I'm not so sure this guy ever had a chance. Sure it's hostile terrain and that will keep some people out, but right on the doorstep of LA? It was only
a matter of time until somebody showed up there. Think about all the legitimate and illegitimate reasons various people would want to go out into the
boonies- you've got to get into SERIOUSLY hard to reach or inhospitable areas or just a very very very long way from any appreciable population at all
if you want to find a bit of ground that absolutely nobody will walk on many years.
And if SHTF? The whole Angeles forest is going to be a riot zone. There is road access to the mountain and over a million people looking up at those
mountains everyday- thousands of unprepared people are going to cram their cars full of camping gear and jam the road, then start getting out of their
cars and walking from the road, and the authorities will be trying to stop them. Within the first mile or two from the road there will be hundreds if
not thousands of people who don't know what they are doing shooting at strangers and letting their fires get out of control, and cops combing the
brush trying to find them all without getting killed.
I'm from Southern California too, and the area is largely hopeless in a SHTF scenario. There are few roads out, which will probably be controlled,
there are way more people than the land can support or the police can protect, the summers can be brutal, and really good hiding spots are few and far
between.
People do go undetected for years and years out in the deserts. It's not an easy place to survive, particularly with respect to obtaining water, but
it is doable. The challenge there is that only a few roads will get you out there, and those are going to be refugee nightmares with the large number
of people heading for the Colorado River, many off-road routes can be blocked if SitX involves flooding, and of course it gets even uglier if Sit X is
an earthquake on the San Andreas near the Salton Sea.
Realistically you'd have to be prepped to hike at night for several days to get out into the real no-man's land. There are a few mountain areas off
the beaten path where off roaders, prospectors, and nature lovers don't seem to go- no roads going in and no recorded studies of the animal and plant
life beyond the occasional "I tried to get up there and didn't get very far, but I found the tracks of a big cat and that was good enough for me" type
story.
It takes careful study though, because it all looks really desolate, but not all of it is. The Old Bradshaw Trail is still maintained by the BLM and
the off road crowd runs all over that area, and on the North end Joshua Tree Park draws more people than some would suspect. Then you've got to stay
away from the aqueduct or you risk running into DoHS or FEMA or maintenance crews depending on the flavor of SitX. You've got to systematically rule
out several groups of outdoors people, workers, and potential refugees who could conceivably come up with the same idea as you to pick a spot that's
really going to stay untouched, and unfortunately the best way to do that in a place as populated as So Cal is to pick an area that's incredibly hard
to stay alive in.
ETA: Another point to take away from all this- don't do illegal stuff at your bailout site. Stockpiling or producing things like this guy's plants, or
ammo for that matter might make you feel well prepared, but all it's really doing is putting up a red flag for dogs to hit on and giving the
authorities one more excuse to mess with you.
edit on Tue 17 Jul 2012 by The Vagabond because: (no reason given)