➡ The Canadian prepper is discussing how to find the best property for survival in difficult times using a 20-point scale. He examines a property in Canada that costs around 200,000 USD, which is cheaper than the average home in the U.S. The property has a mixed forest, a man-made pond, and is located near a city, but it’s also close to a recreational facility and a school, which could pose security risks. Despite these risks, the property could be a good choice for a family wanting to live a self-reliant lifestyle while still having access to a school and other facilities.
➡ The text discusses a large, untouched piece of land with potential for various uses, including recreation, hunting, and farming. The land features mature trees, a water source, and is suitable for growing different types of fruit trees with the right infrastructure. The author also mentions the importance of considering factors like wind conditions and potential pollution from nearby industrial activities when buying land. Lastly, the text highlights a property with a house on it, which is surrounded by stunning landscapes and has access to a river, but also notes some potential issues with the soil and neighboring land ownership.
➡ The article discusses the importance of understanding the geographical, ecological, and social factors of a property before purchasing it. It emphasizes the need to consider factors such as industrial encroachment, local climate, water sources, crime rates, and proximity to urban centers. The author uses maps and satellite imagery to analyze these factors, highlighting the potential impact on property value and lifestyle. The article also warns about potential issues like erosion, public access to waterways, and nearby Airbnb properties.

Hi, folks. Canadian prepper here. Today we’re looking for the ultimate bugout prepping property using the property resilience scale that we devised. This is a 20 point scale that takes into account a variety of factors that are going to help us determine how survivable a property actually is in the worst of times. Without further ado, let’s get to it. Foreign. We’re going to start off with some properties that are a little bit more cost effective. What do I mean by that? The average home in the United states is around $415,000. Now, that’s going to vary greatly depending on the state that you’re in.

415,000American is around 600,000 Canadian. So keep that in mind when I’m showing you these prices. And so this first property is $275,000 Canadian, which equals around 200,000 USD. Now, as you can see, this is way up north. It’s actually closer to a major urban center than you might think. We have Grand Prairie, which will likely be one of the closest major cities. You’re about an hour and a half from Walmart. Okay, that’s kind of my benchmark to know you’re in a town that’s big enough to have a Walmart, that’s a city Right now. Let’s go up here.

So this is where this is way up in the boondocks here. All right. The first thing we’re going to check is we’re going to check out crime. I haven’t shown you guys this map yet, but this is a very useful map. Now, it’s important to remember that not all crime is reported, but this is a good indicator. And you probably have an equivalent system in your neck of the woods as well. So in the last 14 days, we can determine that in this region just to the west of Grand Prairie here, there’s quite a bit of crime.

And you have all kinds of theft. Over and under 5,000, you have breaking entries. And so I imagine on an annual basis this map is just going to be covered with stuff. But when you go up to where our property is, you don’t see that much, although there are a few, but not in that general vicinity. So this is a good resource. This is the Red Deer Rural crime map. So if you have a county police department, they might have a map like this where they detail all the crimes. Most urban municipalities will have something like this as well.

So first things first. This is a property that doesn’t have a home on it, but that is going to preclude purchases from people who likely need a mortgage. Unless you can provide some justification to the banks as to why you need this property, maybe it’s going to be a business endeavor. 200,000 USD is fairly cheap for 150 acres of woodlands. Now the first thing I notice here is that this is a mixed forest which is perfect because that means that the soils are going to be a little bit mixed, a little bit more well balanced. And it also means that the deciditous forest there, that’s the stuff with leaves on it as opposed to needle leaves, is going to be a mitigating factor for forest fires.

So chances are we’re not worried about big sweeping forest fires on this property. Now the first thing I see, this looks like a man made pond, which means that at some point somebody dug this for some reason. Now that’s expensive. It’s about a hundred thousand Canadian. To excavate an acre into a pond, I would say that’s about an acre of land. We could actually do a determination. You can use something called scribble maps. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to use our polygon tool. And so what we have here, 3,500 square meters. So this is approximately a three quarter acre pond.

What you know then is that there is water on this property in the ground. We can also use the Alberta well finder map that will give us a sense of what the water availability is. But so far what I’m seeing on this land is a healthy forest, a nice mixed forest that looks like there’s trees of various ages. We have a road access to the pond. So at some point somebody was accessing this. I’m not sure what they were using it for. Maybe it was their own personal thing. Maybe they wanted to build the house but they didn’t go through with it.

There is a bit of a clearing here. You could probably build a house here or you could expand that out and it looks like you’re off a paved highway, which is not the greatest for an SHTF situation. But the good thing about this is that the pond is inconspicuous. You might not notice it if you were driving by, depending on how much attention you brought to this. In fact, you might want to cancel this road altogether and find an alternative roadway into here. It cost you a lot of money and you’d have to clear a lot of trees.

But if you’re really serious about security you could do that. Now this is obviously a mostly flat terrain. It’s not very defensible in the Sense that people could get the jump on you from all angles here. However, because it’s heavily wooded, it would be difficult to bring a vehicle on the site. So so far, it looks pretty good. This. This is actually a really nice forest. I mean, this is a really healthy mixed forest, Especially for this far north. But a lot of this land in Alberta, it might look treed and wooded from a satellite, but it could have been logged 20, 30 years ago.

And it’s all new growth. So all the trees are like toothpick size. Now. What we want to figure out, though, is industry that is next door. Because the thing with Alberta is that there’s a lot of industrial pollution. I’m really curious to see what this is. So this is where we would kind of go and we’d do some investigating. So this is savannah agricultural society recplex. I mean, that’s a big recreational facility to have in the middle of nowhere. Is this like their little personal retreat, Just like an aggravation type thing? Okay, so this might be a slight problem, because if there’s a recreational facility, that means that people are going to be congregating to this place periodically.

