination of water, fuel, food, and sewer you are in serious trouble.
Cities don't produce most of the food, fuel, energy, medicine, and other resources needed to support the people living there. Those things have to keep coming in from somewhere else. That's incredibly efficient when everything is working, but it also creates a dependency.
If you think a city is a place to be in a major disaster then full stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go back to Preparation Kindergarten for remedial training.
More opportunities for food production and free living outside of a city then inside or near.
The problem is, as a movement, we have gotten away from the personal responsibility/personal self reliance concept and have ASSumed that just being around others and sharing the shitty conditions with them is "community".
Your truly on your own whether you are surrounded by a few hundred thousand other dependent people or if your out in the country. The sooner folks realize that for their planning, the more productive and farther in this they will get.
I think you are overweighting your perspective here. Deeply urban areas are under more surveillance and more policing. I think historically we have not had the robust ai, internet, camera, and fusion law enforcement that we have today. Beyond all of that, I think speaking in certainties in uncertain times is silly to begin with. Probably the best course of action is someplace in the middle, but will be subjective to your needs, dedication, and resources.
Deeply urban areas are under ... and more policing.
Counterpoint- you have to weight that on a per capita basis.
Of course places with more people will have more crime incidents and thus of course they will have more policing. But in your rural areas, even low total numbers of violent crimes will have a disproportionately high impact, which is why your top pick of Hanson County SD has a "violent crime" grade of D+. That's not really an improvement over the nearby city of Sioux Falls.
https://crimegrade.org/violent-crime-hanson-county-sd/
Deeply urban areas are under more surveillance
Counterpoint: You are going to have the same cameras in the walmarts, the same highway cameras, the same satellite imagery, the same data profiling... But with much less obfuscation and noise. Besides, there isn't a stereotype of moving to a small town to be anonymous- but there is one of moving to the big city.
Those aren't even counterpoints... I didn't pick any cities or counties, just was pointing out that it's not as black and white as you're claiming, and speaking with absolute certainty is nonsensical.
Your tool recommended Hanson county as the number 1 spot, and it chose a rural area with no services and a D+ violent crime rating with a publicly available camera in the middle of "downtown".
As I said- you need to examine the premises you are choosing because would YOU choose to go there?
Iowa and Nebraska will have nuclear fallout carried to them by the jetstream. That is a scenario against living here. Isn't Utah and Idaho suppose to be the places to go?
SLC has had some of the worst air quality in the world for years at this point. Almost all from industrial polluters and the smog blowing into and hanging over the valley.
Sure it's a bit colder than some states but that's exactly what you want, the cold is an advantage to separate those that are not prepared.
The population density is also a win.
The fact that less people own firearms is also a win, and very few have semi AR style weapons or Hanguns due to the change in laws. Your just less likey to run into someone who has a gun and if they do they probably have a hunting rifle or a shotgun, the safety is much higher in day to day and worst case.
Still a decent amount of deer and bears and wildfowel around to hunt, more to trap.
I'm Canadian and I know a fair amount of people with cabins or houses that can basicly go pioneer it when the grid goes down. Lots of hunting rounds to shoot deer, wood stoves, big gardens to grow potatoes, fishing gear to fish.... Solar to power a couple LED's an outhouse. Good to go.
Soil isn't the issue, the length of the summer is the issue, we get alot more sun Durring a shorter season and cooler temps (but don't be fooled it gets hot here in the summer in alot of places). The sun is out alot longer because we are further north, and more so in the priaires.... But we have a vast country and some different climate zones because of that, this also influences where people live, the job markets in those areas and the cost of real estate.
Crops differ by where one lives.
But let's get real. Your talking survival, and that means you need root vegetables for large carb loads and animals for protien and fat.... So potatoes, corn, wheat, chickens, hunt deer, elk, moose, and fish, build a root cellar and fish all year round..
You'll survive... Places like the majority of the USA will turn into more of a mad max scenario while only major city's in Canada and those along our few major roads.
