On the post about Katrina, commenter Chris brought up a point worth devoting an entire post to: How to rendezvous in a crisis situation when members of the immediate family are separated.

Most suburban spouses are separated for a minimum of about 45 hours a week - nine hours per day for five workdays a week. Thrown in some errand-running, children’s lessons and other activities that take up even two or three hours on a weekend, and it easily climbs to about 50. Coordinate a rendezvous between two separated adults in a crisis situation is one thing, but when you add children to the mix, things can get complicated very quickly.

Let’s set the the least complex emergency rendezvous situation at two adults working at home with no children, and the most complex at two adults separated by commuting distances (for example, Chris’s 30-mile separation during the day from his wife) with multiple children divided among more than one school location (Chris’s wife homeschools their children, but it’s not uncommon in a family with 5 children for them to be at, say, three different schools).

The variations within that range are too many to treat in a single post, but if you haven’t given much consideration to preparedness before now, there’s a lot of food for thought in considering the fairly common situation of a dad at work some number of miles away from home, a mom either at work or running around town doing grocery shopping or whatever, and two children at different schools.

Now, let’s set the stage for the nature of the emergency.

I mentioned in the Katrina post that cel communications were up during the aftermath of the storm while land lines were not. This is because land lines that were on poles were blown down, and some lines that were buried were ripped up by the force of the storm surge. Cel towers, on the other hand, were left largely intact, I suppose because of their structural nature (they were sufficiently anchored such that they weren’t knocked down, and given their skeletal frames weren’t susceptible to being blown over) and the fact that most of them have emergency backup power in the form of generators that kick in automatically, and can be run for long periods of time before grid power comes back up.

But while cel communications were up during the aftermath when land lines weren’t, the cel networks on the Mississippi coast and in New Orleans were so jammed for the first 48 hours following the storm that they may as well have been non-existent. It was next to impossible to get a call through, and for the purposes of emergency communications between separated family members, they were practically useless. For this reason, for the purposes of this exercise let’s assume also that all text-messaging is down, and while we’re at it, let’s assume also that all other forms of electronic communication are down, including email.

If this were all we were assuming about our emergency - that all communications were down - your rendezvous plan might be as simple as: Go to your kids’ schools, pick them up, and go home. If one of you goes to a school where a child has already been picked up, no harm done, just an unnecessary trip in the course of an emergency of relatively minor seriousness. You all end up back at home, together. Rendezvous successfully executed.

What we’re going to add to this emergency is the condition that your home is not a viable rendezvous point. I live about 100 miles from a nuclear power plant. We’re in the prevailing downwind area of the plant, so if something there goes haywire, it’s entirely likely that we’ll be forced to evacuate.

Or, let’s say that there’s a situation similar to the Rodney King riots, in which mobs are roaming the streets attacking people at random. Your entire neighborhood becomes unsafe for your family to inhabit.

Whatever the cause - a nuclear/biological/chemical (“NBC”) disaster either accidental or deliberate; instant and large-scale civil unrest; or something else entirely - let’s assume that 1) the emergency is immediate in nature (no advance warning such as the case with a hurricane or flood), and 2) you can’t safely inhabit your home for one week.

Let’s further assume that hotels are not an option - either they’re full, or packed with unsavory refugees, or you can’t justify the roughly $1,000 expense.

The first thing to decide on - and remember, you have to plan all this well before the emergency, because in our scenario you don’t have any form of communication with your spouse - is where your rendezvous locations will be. Notice I use the plural “locations,“ because to be truly prepared (as opposed to simply reactive), your rendezvous plan has to be able to work when your primary rendezvous location is rendered non-viable. For example, what if your first location is downwind of the nuclear fallout, or the rioting mobs are drifting toward it?

So at the very minimum, you should have a primary and a secondary rendezvous location, and you should have a small number - perhaps two or three - of conditions, all easy to recall and mentally process, under which you abandon your primary rendezvous location and move to the secondary one. NBC fallout is one obvious condition, as is mob drift, but there may be several others, such as: Is the power grid down? Will other parties be there, or not be there, and does that matter? Only you can create the final list of conditions under which you scratch your primary location and move to your secondary location. It’s a good thing to think about when you’re having trouble drifting off to sleep at night, or when you’re on a long drive by yourself. (Obviously having third and fourth options are worth considering, too).

Once you’ve decided on your rendezvous locations, it’s time to work out the details of which of you goes and collects which children. A good place to start in this decision-making process is simply who’s closer to which child. Or, it may be better to start by examining the geographical relationship between you, your children, and your rendezvous locations. In some cases it may make more sense for one spouse to get both children, and meet the other spouse at your rendezvous location. The system my wife and I have worked is simple, and doesn’t involve many if-then conditionals based on geography or the nature of the crisis. We have one child, and we both work at home, so our conditions don’t match the “typical” example I’ve described, but I want to explain how we’ve approached it, and then examine how the “typical” situation might be extended from there.

