Here's some links to poke around, if any are interested...
http://www.escapeartist.com/retirement/havens.htm
http://www.boomersabroad.com/
http://www.expatexchange.com/
Be aware, though, some of those can paint a rosier picture overseas cause they are selling real estate there, or books, etc.
This topic of 'stay or go' ignites some important core issues and debate, so let me throw some more rambling dry tinders upon it...
While grass is not always greener across all borders, of course, some feel that the best fallout shelter for their kids would be to get thee all someplace where they are less likely to ever need one! Or, to avoid some other coming catastrophic threat concerning them enough to be exploring alternatives elsewhere for their family.
The movie 'Mosquito Coast' comes to mind, though most of us would probably like to have taken a shot at writing our own, different, ending. Maybe some of us here for real, too!
I don't think leaving is usually the 'easy way out', though, but rather it's very hard to even contemplate for most, unless single, no extended family, mobile job & skills or lots of cash, etc., especially when done well before events have deteriorated enough where others around them won't all think it totally nuts, too.
For some, to act now against internal inertia, they will have to be gripped by a palatable and vivid terror of what they see coming soon as a virtual certainty to where no hurdles could ever restrain their attempt to escape to anywhere that's gotta be better than staying here, in their mind. That tipping point may come for many more someday, too, of course, but too late for most to ever accomplish it then.
Lot of mistakes, many fatal, await those gripped by such blind panic as rational analysis is eroded away in that terror, real right then in the future or simply anticipated today in one's own mind.
What about the Jews who escaped Hitler's Germany? Were they thought cowards by fellow Jews back then, early on, for running out on their native country and not staying behind to try and stand up and fight against the growing NAZI tyranny in some way? What was the more honorable course to have embraced?
And, those who risked all getting out over or under the Berlin wall, would they have been more honorable and brave to have stayed and fought clandestinely against their countries' repressive regime instead of trying to escape?
I wonder, too, how my Irish forefathers were treated by those who chose instead to stay behind in their Irish homeland when they emigrated here to the USA? Were they cheered, or jeered, as they left out by those remaining? If 'jeered' by their countrymen, was it because of envy that they did not have the means to go, too, or because they lacked the courage to follow, or for some sincere patriotic reasons? I don't know.
I do think we got a lot of the 'cream of the crop' then coming over here, rather than the most meek hearted of the clan.
Instead of 'Who is John Galt?' might we be hearing more, in the future here, 'Where Did John Galt Go?''
If half of the stuff we worry about happening here at TB2K comes to pass in the next few years, will those who left beforehand be thought then as the smart ones or seen, instead, as cowards for having run out on the 'good fight'? Will those who made the decision choosing to stay behind be the honorable ones then, here amongst all the others mostly trapped in inertia who could have left, too, along with the much greater numbers always so ignorant of any danger approaching?
The victors and survivors will write those history books.
The 32 men from my adopted town here in Gonzales were incredibly courageous to have reinforced the defenders of the Alamo, even though they knew the odds were dead against them ever surviving when they set out to try. That's my initial inclination I would hope to embrace, too, when push comes to shove, rather than exit left. Everybody has to die sometime anyways, that's the reality, let it at least be honorable I pray first, and secondly, if possible, let it have been purposeful and effective.
-
Shane
