When considering the availability of supplies after any kind of disaster you need to realize several factors.
1) What do you have stored in your home?
2) Do you have supplies stored at a retreat location?3) How many supplies can you effectively transport in a bug out situation?
During a disaster of any kind, you never know which locations or which areas will be affected. An associate of mine, that contracts with his rural fire dept., was recently called in to help with a fully involved facility fire. Unfortunately, the building in question was the BOL of some poor unfortunate chap who literally lost everything. This could easily become a discussion about how to safely store fuel and other things, but that is another post for another day.
Just think... You invest heavily in a BOL only to lose it all in a freak accident, then something occurs where you must abandon your primary location. You have nothing left and nowhere to go.
Even if you are able to load quite a bit of your at-home supplies into a vehicle, there is no way to guarantee that you can get them to where you need them. Roads can be clogged, washed out, or heavily patrolled by a hostile force. With a bug out bag on your back, and who knows what else you will have to try to carry, its not remotely realistic to get out of Dodge carrying your pantry on your back.
A series of Survival caches placed in key locations en route to your BOL, or even en route to a very remote rural camp site where you can set up and attempt to subsist could be the difference between making it and... not making it.
Even if the Bug out Vehicle proves to be reliable, Militant check points or highway piracy may deprive you of any number of things. Hurricane Katrina is a good learning tool. There were National guard soldiers stopping evacuees and scavengers on the streets and confiscating firearms (and doing much worse things by many reports). Even going so far as conducting house to house sweeps and seizing firearms, leaving people defenseless against looters, rapists and all manner of human filth.
A survival cache can be tailored to fit nearly any need. A rifle with ammo in a PVC pipe with several pouches of Mountain House, some toilet paper and several packages of batteries and some fire making and water purifying supplies can mean you make it through the chaos.
