After reading many survival posts it seems like WV is not mentioned as a possible bug out location very often.  The state seems to have alot going for it survival wise it's wooded, lot's of game, low population(although heavily armed), good water, moderate climate. What would the advantages/disadvantages of WV be in a major SHTF situation?

The mountainous terrain could be very challenging.  However, the game and smoll plat agricultural opportunities are very good.

The thing I look at with WV, besides everyday since I work on the rivers edge, is that "SOME" of the people over there have grown rather dependent on the Gov't and their blessed handouts that keep senile men in power in DC.     You have a SHTF scenario happen and deer will disappear  like they did with the Great depression.   these Jesco White types will kill you in a second for 20 bucks for a fix what do you think they will do if their starving....  I have hunted, fished and camped in WV for years with my father.  I never felt like there was an abundance of wildlife in the mountains, in fact it was rather more challenging to kill the same deer I could walk out on my front porch in Ohio and kill.   more work equal more wasted calories. but less chance of the game population being totally wiped out.  

i'll take rolling hills, large farm land area's any day for a SHTF.  Now if one was to be properly armed, supplied, educated, and had enough work hands, a remote WV location could be good for a compound like home.  



so to sum it up i'd fear the people more then the land.

I grew up in West Virginia, I bugged out to Alabama...that should tell you something.

Spoon

My kids mother and family are from WV.  In some ways, they are already living SHTF.  The unemployment is absurdly high and the average income in many areas is below the poverty level.  Lasly, WV has numerous superfund sites and various other contamination.

Point is, its a beautiful state but since they're already living on the brink, having "outsiders" in their woods is asking for problems.

The wife and I had an opportunity to relocate to WV 2 years ago.  She was up there working and I was up there visiting her and one day while she was at work I went to the local gun range to pickup brass.  While I was picking up brass a local fella named Mike pulled up and we started talking.  (Very nice Christian fella in his 60's, goes to this particular outdoor range every Tuesday to shoot).  Anyways, we were talking and I mentioned that we were looking at relocating to the area, his comment to me was to go somewhere else for mostly the same reason mentioned above (high unemployment, government jobs, etc., etc.)  Needless to say we didn't move to WV.  On a lighter side note, he is the only person to have ever asked me if I was a Christian, said that he does that to everybody he meets for the first time.

One disadvantage I could think of is it's relative close proximity to some big cities.

I would take the agricultural land around here over WV any time. I can't imagine cutting a field out of the side of one of those mountains.

We have beef, fields already soft from planting, deer coming out of our ears, and easy water sources galore. If you were one of those immature people who think living off the land in the mountains is a survival strategy you might think WV is nirvana.

Keep of meh propurtee!   Nah, its fine here. Just don't hold your breath looking for work.

It sucks here, don't come.  Crappy hunting, people are assholes, land is already spoken for, stay away, it's for the children.

Parts of WV would be pretty tough.  A couple of weeks ago we got about 6" of snow here in Richmond, VA.  Mom and Dad got 31" there in Greenbrier County.  WestVaCo's clear cutting policies have about wiped out the squirrels around home.  Some years dad manages to kill 5 or 6 (that's right, all fall).  No den trees and few trees big enough to have a good mast crop leave them little reason to stay in the area.

The deer population has picked up but it remains to be seen what the growing coyote poplutaion will do to them.  Not many rabbits either.  Every 3 or 4 years they'll get a rabbit the dogs run across while bird/squirrel hunting.  There used to be lots of grouse and turkeys but their population has drastically dropped off the last 8 or 10 years, maybe due to the coyotes, maybe not.

Fishing?  If you like little fish.  I mean you can catch a stringer full of little fish and little fish is still fish, it just takes more of them.  Are there big fish up there?  Yeah, but the policies of the Army Corps of Engineers use (letting most of the water out of the lakes in the fall/winter) don't allow for stable habitat in what is shallow water during the warmer months.  They stock fish all over the place as the "native" populations just don't provide enough new fish every year to maintain levels.  That and some of the locals don't mind taking home 70 or 80 stocked trout a day if they can get by the game wardens.  

You know the indians didn't even stay in some parts of the state during the winter months.  They moved in in the spring, hunted and fished and gathered and camped and then went home in the fall.

There's lots of wild strawberries (man are they ever good!!), black berries, rasberries, a few huckleberries if you know where to go, lots of apple trees (but due to the weather they sometimes go two or three years without apples due to late frosts in the spring), no such thing as peach or pear trees in that area and wild mushrooms if you know what's safe to gather and cook.

You want to know how hard it is to make a living farming in that area?  Most of the smaller farms were abandoned when jobs became available in the mines in the '20's and '30's.  My dad remembers a few of them having houses/families living on them when he was growing up in the '30's and '40's but since I was a kid they are just names (the Wade place, the Beckner place, the Burdette place, etc,. etc.) and there's not even a piece of a building standing on any of them that I ever remember seeing.

There are much nicer parts of WV.  Mostly over to the west where its more like southern Ohio.  Rolling hills and warmer temps in the winter.

Having said all the above, one reason I like it up there was I could go hunting all day and never see another person, or go shooting and never have someone come by and bother me, or go fishing in a creek or pond and probably not see anyone.  I really miss it.  I'm not anti-social, I just act like it.

hillbilly heroin addicts are everywhere.

Being an outsider they'll kill you and steal your stuff for their drugs

Agreed, WV is the last place anyone should think about relocating too, better yet....as the poster above wrote....go to Ohio.

We need more good people here!

First wife tried getting me to move the family back near her folks in Parkersburg.  Short answer, she left me and the kids, moved back there and now delivers newspapers.  Like I said, its beautiful country out there but is it worth leaving your family and living in poverty?

My family had a huge farm there once, several hundred acres.  I visited it once when I was very young, and saw the remains of the 2 room cabin my grandmother grew up in.  Very beautiful country.  My great uncle had a huge piece of it logged off w/o the permission of any of the other siblings, and my grandmother sold off her interest for a pitance.  I used to listen to some hair-raising stories about the place, bears coming up the cabin after a hog butchering or to raid the corn crib, "painters" (mountain lions) all over the place.  Grandmother would tell a particularly suspensefull story of a panther that was called in by my mom's colicy cries as a baby, and how it pulled at the barb wire over the windows...TWANG!

Anyway, WV is a beautiful place and I have fond memories of that trip.

Many parts of WV are great but many serious survivalists won't consider anything EAST of the Mississippi.

True, the Golder Horde will pour out of the rest of the cesspool cities of the over-populated EAST but they wouldn't last too long in West Virginia.

Montani Semper Liberi

+1

This is the answer.  That's why it's not 'prime' uber-survivalist real estate.

I live in the Parkersburg area, just across the river in OH.  Yes the unemployment is high in this area, yes the locals don't like people from out of state (it's MUCH worse the further into WV that you get).  I have lived in nine different states, I  moved back here from KS over ten years ago and I can't think of a better area to raise my children.  I guess that your home is what you make of it.