OE,
Don't worry. The criminals in your nearby city will spend all of their gas driving around searching for food in their city -or sticking up their neighbors. If they don't get blown away doing crimes locally, they will be unable to get out to where you live because they'd have to walk. Ain't happening.
I live 35 mi north of Phoenix and the chances of folks having the resources to head up this way will be few and far between. They'll be busy sticking up folks trying to escape on the Interstate out of town. Those folks will run out of gas.
I have a "friend" who has a neighbor back in a suburb of DC. This neighbor works at Ft Meade, MD. For those of you who don't know what Ft Meade is, that is where the Congress and President will be rushed to to take their places in hardened underground facilities. This neighbor is a contractor engineer with the DoD.
My friend is a "gunny" and is usually in his garage either re-loading ammo, working on guns, or cleaning guns he just shot. The Engineer neighbor has never once indicated any interest in my friend's weapons. Until one day...
The neighbor calls my friend and asks if he could take an afternoon to help this neighbor shop for some firearms and ammo and then go out and give him some instruction on their use.
After buying a few pistols and shotguns, on the way out to the range my friend asks why all the rush to arm up. The neighbor tell my friend that the "chatter around the water cooler" at work has turned decidedly "defensive." Under threat of a potential missile attack on DC, the "gamers" had built a scenario that indicated the freeways would become a huge linear parking lot as more and more cars ran out of gas and clogged the path. The whole widely accepted concept of "bugging out" was deemed suicidal and the preferred alternative was to hunker down for up to two to three weeks at home and then venture out when it was much safer.
Now, this friend of mine heard it from his neighbor directly, first hand. A month later, I am in Denver, and I run across another friend who tells me the exact same story he has received from a close military friend of his. I cut him off and finish the story. He says, "You have heard it too."
This was six years ago when it looked like Israel and Iran were about to go at it over plutonium enrichment. Israel is closer to that aim now than it was then. Netanyahu, in his speech to the joint session of Congress in March, said they will not allow Iran to get the bomb because it means suicide to Israel. He said that Iran could have enough material to construct a bomb by Fall. That means if Israel is going to strike Iran, it will be before Fall. Fall starts the month after next. A strike on Iran could trigger the missile attack and an attempt at an EMP attack on the Eastern Seaboard. I sure hope not but this I do know: The current administration has refused to spend the paltry $500 million it would cost to harden our nation's electrical infrastructure. Makes you ask, "Why?"
No one hopes he is more wrong on this subject that me. I just know I sleep better knowing I have a few options, meager though they may be.