- Our child is retrieved at the earliest possible time. This is the first and most basic assumption. Whether one of us goes, or both of us go, depends on:

- How much time do we have before we need to be out of our house and heading toward our bugout location? If we believe it’s less than 30 minutes, we’ll throw in the most basic bugout supplies - which we can do in under 10 minutes - then both go get our child, and hit the road. If we believe it’s more than 30 minutes, then one of us goes and gets our child, and returns to the house. The other one’s job is to gather up a much larger amount of bugout supplies and have it ready to load into the SUV when they get back.

- We also have an option in which one of us goes and gets our child, while the other packs our bugout supplies, and then in two vehicles we meet at the rendezvous location. This is our last option because it adds a layer of complexity: Getting your family from your home to a rendezvous location in one vehicle presents enough challenges… getting your separated family in two vehicles (remember, with cel communications) to that same rendezvous location presents many more possibilities for failure. Do both of your vehicles have sufficient fuel? Did you inadvertently pack into your spouse’s vehicle something you might find yourself needing on your solo journey?

Now let’s look at the ways these basic assumptions and logistics might work with the “typical” example of spouses separated by some number of miles, and two children in two different schools:

- Talk about the conditions - physical, temporal, etc. - under which it makes sense for each of you to get one child, or one of you to get both children, and whether or not to meet at your house before bugging out. Let’s say the dad is like Chris’s, and works 30 miles from home. Look at a map - is dad between home and the rendezvous location? Given the time everyone has to bug out, and the time it takes for him to get from work to the house, does it leave enough time for him to be useful if he goes to the house? Maybe it’s wiser for him to go to the rendezvous location immediately, and wait while mom packs the car, gets the kids, and meets him there. There may even be a good reason for him to wait at work, and make that your waypoint between home and your final destination. Is he closer to the rendezvous location than mom is, but only a few minutes from home? It might be wiser for him to head to the house and pack while mom goes and fetches the kids. Or may he can get one of the children on his way home, while mom goes and gets the other one. Again, these are the kinds of details only you and your spouse can work out for yourselves.

Be prepared to discard some of your assumptions, and to deal in a very calculated way with some difficult questions - to make decisions that may hurt your heart, but save your life.

For example: As a mom, do you fear being responsible for packing your bugout supplies and getting your children, then trekking across miles of uncertain terrain to meet your husband at your rendezvous location? Then you need to face the possibility that “ground zero” of the crisis that causes you to have to evacuate may be at or near your husband’s workplace, resulting in his death or injury, making you the only one who can be counted on to save your children’s lives.

Or: Do you have two big dogs that take up valuable space in your vehicle, space that is better used for water, food, or medical supplies for your family? Then you need to face the possibility that in a true crisis, you’ll have to leave your dogs behind. You can certainly come up with ways to improve their chances of survival at home (toss a large bag of food in the middle of the floor, and pierce a small hole in it - once their bowl food runs out, they’ll find their way into the bag, trust me). Or do you have a cherished cat who’s outside, and you want to wait until he comes in before you leave? Then you have to face the possibility that you’ll need to just leave big bowls of food and water somewhere he knows to look, and hope for the best.

Or: Do you have treasured possessions with huge sentimental value, but little to no monetary value, such as photos or gifts? Photos are easy: Make sure you have high-resolution scans of the ones you treasure, store them on a thumb drive or a CD or DVD, and put it in your bugout box. If your home and/or its contents are destroyed, you can always have your digital files printed and framed. Gifts and other things you can’t make copies of are harder, but you’ll have to face the possibility that the time spent finding and packing them could mean the difference between you and your children making it to your rendezvous location, or getting snarled in a mob situation, hauled out of your car and given the Reginald Denny treatment.

All of these questions point to the rule of thumb to “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.“ Odds are you’ll never have to evacuate your home. Odds are that, if you do, you’ll have some reasonable advance warning. Odds are also that you won’t have to make your way through hostile territory, or if you do, that you’ll have to do so without the aid of your spouse. However, the right way to make your bugout plans is to not to assume that at each level of crisis, the best-case scenario will play itself out. The smart way to plan is to assume the worst at each step.

So now we’ve brought in a couple of more issues into the emergency scenario: The bugout bag, and the possibility that your family will be separated on the way to the rendezvous location. We’ve discussed some bugout bag ideas before, and once you get over the initial mental discomfort of having to think about needing one, it’s a lot of fun to think and talk about what yours should contain.

