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

[Lightspeed]

SCENARIO: The S has hit the fan. The grid has failed. Petrol /diesel fuel deliveries to commercial filling stations have ceased. Quickly food supply chains break down, water and sewerage pumping slow / stop. After a week city food sources have dried up and water is getting harder to find. Those with the wherewithal to get out will do so, but they will be a small minority.

Families who enjoy ( or in the past enjoyed) camping and caravanning type holidays will have mind-set, skills, equipment, and the self-reliance to allow them to move. They will probably favour evacuating to regions that they know to have favourable climate, perceived plentiful food and water supplies, and with which they are somewhat familiar. Simplistically, this equates to rose tinted memories of past summer holidays, so this is where they may well head out for. (source: self-reference. This describes my own family’s pre-prepping situation and mind-set)

There are at least 11 million tents, caravans and mobile homes in semi-regular use in the UK. Assuming that each unit will have an average body count of 3, that’s a potential of 33million refugees! Further assuming that only 10% of those that can actually do that reduces the refugee count to 3.3 million (although Pareto principle would give a value of double this, let’s hope he’s wrong this time….) ( Source: http://www.visitbritain.org/Images/Fores...-14790.pdf‎ + http://www.thencc.org.uk/our_industry/statistics.aspx)

Most popular caravanning and camping region in UK is the South West with over 33% of all touring caravan and camping holidays are to this region. ( source: extrapolated from ( Source: http://www.visitbritain.org/Images/Fores...14790.pdf‎)

This scenario could mean 1 million or more refugees descending on Devon and Cornwall, who’s combined current population is around 1.6 million ( 2011 Census). And how many more will come, returning to family and friends with homes in the region?

To put this in context during ww2 Devon’s absorbed approx. 186,000 new arrivals, of which 85,000 were the US Army. This number is dwarfed by the potential numbers of refugees calculated in this scenario. (source: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bits...S_Vol1.pdf page 18)

Plausible or misguided?