Been seeing a lot of folks talk about bugout bags where the context seems to be fleeing a Knock from secret police or something, and I want to gently suggest folks consider more likely reasons to bug out (wildfires, crumbling infrastructure leading to gas leaks, etc).
Make sure your bag can get you through scenarios where you are part of a mass evacuation, rather than you clandestinely leaving in the middle of the night to escape brownshirts.
I feel like thinking in this context will help folks prepare better and think beyond fleeing to the nearest border as their prime objective.
I don’t like giving this regime more power than it actually has, so it is helpful to me to think about what I would do in specific scenarios. Planning for those gives me much more concrete action items, reduces my panic, and ends up preparing me better for unknown situations.
A lot of us have real fear of this regime rn, and escaping a Knock is a realistic concern.
But I feel like a lot of white, cishet, middle class folks are in oppression cosplay mode rn, and their brains aren’t in a practical space for what the more likely impact to their lives is going to be.
If preparing for a Knock isn’t also going to prepare you for facing sitting in traffic for 12 hours with no hotel plans because you need to evacuate a natural disaster on short notice, you should think a bit more about your risk factors and resiliency.
Vague prepping for “When shit hits the fan” means you are going to forget key items. Come up with some specific scenarios to run through and see how your kit would perform.
@thatdisasterauthor might have suggestions on this? (sorry about the tag if this is intrusive, ignore at your whim)
Always down for disaster advice related tags!
And yeah, I agree with @so-i-did-this-thing in a lot of ways. A natural disaster (or a man-made one) are A LOT more likely to present an immediate threat to most people right now. Especially because of this administration threatening to dismantle basically every disaster protection we’ve got from FEMA to NOAA. We are starting down the barrel of, at the very least, a wildfire season with an absolutely crippled wildland firefighting force. (And wildland firefighting resources respond to a lot of other non-fire disasters as well.)
Be prepared for a Knock, especially if you’re in any sort of marginalized group, but also be aware that knock might be someone telling you to fucking run because there’s a fire roaring towards you.
“The Knock” happened at my door today. ICE raided my apartment complex starting at 5:30am. They told me they were following up on “reported gang activity” but their facade soon dropped and other tenents were not told the same lie.
By 6:30 a local community task force had mobilized and were shouting “Don’t open your door! You do not need to open the door without a warrant signed by a judge! An administrative warrant from ICE is not enough! You have the right to remain silent! You have the right to an attorney!” in English and Spanish. People who left their houses were subject to harrassment and they detained 7 people.
If the secret police knock on your door, running is (often) not the best option. The best option is to know your rights and hunker down, don’t let the cops in.
Yes I understand it seems like everything is disintegrating right now and that our legal rights are meaningless, but institutions don’t fall overnight. They’re counting on you already acting like they’ve won, they’re counting on you believing that their secret police are able to skirt around your legal rights. They’re not.
It can be exciting to imagine the scenario where you have to go on the run from a corrupt police force. Often the heroic work is actually quite boring. It’s tireslessly working with governments to change the laws, it’s filing paperwork, it’s doing the dishes.
Just my two cents after the crazy day that I’ve had.
amhrancas 