A number of years ago, I was listening to Alex Jones and he had Joel Skousen on to talk about his new book, Strategic Relocation. While most people consider where to move based on school district or work opportunities or whatever, this book was about locations that would be best for survival in a disaster scenario.

I never bought the book, but the concept stuck with me. It made sense to me that if I ever bought land and a home, I wanted to be strategic about it, taking into account more than just tax rates and neighbors. I wanted a home where we could thrive both in the best of times and the worst of times.

As often happens in life, we ended up not doing what I had dreamed we would do. We bought a home in the third-largest city in Pennsylvania. This was far from ideal. We lived in a townhome, one half of a duplex. We had no privacy. Technically, we weren’t even allowed to collect rainwater even though we did. We had one short growing season each year and of course, there was no livestock allowed.

When 2020 happened, we knew that we had to escape. The city felt like a prison. So, we set out to find a permanent home. We decided to strategically relocate.

We had a number of requirements for this new home. We wanted to have privacy. We didn’t want someone always looking over our shoulder. We wanted to be able to collect as much rainwater as we wanted or install solar without our nosy neighbor calling the police to check that we have a permit. We wanted to have an above-ground water source. We wanted be able to have as many animals of any kind as we wanted. We wanted space for the kids to run around. We wanted to be surrounded by forest and know that it wouldn’t turn into a Walmart suddenly. We also wanted year-round or as close to a year-round growing season as possible.

That is a hefty list, I know! But, you know what? By the grace of God we found just that. We bought our acres in the middle of the Ocala National Forest in Florida. Step off the front of our property and you are in the national forest. Step off the back of the property and you are on the shore of a spring-fed lake. We cleared just enough land for the house then installed a sturdy manufactured home. We can garden for at least ten months of the year, something like three growing seasons and we can build anything we want and raise any livestock that we want. The wild thing is that we got it all for less than $20k over the price of our townhome in the city.

We are living the dream now, but in reality we should have done this long ago. You don’t wait for an emergency to prepare. You don’t wait until the shit hits the fan and then figure out how you are going to deal with it. We were lucky, or just blessed.

The world seems to be getting crazier and crazier every day, but it doesn’t have to be too late. If you are already in a good place where you can weather whatever is on the horizon, then that’s awesome. If not, I’d suggest that you consider strategic relocation. Make a list of what your family needs and then find where those needs can best be met. It might be in Florida like me, or it might be off somewhere else. But, now is the time to make that move. Now is the time to prepare. Don’t wait until the next round of craziness happens. At that point, it might just be too late.