Originally Posted by late

A disaster nasty enough to require a bugout kit likely took out cell service.

If it's not that bad, then you don't need a bugout kit.

If you're serious about this, you want to do real planning. A little shack that's hard to get to, stocked with supplies.

The problem is, there is a fairly narrow distance between ordinary disasters, and the types that will cripple civilisation for a while. Odds are you won't survive a nuclear winter from a meteor strike. A massive tsunami could cripple food production and transportation on the West coast. Anywhere within a thousand miles of Jellystone National park is toast if the Yellowstone caldera blows. I'm in Maine, but that would cripple food coming from the West and South of the border. Eventually there should be shipping, but that could take months, and there is the question of getting oil to move it around once the food gets here. There is a small possibility that a big hunk of Antarctica could slide into the ocean. That would create mile high waves, and I doubt I could get far enough away to be safe.

Just as a public service, and because I have a morbid turn, a Space rock hitting the Yellowstone caldera, the wrong place in Anarctica, and a couple other places could easily make our species extinct.