I hadn't planned for this.....

[Lightspeed]

Here's a real scenario (not hypothetical):

We live and work near to a city. The location is good for us economically, but has extremely poor prospects survival-wise.

We have prepared a remote Retreat to fall back to if things start to come unravelled. Its the best part of two hours away by car.

There are two main weak points in our contingency planning, when resident in the city. These are, early identification of treats that will cause us to evacuate to the retreat, and the vehicles needed to do so.

Vehicles, in particular, have consumed a lot of thinking and planning effort.

The vehicle of choice has been chosen and constructed for:

Mundane looking appearance
Good ground clearance
Good utility load carrying space for our needs
Simplified electrics,
Extensive preventative maintenance ,
Extended range and spare fuel tanks
Heavy duty suspension
Steel wheels with M&S type tyres with anti-puncture gel injected.
Extensive spares kits
Tool kits, and repair manuals
etc etc etc.
We even have full sets of spare tires in the store room.

Used in anger, this car can travel 5 times the distance to the Retreat. It will also carry bicycles, in case it get gridlocked in traffic, breaks down or is some other way prevented from delivering us to the Refuge. Worst case scenario we can get to the refuge by bike in 1.5 days.

I thought we had the transport situation reasonably well covered.

Until this morning.......when I was rudely awoken at 06.30 by a policeman at my door. Some little ***** had stolen all 4 wheels from the BOV in the night....

WTF?! We didn't see that one coming! The car is now sitting on the bricks that were so kindly left in place, awaiting delivery of new wheels and tyres. Right now it ain't going anywhere fast

I post this to illustrate that the best laid plans can come unstuck because of a blind spot. Ours was that we never considered loosing 4 wheels in a single strike. We'd covered off punctures, and even have spare tyres ( and tyre irons and compressors/pumps).

Although the car's wheels were mundane and somewhat rusty rims, the high quality M&S tyres with which they were shod had caught someone's attention.

If the knock on the door this morning was to tell us of an imminent event from which we would have to evacuate, our Plan A transport option would have been compromised.

OK, we have plans B and C and D. But these of course become less and less comfortable, and more and more risky. This morning we were at plan B before we'd even reached the starting line.

So, as of today a spare set of tyres does not cut it for us, now we need to find and store a full set of wheels and tyres.....just in case.

Its scary to see at first hand how quickly our best and most carefully laid plans can come unstuck.