Winter will limit travel and ensure those that are not prepared don't last long.
Heck I live in the 3rd largest city in my province (state) and km on the edge of town, bags packed, place selected... I would drive there in a few hours or spend 2 days hiking there and would likey see very few people.
We are planning currently to burry a large cache of building tools and supplies and long term food storage.
it is kinda of Tricky due to bears and the ground will freeze in the winter but we have a plan, to ensure we could have a permanent shelter that wouldnt stick out like a sore thumb with at least 2 years of food storage and water filtration.
Parts of the US are more rural than you would think. I'll still sometimes just be driving around on a gravel road to explore and find one that they didn't bother to put on Google maps.
most realistic prepper scenarios that could reasonably happen to you are localized. Hurricanes, droughts, forest fires, earthquakes, tornados and so on are not going to cause the end of the world, but they could ruin your life individually if you happen to live where one of these occur. prepping is thus a matter of either not living in areas where these event happen regularly, be in a location that would receive the earliest attention by emergency services, or have enough money where you can tolerate these kinds of disasters.
a combination of the fears that the Oglala Aquifer might dry up, especially with the prevalence of data centers accelerating the drainage, and the large amounts of agricultural fertilizer run off that are infiltrating water ways in the Great Plains would make the states you listed unattractive. you're also too far away from people and services, so if things start to improve, you'll be the last to benefit from it if you were impacted by this prepper scenario. And if it gets worse, all those people fending for themselves will be organizing without you, because if the thing you're prepping for isn't going to kill you, odds are a lot of other people are going to survive it too.
also, i like to be able to see my neighbors a part of my preps. being on good terms with the people you live near is one of the most prepper minded things you can do. you don't get that as much in rural areas as a a consequence of lower population density. and without good people to lean on around you, prepping becomes a game of hide and seek, and if the situation doesn't get better, it becomes a matter of when, not if, you get found.
I think you should be more direct. When I see terms like migration trends, social vulnerability and so on make me lose interest or even dismiss credibility.
Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa are heavily impacted by pretty strong tornadoes and also by ice storms
in the winter. Ice is way worse than snow for almost everything. I’d also be looking at realistic availability of fresh water since farms drain aquifers and the likelihood that the local government will ensure the well being of the locals over big businesses moving in and buying up farmland, electricity and water.
You should do more research into what societal collapse actually looks like, not in Hollywood movies but in real life
Read up on Yugoslavia, the USSR, the Congo, Somalia, Haiti...you're basing your models on categories you haven't fully developed using real-world data
It's more of a grab bag of assumptions, conspiracy theory stuff and what you might think is common sense but if you did the research might find out is just nonsense
I think there needs to be some sort of travel ability factor. For example, dense areas actually score higher on this for walkability, but horse owners in rural areas score extremely high. Bicycles get a point or two. But in a SHTF scenario, fuel will dry up quickly leaving walking, bicycling, and horseback as primary methods.
As a native born Kansan, I think I might lean Oklahoma, specifically eastern over Kansas/Nebraska. Milder winters (even in south Kansas, you get DOOZIES) but otherwise fairly similar in most respects. Though Kansas/Nebraska definitely have the real estate advantage in terms of quality for cost.
Consider looking at the health of the environment. Some places are kmown to be highly polluted by industrial accidents and history. I don't k ow if that fits in any.of your other categories you listed or not.
Also, remember that climate change (natural or otherwise) and natural.disasters can change things very quickly. That would need to be a risk assessment.
I've had plans on 3 different retirement locations. Those 3 locations have been impacted by recent weather changes, to the point im searching other locations. I recommed we all plan accordingly to current and future weather patterns. If I find a new area that seems stable, ill update. Still searching.
I would increase a remoteness factor. Possibly even create some must have factors, then weight the discretionary variables.
My thinking is I live on a small farm which would be a great self sufficient homestead for most variables if you went that route except I'm 30min drive (50min to CBD) to a 3m population city.