As should be obvious by now, different scenarios will allow you different levels of luxury and flexibility. You may turn on the news, or be greeted by a policeman loudly knocking on your door, and find that you have 10 minutes to get out. In that case, you have to assume that half that time is going to be spent finding your shoes, your keys, and your gun(s), leaving only enough time to haul ONE, maybe two, things to your vehicle. They better contain everything you and your family will need for at least 72 hours of survival - water, food, medicine, firearms, ammunition, and provisions for shelter, be it a tent, a tarp, or things you need in order to live in your vehicle, provided it’s large enough.

Or you may have 30 minutes, which will give you time to pack more water and food, or additional clothes. Or you may have a couple of hours, and so on.

The key is: Have ready, at all times and in one container that you can literally walk directly to (not stored in your attic or anywhere that requires struggling or slows you down) and load single-handedly (your spouse or older children may not be around to help), all of the absolute bare necessities for your family to survive if you had to walk out the door immediately and not return for seven solid days and nights. Consider any warning time beyond that an opportunity to extend your range and/or make your exile more comfortable.

The other issue we’ve introduced is the possibility of being separated from your spouse during your journeys to the rendezvous location. The bottom line is this: The more you are separated by way of routine (commuting, business travel, school, errands, etc.) from your spouse, the higher the likelihood that when a crisis arises, you’ll have to make your ways to your rendezvous location separately. The further you drill down into the details of your route, your means of travel, etc., the greater the variations between one family and another, so addressing all of the minutiae is beyond the scope of any article, but there are a few basic principles that apply to all crises:

The first is to move as soon as possible, and as quickly as possible. These are two different concepts. When your internal “crisis” trigger is pulled, don’t dilly-dally. Move as soon as possible. Pack your stuff, and get out as soon as you can. Every minute you delay is a minute the chemical cloud or the riotous mob can move closer to you. Every minute you delay is a minute the roads can get more congested. Every minute you delay is a minute the stores and gas stations, should you absolutely need to make a stop,  can become more crowded with panicked and surly people.

Then once you’re on the move, move quickly. In crisis mode, you can pass on the right. You can hop a curb to avoid the arguing motorists at the light just ahead of you, or the broken-down car on the exit ramp blocking your way. It’s okay to do 60 in a 50-mph zone. Safety is priority one, of course, but use the examples I just mentioned as a guide to the kinds of things you can do - and may find yourself having to do - to keep your family safe and get you closer to your rendezvous location.

The second is to keep moving toward the rendezvous location no matter what. Don’t assume that, if you run into your buddy Joe and you decide to stay the night as his place outside of town, that your spouse will arrive at your agreed-upon rendezvous location, and calmly stay put while assuming that you’re safe. Tell Joe thanks but no thanks, and keep going, even if it means spending a few hours - or even the whole night - huddled in your car or under a tree somewhere in the woods, as long as it keeps you closer to your rendezvous location. When you’re able to keep going, you’re that much closer to reuniting with your family. The longer the period you’re apart, the greater the possibility that your spouse may decide - wisely or unwisely - to go out and start looking for you; the greater the possibility that without you to help take care of them, they’ll be forced for whatever reason to uproot and make a run for another location, in which case they may not be able to leave word for you as to their destination. Once that happens, finding your family increases in difficulty by orders of magnitude.

Finally, it is one thing to become a refugee, but never ever become a ward of the state, and this includes things such as Red Cross shelters. While stories of gang rapes and bodies being dumped in freezers in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were overblown, make no mistake: Life was savage inside the New Orleans Convention Center, and miserable inside the Superdome. With tens of thousands of people crammed into small places with virtually no creature comforts, all of them under tremendous stress and a sizable percentage of them used to getting what they wanted through predatory behavior - and with very few authorities in a position to keep order - life quickly degenerated into a survival of the fittest, with “fittest” often defined as nothing more than “toughest.“ Besides, the presence of law enforcement was not - and never is - a guarantor of good behavior. Even in the American south, you can’t take for granted that law enforcement will be on your side, or even act rationally, in times of sudden and widespread crisis. To many suburbanites, this is a startling revelation, and one that’s easily dismissed as extremism or paranoia. If this is your view, then take eight minutes, watch this video with the knowledge that Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish is home not to the third-world hellholes of New Orleans, but to the upscale suburbs of Covington and Mandeville, miles across Lake Pontchartrain north of New Orleans. Avoid government shelters at all costs. It is better to live in the woods and ration a couple of energy bars than to put yourself and your family at the mercy of the toughest thugs in a convention center or stadium. Whenever possible, avoid law enforcement as well. Make your single-minded goal getting to your rendezvous location and reuniting with your family.