I just ran across this guy, he seems a little hokey to me but I liked this video:
He makes some good points. The issue is that your home is your base of operations. If you are storing food in any sort of quantity, it is at your house. Your clothing is at your house. If you bug out and it is late summer, what happens when the weather turns? Oh, your warm clothing is at home. What about all of that ammo you have stockpiled? Ammunition is very heavy and can be pretty bulky. Spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in ammo isn’t very smart if your plan is to abandon it. Then there are people to consider. Neighbors, friends, family. Are you going to take off and leave them behind? Maybe you will but that means you are colder than I am and I am not known for my warmth. There are people I care about besides myself, and even besides myself and my family. I want to be able to help those people and I think many of them can help us.
If you live somewhere you think you are likely to have to abandon, then you can assume that when you eventually do come back, your home will have been ransacked. Your neighbor Joe might be a great guy that lets you borrow his tools but if his family is hungry and you are long gone, you can bet he will break into your house and take what he needs. I would and so would you. Infinitely more so if Joe is some urban refugee that has fled for his life and stumbles across an unoccupied home. If you are starving, really starving, and you are out in the weather with inadequate shelter, you will do what it takes to survive. So all that stuff you saved up for any eventuality will be used by someone else or stolen to barter.
Maybe if you are a lone wolf, real solitary kind of person you can pick up your bug out bag and head to the hills. Otherwise you are probably fooling yourself. I maintain that you better bet right now today while things are reasonably stable is to bug out permanently. Today. Get away from the urban death traps and the suburbs that are in walking distance. Find a place where you can start to set up for some self-sufficiency, have a garden and raise a few chickens. Start making friends and at some point maybe have a conversation with them about what you can do for each other in case of a disaster. We have some Amish neighbors across the street that don’t have a basement so if there is a tornado we can have them come shelter in ours. That sort of thing. Living a solitary, out in the woods by yourself, kind of life is no kind of way to live. If I am looking at years of eating wild berries and hiding in the forest until I die, I’ll pass.