Devon and Cornwall will be inundated with refugees? Ifs, maybes, and conjecture

[NorthernRaider]

To me that just sounds like people jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Why would they do it. I'm not saying that people won't head this way, of course they will, but the kinds of figures being quoted are unrealistic.

(NR)When ebola broke out in a sub Saharan Africa township the people could have stayed but many chose to run out into the desert, when the twin towers started burning many chose to jump rather than burn, if you had say a terrorist inspired attack in London and Brum ( could be a viral attack like Ebola or simply DIY dirty radioactive bomb) the numbers leaving would be huge. Plenty scenarios that could see millions move, the recent events in Serbia in the 90s saw entire cities flee their former neighbours. Look at the Crimea now, the poor Tartars and Ukranians are being driven out enmasse without a shot being fired.

And surely if the whole of the South East and Midlands are in such an uninhabitable state that a mass exodus of all the Cities is happening, then surely the South West would also be in a similar uninhabitable state rather than being immune and remaining picture postcard perfect???
(NR) No not so, pandemics, terror attacks, first attacks by waring nations, natural disasters etc tend to impact larger cities first. that's why as soon as the Luftwaffe started bombing London the citizens sent all the capitals kids out the the south west and Wales .

In which case it looks like the best place for any Prepper will be to head to the cities for some peace and solitude as everyone else will clearly be on the beaches of the South West.....

(NR) I hope you believe that, once the cities are without power, water, sanitation, foods, law and order and the masses have finished looting, rioting and leaving if that is where you want to go then do so with my blessing.

As for the back lanes, the farmers would soon have them blocked off, I'd like to see your average family in their ford focus trying to get past a bale of Haylage plonked in the middle of country lane. Farmers down here have been blocking access to fields, lanes and roads for years to prevent travellers and ravers going where they want.

(NR) YES of course I should have realised that after driving out of London and navigating as far SW as they could as soon as they come across a hay bail in Little Snittering they will turn around and go home. They would never abandon their vhicles and finish their journeys on bike, foot, quad, boat etc. Stopping a traveller with his transit van and caravan is somewhat different to stopping refugees without vehicles or caravans, desperation makes ingenious refugees.

And despite what some say, fuel will be a major issue for lots of people. The fuel stations will run dry in a matter of hours, most people will not have a full tank of fuel and they will not be driving at 56mph along an open motorway, they will probably be crawling at a few miles an hour, or just be stuck because the roads are blocked by accidents caused by idiots desperate to get ahead of the hoards.

(NR) Yup I point out that fact in my original post, but again equally you will find plenty of fully laden vehicles with full fuel tanks and a few jerry cans crawling along for hours, and as every hour goes by they get those few miles nearer the south west, THEN they can cycle or walk.

With the convergence of the M5 and M4 with people from the Midlands/North, Wales and London/South all converging on a very small piece of real estate, then that is where the major problems will be and a lot of people will reconsider their options and simply be stuck with no way to move on.

(NR) and equally plenty of others will find their way past, lets not forget its not just the farmers and preppers who have guns, there is no shortage of guns in mainstream society.

Which part of the "South West" do you think you can get to (under normal conditions) in 90 minutes?? Brum to Bristol is 90 minutes Bristol to Exeter is another 90 minutes. Similarly London to Exeter is a 3+ hours car journey. After TSHTF, its anyone's guess how long it will take.

(NR) as far as you can get but as soon as you get past Basingstoke, Guilford, Reading you have the huge open spaces that I know personally from my army days that are the Salisbury plains, after you pass those areas everything else is in only a few days walk for normal people, and fear is a great source of adrenalin as well.

On the other hand, Birmingham to Newcastle is just over 3 hours, a comparable time, whereas Liverpool to Newcastle is less than 3 hours and London to Newcastle is less than 5 hours, I think we need to start promoting Northumberland and the Yorkshire Moors as the ideal bug out locations, far more resources than the SW, plus you are trapped on a peninsular Wink

(NR) Yup providing you can get over the Pennines past the Leeds and Manchester conurbations, through the Yorkshire dales / moors, through the Tees bottleneck or past the Catterick bottleneck. You can spread out and enjoy the region but those who get this far wil probably keep heading for Scotland

---

Yup its nicely flat and generally gently downward sloping ground to the South West, I absolutely encourage everyone wanting to bug out to head towards that land of milk and honey. The evidence is 100% overwhelming that the south west is absolutely the best and only really suitable place for preppers to set up home. I give you my word honest.

[bigpaul]

nobody reads, nobody listens, people just don't get it. it isn't going to be like the summer holidays, hello farmer giles can I camp on your field? its going to be hell on earth, no electric, no internet, no mobiles, no food in the shops and no fuel in the filling stations. its going to be dog eat dog and kill or be killed, most of them wont get anywhere before they get attacked for what little they have. forget the motorways, accident, fire, tail back or traffic jamb, it'll end up as one big car park, nobody going anywhere and fast running out of fuel, food and water while they panic. and like Devonian says forget the back lanes, unless you know them by hand, farmers and land owners have been blocking roads for years-just ask the travellers in Somerset-ok maybe not hay bales but bloody big rocks and sodding great farm trailers-they've all got the equipment to move this sort of stuff around, and they've all got shotguns and half a dozen farm dogs too.

