Is it possible to stay put when you're near London?

[Lightspeed]

Hi Rachel,

The short answer is yes, its possible. But challenging.

Have a good dig through this forum and the articles on the main SUK site. here's a wealth of good advice available.

You’ll tend to find that the consensus of opinion among the most experience people on this forum is that your location is not ideal.

After a major collapse, your area is likely to become over run with desperate raiders going house to house in search of water and food. That's your initial threat. Primary drivers of the raiding activity are failure of London's water and food supply chains. In a major collapse, both of which have been argued to be likely to fail completely. Without clean fresh water people stat dying within the week, and without food people start dying within the month. Ask yourself how much drinking water and food is held in reserve in most Londoner's homes? Once the shops have been emptied of water and food, where are those people going to look for more, when will they start doing so and for how long will they keep searching? Their searching will be quite literally a life or death process, do not underestimate its relentless intensity.

Your secondary threat is from disease, due to failure of sewerage systems, and contamination of non mains water sources.

Bugging in might be viable for your family if you could do so in such a way that raiders coming into your house could not detect you and your family or your precious stores were still there. In your location, prepping to stay completely out of sight for 3 to 6 months would be the minimum, I think, as it would take a minimum of this long for the number of potential raders to reduce significantly.. There’s loads of resources on here you should review concerning prepping requirements for water, food, sanitation, heat and light etc.

Consider that buggin in will not be the end of it... after you emerge from your 3 or 6 month hibernation, you can expect all food resources in your area to have been exhausted, and much of your now vibrant community to be dispersed to the winds. What then?

Consider seasonal effects on your bug in plan. For example if you batten down the hatches in May, you'll be emerging again between September and December. You will have to endure the hottest part of the year within your hide out position, and you'll emerge too late to start growing many food crops and with the prospect of having to survive a winter with minimal food replenishment opportunities.

I'm not trying to put you off Rachel, just to highlight the level of complexity of what you are contemplating.

You’ve already taken the most important steps, of identifying the threat and deciding the solution that you want to achieve. There is no right or wrong solution to all of this, just ones that suit you and your family, that overcome as many threats and risks as reasonably possible.

There are others on here who will be able to offer you far greater practical advice.

Good luck.