How to figure out the ideal location for self sufficiency | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Another member on another forum was doing a paper on preparedness for college about 5 years ago and had asked for some advice on where was the safest location to survive a shtf scenario. I gave him a bunch of reference material and he ended up getting a 87, not to bad. I think I still have the link for the paper somewhere, he had posted it on scribd when he was done.

Anywho, Verukter's thread on his homesteading project and goals got me thinking, V's number one question was where he should locate to live out his dreams, well pretty much everything I referenced 5 years ago pretty much points in that direction.

So I spent yesterday looking for updated reference materials, and modified them late last night. So here they are. I basically stripped off the bottom 40-50% of each one creating a map overlay where the best places are that meet the criteria

First off, hardiness zones.

I think the warmer the climate the better is top priority, from heating costs, growing seasons, etc, so I cut this off at zone 7

Next is precipitation, without water, we are toast

so long west coast!

along with rain, comes drought,

hm, we lost a couple stats on that one

next on the list is groundwater

god bless new england when it comes to water

we need a job, so unemployment numbers are important

I stripped away everything under 8 percent

property values are important so you can find a inexpensive piece of property

125,000 was the cut off for this

just as important as a job, is how much you can keep, so here are the state and local tax rates

I tried to strip off half

property taxes are next, crazy what some people pay, I'm looking at you groin

next up is the income disparity level, which is a sign of low wages, etc

Now if we want to throw in some shtf stuff

tornadoes over the last 50 years

I figured the average of one every other year was a good enough risk

earthquake faults

the new madrid is a concern for that area

hurricanes are a concern along the cost

nuclear reactors by location

I would overlay this last

another important aspect is being around like minded people

if you're a democrat, use this overlay

republican, use this one

Last but not least is population density

I just noticed flickr changed all the transparent png's to jpegs, awesome, anywho, so I tried ovrlaying all the transparents with gimp and due to slight fluctuations with the maps, it didn't turn out so hot, googling tells me photo shop can fix alignment issues, anyone know how to do it so we can see where the best place to move to is. I would skip the shtf stuff. if someone is interesed, I will just upload the transparent png's here and give you the links, I can barter some seedbanks, hat's and t-shirts for putting it together