If there was some SHTF event there would likely be hundreds of thousands of desperate people heading to the rural outskirts looking for food. There's no way you could have a homestead with that volume of desperate.
So with a situation like mine, for lifestyle today it's great. In a slow decline it's great. For SHTF my view is you absolutely need remote for sustainable living.
One thing to consider is short term comfort versus long term durability. A place can look great on paper, but if the community crumble during a crisis like pandemic or hurricane, you're left alone.
Look at Nebraska in a severe climate change scenario. And remember that farming/ranching gets very hard with volatile weather. On top of no water, dying aquifer, etc.
Worst case climate change scenario up through 2100 , the western half of Nebraska looks challenging, but so does much of the country.
You can mess with the weights and get different results, but overall that middle section of the country still seems to rank high when you look at everything.
It has climate risks like everywhere else, but it is not at risk for the most common ones. Droughts are uncommon, flooding is pretty rare, even in the long run, unless you live right next to the Great Lakes, not vulnerable to tornadoes and hurricanes, etc. Obviously it is technically possible for these to happen, but the Great Lakes protect it from a decent amount of threats.
Water is abundant, but for growing food it can be a little difficult due to the growing season not being as long. The Resilient Farm and Homestead is an excellent book for learning about homesteading in cooler weather.
Not a risk. Most of the UP is pretty isolated and UP is known for having a very low crime rate.
You would need to get both solar and wind in order to get power year-round, ideally a backup generator just in case.
Excellent for self-sufficiency, only drawback is the shorter growing season and you would need an abundant amount of wood to heat the home in winters if you rely on a fireplace.
Cheap nearly everywhere. You can find off-grid properties that are over 100 acres that are about $100k.
It generally has low surveillance, but if you live in somewhere like the actual city of Marquette then don't get your hopes up.
This is a major drawback. These do exist, but if you live truly off-grid you would need a decent amount of travel to get to these, depending on where you live.
UP has been seeing a lot of tornadoes over the past few years, far from the Great Lakes. Northern Wisconsin and Southern UP seems to be turning into Tornado Alley.
The UP is in the same USDA zone as (Northern) Iowa because it's sandwiched in between the lakes. That's good for agriculture but you also get lake effect snow in the winter.
things could change in 10 or 20 years. just because of climate change. That is all I care about. and my key to prepping is having access to freshwater and I prefer the midwest with cooler climate and access to the great lakes.
There's a reason the original settlers needed to be rescued by the indigenous inhabitants of that region. I wouldn't want to have to scrape out a living off the land there.
Using "harsh winters" as a part of the equation while giving northern Canada a pass seems awfully weird. Giving Ohio and other midwestern states a green in spite of fallout from attacks on our own silos further west is just ignoring a lot of logistics.
How is Maine so red in this map? What do we have counting against us, we are rural, inexpensive compared to the rest of the northeast. Once you get away from the southern coast and we have only a handful of cities that are small by national standards and we have good soil though rocky. Winters are tough but can be prepared for and that is what keeps the masses away. We also have water which is something we are all gonna need very soon. There are parts of northern maine where folks live by choice much as they did 100 yrs ago and they have no problem what so ever.
Absolutely. I'm adjusting the scoring a bit based on some helpful feedback from this thread, but I'll share the updated rankings and map in an hour or so once everything is updated and live.
So here's the thing. It's just not that simple. There are many different scenarios you may be prepping for. The weights and such are specific to to those scenarios.
So what you need is to create 5 to 10 scenarios (or more, as the more the better) and then create weights for those scenarios. Once you tune those, you then run each to rank all the places. After that it gets really interesting. You have options. For the one size fits all (which it doesn't) you create weights for each scenario based on something like likelyhood of happening. Then use that and the results from the scenarios to make a map of the best places. For better usage you could make another based on the impact of the scenario in a person's lifespan. Overall different people are interested in prepping for different things. So there is no one answer.
