SHTF: Worse Case Scenarios

Let's start this off with a bang..

Best Case Scenario SHTF -

You are at your remote retreat. You have over 200 acres of high producing tillable land currently growing a mixture of grain crops, vegetables, fruit trees and small scale livestock. You can grow and produce enough food to support you, your group and more than 100 other people should you decide too.

You have several large, fortified buildings for storing grain, hay and sheltering the animals. All are connected by an underground series of tunnels which can also provide protection from fallout and weather for the animals as well.

Your primary residence is a completely off the grid super house which can comfortably shelter up to forty people. Half of the structure is underground, has several hidden exit and escape routes and massive amounts of storage.

Inside is enough LTS (long term storage food), medicine, toilet paper and booze for five years without having to grow a thing or run down to 7-11. The home runs entirely off of solar and wind power, but you have a number of diesel generators with enough fuel to power them for twenty years. Water comes from wells drilled within the house and around the property.

Protection is handled with your enormous armory, some legal but most obtained through back channels. Of course you are former military and are well trained on numerous small arms weapons systems as is many of the members of your retreat; they were your core unit when you were with Delta Force. Your wife is also former Special Forces (combat doctor), can cook beef stew under fire and still looks great in camo.

Most of the rest of the world is dead from some strange illness that killed everyone within seconds and decomposed their bodies minutes afterward into a harmless dust which blows away with the first wind. Fortunately, the disease disappeared before it reached you and your group.

Since everyone else in the world died in just a few minutes, all the stuff left is in pristine condition at Walmart and all the other retail outlets waiting for you and your group to come get it. For some reason, this strange virus also preserved gasoline and diesel fuel in storage, kept all canned and packaged food from going bad and left all animals in perfect health.

In short, the entire world is waiting for you and yours to show up and claim it.

Back to reality...

Worse case scenario - SHTF

The President comes on the radio and announces that global thermonuclear war is about to break out and diplomacy has failed. You would have known problems were coming to a head, but you had not kept up on the news lately. Since nuclear war is inevitable, everyone begins to panic.

You try and phone your wife but you keep getting the "all circuits are busy" message on your phone. Thinking it may be your office phone, you try your cell but get the same message. "I am sure my wife knows what to do" you think and head out to your car.

Too late. The parking garage is backed up as everyone tries to leave at the same time. There are no fewer than a half dozen fender benders and that is in the garage. Imagine what the streets look like.

You think you will try that mass transportation everyone is talking about and head to street level and look for a bus. Too late again. The only bus driving by is packed to the rafters and doesn't even slow down in front of your office.

It is early afternoon and you are twenty plus miles from your home in downtown. Surely your city is a grade A target for a bomb, so you start hoofing it home. Maybe you can catch a cab along the way.

About twenty minutes into your walk you mentally kick yourself for not grabbing at least a bottle of water from the office. Maybe you can grab something from the mini-mart at the corner.

Big mistake there. The owner and his wife have barricaded themselves in the store and are trying to preserve their stock for themselves. Already a mob is out front trying to get gasoline and what snack foods and water are available inside. You play it safe and go the other direction towards home. Now you are thirsty and your feet are beginning to hurt. Should have packed some other shoes in that Bug Out Bag you also never got around to putting together.

Two hours later and several phone calls, you finally reach your wife. She was at work as well and has been stuck in traffic since hearing the news as well. Unfortunately, she works in the other direction that you do and cannot swing by and get you. Besides, she is mad you left the other car at the office.

Your wife wants to get the kids from their school which is about to let out around now. Sadly, she is five or more miles away, stuck in traffic and about to run out of gas. You meant to fill up her car last night, but your favorite program was on. Besides, the quarter of a tank she had in her car should have been enough.

The kids are still at their school and have been placed in the gymnasium with all the other children whose parents had not picked them up yet. Only a few nervous teachers are left at the school. Most left when the news alerts went out. No idea how much longer they are planning on staying and watching your kids when their own families may need them right now.

Your kids have no idea where their parents are nor how to reach you. There was never a plan put in place so they have no idea what to do. Your oldest daughter has suggested that to her little brother that they sneak out and try and walk home. After all, it is only a few miles and they think they know the way home. Too bad another parent was not notified to get them in an emergency.

By the time darkness begins to fall, you are only three quarters of the way home. Your wife's car ran out of gas and she is walking to the children's school. The kids, now left unsupervised, have left the school on their own and are trying to remember the way home on foot in the dark.

Overhead, a couple of dull metal objects break apart over your city and being their slow decent of death...

Best case and worse case scenarios. Where do you want to be? Sure the first is over the top extreme, but the second scenario probably covers 90% of America right now. I think I know what my plan is. Do you?