Local, Local, Local...

With a full tank of fuel in your SHTF vehicle, calculate how many city miles you can travel.

Reduce that mileage number by 10% for safety buffer.

Divide that number by half. 

That is your Bingo Fuel range in that vehicle under typical conditions.  That is the outside range for operations, to ensure you have enough fuel in your rig to get back to base without refueling.

Now thoroughly study your local maps and calculate how far that vehicle will get you, under normal SHTF conditions, in each direction from your operations base.  Do not use "as the bird flies" calculations.  Use Google Maps to calculate ranges on actual travel routes.  That is your primary AO.

Holly and I are heading westward in the next week or so to continue serious work in Idaho to lay the ground for III Patriots who are planning to move to the Redoubt.  We have talked quite a bit about the area of St. Maries and Benewah County.  For many reasons this area was chosen by the readers of this blog as the place best for relocation and defensive considerations in a SHTF and/or WROL societal tragedy.  Many of us think this area is ideal for making our families safe in such a world.  There is water, food, low population, the population currently in the area is generally like-minded regarding Liberty, and the area is well-removed from the most likely lines of attack in an ugly world.  Even if we do not have time to build a perimeter wall for the Citadel, a county filled with serious III Patriots is a secure county.  Overlapping fields of fire will be easy...

However, my life on this planet has made me intimately familiar with the Washington DC Metro area.  I know every street and neighborhood in the city by memory, I know the "attitude" of every neighborhood, and I can get to any X on the map without navigational aids.  My knowledge of the immediate surrounding suburbs is as complete for at least 30 miles in all directions - as the bird flies - 50 or more in some directions - though I admit in some instances I may need a map to find an exact spot.  Yes, I have the maps - including topo.  I can get from any suburb to any other suburb without navigation aids, and I can do this by a nearly any existing route, no matter how convoluted, but finding some particular streets will need a map.  As bad as is my memory (Goldfish have better memories), this is one area of my memory that works well.

Additionally, because of decades of being on the water, I am as knowledgeable about Chesapeake Bay and all of the rivers that feed her.  If needed I can get to the water, and once on the water I can get anywhere I need to go.  I may have to borrow a boat, and a car wherever I land, but if we are in such a state of affairs, I don't think the owner will mind...

When, if, I am ever forced to fight for Restoration, the place in America where I would be most valuable is in the DC Metro area.

Do you know your AO as well?  Have you calculated Bingo Fuel ranges?  Have you mapped where you are likely to find emergency safe houses?  Have you done the grind of learning who in your AO is important for facilitating OpFor, and where to find them?  Have you identified places that may require intense attention from your Team, and where your Team can stage for such action - surrounding buildings, how to gain access to such buildings either clandestinely or covertly?  Do you know where you can find a sturdy piece of heavy equipment to borrow if you decide to dig a trench across a popular driving route, if needed?

You have already been mapped by those who mean to be Masters.  Your relationships have been mapped.  Where you buy groceries, get your meds, where you go for medical treatments, where you work and with whom, who is in your cell phone, and their relationship to you.  Remember, the Enemies of Liberty have a plan, and they are already executing that plan.  Right now.

If you do not know who is critical for implementing that plan in your area, and where to find them, how to apply pressure through their contacts, you are behind the curve.  If you have not identified and mapped every force projection element in your AO, you are behind the curve.  If you have not identified every shot-caller in your AO and where/how to find them, you are behind the curve.

If you have not identified every possible way to defend the most important assets in your AO from OpFor mal-intent, you are behind the curve.

And it isn't simply people that should be in your knowledge base.

If you know where OpFor elements work, have you figured out how to make their work uncomfortable and slow without causing collateral damage to the school or residential neighborhood down the street?  Have you identified where the HVAC, electrical supply, gas supply, phone/fiber lines feed these buildings so you can shut them down with surgical precision?  Have you watched to see what routes and what companies feed supplies to these buildings?

Has your Team pitched in to establish a safe house and set it up?  If a decapitation strike begins, your Team and families will have to be elsewhere when the Bad People come to your known address - this is something you need to put in place now, and be ready to go the moment it becomes clear that you need to go ghost.

This is what is meant by "Local, Local, Local".

If the North American Liberty Games begin, you will have plenty to do very close to your home. 

You will have little need to travel far to find monsters to slay.

Work on it, if you need to get it done.  Once the Games begin, it's too late.

The clock is ticking...

Kerodin
III