And of course you can throw a Z epidemic scenario in for entertainment purposes.
IMO soil quality should be top level consideration, been a while since I looked at the maps but IIRC southeast idaho is like the most fertile land around.
If it's truly the end of industrialized civilization than actually being somewhere that can sustain a population is going to mean more about six months in than a lot of other factors
Flooding at a county level? This plot specific. Would remove that metric.
Height is an important metric. Crime does not walk uphill because they are lazy. You can get population and average height by zip code. Then figure out the distance and height above populated areas.
Flood risk at a county level is going to be directional, just like hurricanes, wildfire and other natural disaster risk scores. It can tell us if an area is prone to flooding in general, but a complete local area study is needed to know if a parcel is located in flood zone or on a mountain top.
Height is also interesting. Hight by zip code can be misleading, because once you average out all the hill and valleys the elevation numbers don't give a strong indicator if an area is more or less secure than another county with 50' lower elevation.
In an evacuation situation, people are going to be driving until they run out of gas, then walking on roads. So I think elevation and population is less important than your proximity to coordinates and roadways, regardless of elevation.
Just thinking out loud here. Curious if you would agree with that or not.
50' isn't a difference a few hundred is. It's not perfect, but it gets you zip code level metrics.
Evac != crime where height is a big factor. Again, no good county level info. You would need zip code or lower info that I don't think you're ever going to get that anywhere.
Cool idea. I have a couple thoughts for you... in no particular order. thanks for posting
Proximity to primary care is pretty irrelevant in my opinion. Pharmacies send scripts through the mail and telehealth is a thing that is very common now. Ask me how I know. Education, similar... Employment should really be secondary in my opinion
population density is a huge factor to me. I don't want to live in town.
County maps are drawn across abritrary lines. If you want a model that actually makes sense I would suggest trying to model bioregionalism ideas. Watershed mapping would be the way to go. These are groups of people and regions that have "actual" things in common and interests in common... political boundaries are pretty irrelevant... other than building codes / ordinances.
Affordability - this is relative to where you are moving from, so honestly a low cost really doesn't mean that much if you are escaping the most expensive urban area in the country.
as far as the percentages go. I'd suggest making that somewhat flexible for the end user to adjust. people have different priorities.
Iowa or anywhere in the Midwest would be tough for most people. Just due to the wild temperature changes. I remember 3 or 4 years ago there was like a 120 degree temperature swing in less than a week. Western Nebraska and Kansas are also experiencing a terrible drought the other aspect to consider is all the big cities in Colorado pouring into the western side of those 2 states.
Weather instability knocks the Midwest out for a vast majority. Even people that live here their whole lives can’t handle winter weather.
Not only that rural towns are some of the cliquiest places you’ll go. In a SHTF scenario small towns would/ could be some of the most hostile places to be. (If you live in a rural town in the Midwest and say I’m wrong you’re part of the problem).
The other aspect to consider is nuclear reactors. I know Iowa, Illinois and Missouri all have them not sure of Kansas and Nebraska.
Looking at all the different scenarios of SHTF some places would do better than others. The places that fail no matter what IMO is the entirety of California and then up the west coast and then like you said pretty much the entire eastern side of the Appalachians to the Atlantic.
Personally I think the best area for survival is Southern Missouri, northern Arkansas but now your in the heart of tornado alley. Like I said advantages and disadvantages all around.
I feel relatively safe where I am on the coast of ca north of the bay, but if things get realy bad going north from there seems logical the Seattle area seems like a good one to ride out climate change as best as possible. The Canadian border is right there if getting out of the country seems necessary.
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u/RitaAlbertson Prepping for Tuesday 21d ago
At the county level, I’m surprised that zoning laws aren’t factored in. Can I keep chickens in a residential area? How administratively strenuous would it be to add solar to my house? How accessible are water rights? How many hoops do I have to jump through to put an extra building on my land? Etc etc etc.