Imagine a nationwide emergency hits, and your rights as an American citizen are stripped away in an instant.
FEMA agents knock on your door, promising safety but demanding your weapons and food supply. The looming threat of forced relocation to a FEMA camp has many in the prepping community on high alert.
This isn’t just a theory—it’s a scenario that could unfold in the wake of a disaster. If you ever find yourself facing this, knowing how to avoid being herded into a government-controlled camp is crucial to maintaining your freedom and survival.
Who Is Responsible for Security in FEMA Camps
Technically, local law enforcement is the first option to handle security and order in FEMA camps. However, this is rarely possible with so many people packed into one small area during such a high-stress time.
Usually, the state’s national guard is called in to further help with security, protection of resources, and maintaining curfew. FEMA also has its own personnel who can help with security in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security. In some extremes, even the US Army or other military organizations might be called in to handle security.
All these different agencies trying to work together, during a disaster, with little experience working together in the real world can be a problem. In some ways, personal liberties are overly restricted, and people feel herded within the FEMA camps. While security and resource allocation gaps are created in others.
So, it’s understandable why a prepper, who’s taken every conceivable measure to be able to weather a disaster, would rather remain self-reliant.
The Right to Refuse Evacuation
You have several rights guaranteed by the US Constitution and many state laws that might prevent you from being herded into a FEMA camp. Yet it helps to know the fine-print details and the potential consequences that often go with them.
You have the “Right to Refuse Evacuation” which prevents authorities from taking you from your property, even after a state of emergency is declared. This includes the right to remain on your property.
Except in a case where there’s a legal order, such as a mandatory evacuation during a natural disaster.
Local law enforcement and FEMA agents might strongly recommend evacuation for your safety, but they typically do not have the power to force you unless it’s clearly an immediate life-threatening situation.
However, there is a “Public Health & Safety Exception” which they might apply in the case of a severe pandemic, hazardous material spill, or similar extreme leading to the imminent loss of life.
In a situation like this, authorities can take the power to impose quarantine or mandatory evacuation orders to effectively protect public health and safety.
If you still refuse to evacuate despite their warnings, local law enforcement and other presiding authorities, likely won’t respond to future requests for emergency aid or rescue. It’s important to understand this and the risks of being left on your own.
Be Self-Sufficient & Secure
The best way to avoid having to go to a FEMA camp is to be self-sufficient enough that you can exercise your right to refuse evacuation, and not end up so desperate that you have to go anyway. This involves multiple forms of sufficiency.
Your shelter needs to be strong enough to not only weather the types of natural disasters that can befall your area. It also needs to be secure enough that no one can take you from it or gain access after you deny it.
Your non-perishable food supply needs to be stocked enough to get you through the short-term aftermath of a disaster, as well as the aftermath of a prolonged recovery.
This might mean as much as six months of non-perishable food, or agricultural assets you can use to grow, raise, and harvest your own sustainable food sources.
We don’t all need to become cattle ranchers, but keeping a few chickens and maintaining a small garden can provide an endless supply of food. For more information, check out this guide on how to create a year-round, self-sustaining garden and start living independently.
Access to clean water or the means to purify water from natural sources is also critical for avoiding having to go to a FEMA camp. This includes ways to filter water to remove physical debris and sediment. Then you also need a reliable way to sterilize any potential pathogens.
Be Physically Fit
A lot of people who end up being herded into FEMA camps in an emergency do so because they don’t have the physical fitness they need to survive even a modest natural disaster.
Do not underestimate the amount of physical work that goes into things like protecting your shelter and property, as well as harvesting water, collecting dry firewood, sandbagging flood waters, and the like.
Bear in mind that physical fitness also applies to mental health, dependency, and medical needs.
Anyone in your group with chemical dependency issues or addiction problems will suffer a steep decline in their physical fitness when they lose access to the DOC.
People with mental health issues and medical issues that require medications need to also be accounted for. Without a multi-week supply of medications, they might be forced to accept going to a FEMA camp to get access to treatment and sustainable medications.
That’s if they’re even available at the camp near you! Before that happens, add these 10 medical supplies to your stockpile, as they will be the first to disappear in a crisis.
Maintain Noise & Light Discipline
If the evacuation order includes a public health and safety clause, the authorities might have the legal power to remove you from your home to a FEMA camp. In a time like this maintaining noise and light discipline is critical for going undetected.
It might also help deter looters from targeting your place.
If the local authorities are using X Codes, you might want to consider using them. Tagging your own home and the surrounding neighborhood to look like it’s already been searched, decreases the chances of them noticing you.
You’ll also want a safe space, completely hidden from sight—somewhere no FEMA agent or drone with infrared sensors can spot. I’m talking about this secret root cellar, buried a few feet down in your backyard, which offers the perfect shelter.
It’s designed to keep you and your supplies secure for months if needed, based on our ancestors’ tried-and-true methods but upgraded for modern crises. Building one won’t break the bank either and it can be ready in a week. Having it could be your best chance if you want to stay out of a FEMA camp.
Prepare a Bug-Out Bag
In the case of a forced evacuation, you might have to choose between being herded to a FEMA camp and bugging out to a less-regulated safe zone. In a case like this, you need to have a bug-out or to-go bag ready for you and everyone else in your group.
The wise move is to strategically pack so that each person has basic survival supplies. There should also be some shelter and security items distributed throughout the various packs of everyone in the group.
Each adult should have a gallon of water as well as some type of portable water filter and/or water purification tablets. Along with a durable water bottle. Everyone should also have three day’s worth of high-calorie items like energy bars, nuts, dried fruits, jerky, or freeze-dried meals. And don’t forget to add this crucial item to your bug-out bag. It might be your only chance of survival.
Having properly prepared bug-out bags is also about more than just surviving on the road while you make your way to another safe location. If you are stopped by authorities and you can demonstrate to them that you aren’t in distress. They’re more likely to let you pass without relocating you to the FEMA camp.
In a time like this, you need to be smart. Respect all curfew requirements to keep from being picked up and brought into a FEMA camp against your will. If you need to evacuate, ensure you have properly prepared tactical backpacks for everyone in your group. Then make sure there’s a meet-up location where everyone can gather again if you’re separated.
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