[bigpaul]

oh yes, talking of haylage as we were, forget your quaint little square bales of hay, todays hay comes in dirty big round bales weighing several tons, kid got under a moving one a few years back and was squashed flat and killed underneath it!

[Devonian]

(23 March 2014, 18:51)bigpaul Wrote: oh yes, talking of haylage as we were, forget your quaint little square bales of hay, todays hay comes in dirty big round bales weighing several tons, kid got under a moving one a few years back and was squashed flat and killed underneath it!

Yes, not talking about 'Bales of Hay', these are the jumbo square bales which are a couple of tonnes each, there have a few deaths involving them and they make the large round bales look small in comparison, but they seem to be way most of the farmers are going as they are easier to stack than the round bales and take up less space.

[Timelord]

It could be millions and millions of people, not just a few families in cars. More like waves of stampeding animals with an appetite of locusts. Even if a hundred thousand die on the road it will not stop the exodus if the scenario dictates it. What use your hay bales then or your few days foot travel from major urban centres? This is a small tightly packed country and that could be a problem for many areas depending on the scenario.

[Devonian]

(24 March 2014, 00:38)Timelord Wrote: It could be millions and millions of people, not just a few families in cars. More like waves of stampeding animals with an appetite of locusts. Even if a hundred thousand die on the road it will not stop the exodus if the scenario dictates it. What use your hay bales then or your few days foot travel from major urban centres? This is a small tightly packed country and that could be a problem for many areas depending on the scenario.

I think so many people are losing touch with any kind of reality or perspective in this discussion.

Yes there could be mass exoduses (depending on the event and scale of it), but as you say this will be a problem for "many areas" and will not be a problem "exclusive" to the SW as so many people seem to be indicating. If the roads are blocked, you choose a different route (if you have no set destination - which most won't), so those originally aiming for the south west could easily end up in Wales, the Midlands, the North etc...... As the roads will be blocked long before most arrive anywhere near the SW.

[bigpaul]

yes, there are 2 questions here: WHY?(are they all leaving) and WHERE ?,(are they going to), now, I believe most people will go to other relatives in maybe safer areas, some may just be wandering about (like the old refugee's of WW2) looking for anywhere they deem safe. unless the event is actually life threatening(nuclear bomb say) I don't see many people leaving their homes at all. Britain may be a small island but there are plenty of directions they could go not just SW. would someone really chance their survival on somewhere they did or didn't go on holiday for 2 weeks in the summer 5 or 10 years ago??

---

anyone leaving in a vehicle is NOT going at 70/80/90 MPH like they do now, if the roads are as crowded as some people think they will be going at the speed of the slowest or the speed of the tail back, it is always reckoned you need 3 TIMES the fuel you would need to allow for the slow speeds and the slow tail backs and traffic jambs, maybe preppers have extra fuel tanks in their vehicles but I don't see sheeple having more than about 5 litres if that, so most of them will be running out of fuel LONG BEFORE they reach their destination(if indeed they know where they are going).

[bigpaul]

and we are NOT going to have 63 million people all on the road at the same time, when 9/11 happened did the entire population of America take to the roads? NO THEY DIDNT. did they after Katrina? NO THEY DIDNT. it'll be a few thousand, perhaps tens of thousands, even hundreds , and they will be spread out going in all directions, so stop fixating on the South West alone, it'll be EVERYWHERE not just the sw.

[Midnitemo]

I think when people leave, the thought process will be to go with what they know as long as they percieve it to be possible...if they holiday on the fens and have knowledge of the place then that's where they will go...camping in Wales then that's were they'll go...caravaning in cornwall then thats where they will go and so on and so on(man is a creature of habit) don't forget almost all of these people have not planned this , there winging it, no internet or library available at this late stage to do there homework and form a well concieved plan...there unaware of the flaws and pitfall's all they know is its not safe and healthy where they are.[/b]

[Devonian]

(24 March 2014, 16:35)Midnitemo Wrote: I think when people leave, the thought process will be to go with what they know as long as they percieve it to be possible...if they holiday on the fens and have knowledge of the place then that's where they will go...camping in Wales then that's were they'll go...caravaning in cornwall then thats where they will go and so on and so on(man is a creature of habit) don't forget almost all of these people have not planned this , there winging it, no internet or library available at this late stage to do there homework and form a well concieved plan...there unaware of the flaws and pitfall's all they know is its not safe and healthy where they are.[/b]

Agreed, but before they consider where they have been on Holiday, they will think about Family in other parts of the country; then they will think Friends in other parts of the country; and only then will they start looking at other locations such as the SW/Wales/Norfolk Broads/Peak District etc.

On which basis, I think that Brighton as the choice weekend escape for Londoners will be slightly overun!

After which Spain and Magaluf must be expecting a vast influx