Probably not all the time, but quite frequently. You might have a lot of people right next door to you. The reason why I’m showing you this whole process Is because it’s important that you do your research on a property of the surrounding demographics, the crime, security, water availability, biome that is a part of and all of those things. So just to give you a sense of what it looks like from the sky here, so. So it’s all bush. There’s a few clearings here, so you could potentially build on here. Looks like you have an easement road here, which basically divides your property.

And this one, you do have major paved highway access, which is beneficial if you were trying to live a normal life. And you had to commute lots if you don’t have to commute. And quite frankly, you’re way in the middle of nowhere up here. There’s some surrounding towns and things like that. And I think that’s what this caters to for. It looks like there’s a school here as well. So I would likely rule this property out. It would score low for me by virtue of the fact that I don’t want to be right next to a school.

I don’t want to be right next to a recreational facility. And these are all places where people are going to congregate. So people are going to be picking up their kids there every day. They’re going to be Looking at this property every day, if you did start to build something out here with greenhouses and all that stuff, chances are it could potentially be visible for from the road. So even though we have very low crime, very low population density, you can see that this is a very unique situation. That there is added security risks by virtue of it being the one place in the middle of nowhere that everybody periodically congregates.

Now the one thing that we should always do first, and I always forget to do this because I always like looking with my eyes as opposed to my brain is read the description. Because usually in the description there might be some very important information there that will just rule this out right away. Or it will be information that will make it even more enticing. So 149 acres of untapped potential in the heart of savannah. Directly off a paved highway across from an agricultural society and K to 12 school. Now hear me out. If you are a person who has a family, you know you want to be out there in a place which is mostly secure in a place where you can build a homestead, self reliant lifestyle.

There’s a school right across the street that is very, very rare to have a situation like this. In fact I’ve never seen it where you have your off grid forest and right across the street it just so happens to be that’s the place that they chose in the middle of nowhere to put a school. That could be very beneficial for people who are on the come up with children. You want them to have exposure and socialize them. That’s a good thing. So they’re saying that this is 149 acres of rich mixed use land, untouched and full of potential mature timber throughout with large stands of spruce, a large dugout of water for recreation or livestock use, excellent hunting, private wilderness retreat.

I gotta say guys, I’m tempted. Let’s take a look at the, the drone shots here. Let me go. Better quality here. Let’s do 1080. Welcome to 2025. This really is my kind of forest. Okay, this is what I hate. This is not even the same spot. This is not even the same tree species back. This isn’t some park, probably in Vancouver. Okay, so here’s a good perspective for size. So I don’t know how tall a electrical pole is, but that gives you some sense of the height of the trees. Like this is not the same place.

This is open grassland. But this is really cool because you have a nice little watering hole. The animals are going to come and access it. It’s not Fenced, So the animals are just, you know, loving it in here. I’m surprised that the rec center didn’t buy this land and that the school wouldn’t just buy this land, you know what I mean? Because you’d think that they could find some utility for that. Okay, so this is a land cover map. Just FYI, how Alberta is, is there’s grasslands, as you can see here, and then there’s also this strip of grassland up here.

It’s a little bit warmer up here than anywhere else at this latitude by virtue of the fact that it’s kind of open prairie. So let’s go and see what the actual plant Hardiness zone is at these latitudes. Typically you’re looking at level 2B, in some cases 2A, but at least here you’re actually getting a climate which is comparable to southern parts of Saskatchewan. I suspect that this is going to be a 3B or a 3A, quite frankly, perfectly acceptable for growing a lot of different types of fruit trees. With a greenhouse and the right kind of infrastructure, you can grow any kind of food you want.

You’re going to have a lot of wild game. You could have cattle here, no problem. You’re going to want to know how bad the wind is in your region. It can be a good thing if you’re wanting to harvest wind, but it can be bad if you want to contend with the elements. Bad storms, hail storms, things of that nature. As you can see, most of the prairies are in a very windy region. Not quite as windy as places like Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes and things like that, but quite windy. And so if we just click up here, we’re getting some blues, some purples, and there’s a bit of a windy pass up here.

I’m not sure what that is. Must be some kind of valley. This is important stuff to know. You might be the sucker who buys their property there. And it’s windy as all hell and you’re getting all kinds of crazy storms, and it’s just you and everybody else around you, you know, is fine. So this is why we do the research that we do. Okay, so the next property we’re going to look at actually has a house on it, and it’s $565,000 Canadian, which would be around $395,000 USD if you ask me. This is a pretty sweet deal.

The reason why it’s such a sweet deal is because you’re getting 148 acres of land which is wooded and you have water access and the House is decent. First things first, let’s read the listing. A rare opportunity to own 148 acres of privacy and recreation with direct access to Wolf Creek for swimming, tubing, fishing and more. We got the kids covered here. Bordering crown land and just 15 minutes northeast of town. The town in question is Edson, Alberta, which is a big enough town to do your grocery shopping and stuff like that. So the heating type is forced air and it’s on propane.

I’m a much bigger fan of geothermal using some kind of wood boiler. Passive solar, just something that doesn’t require a non renewable fuel source. Now we’ll quickly thumb through the images here because I know your wifey, the first thing she’s going to say is what is the house look like? It’s a 2006 mobile home, that’s what it is. You can see by these images they’re not trying to sell you on the house, they’re trying to sell you on the land, which is absolutely stunning, I must say. You got really mature trees on there. You got a mixed forest.

You don’t have to worry about wildfire. The house is in good shape. It’s really actually perfect for a person who’s looking for a low key lifestyle. You don’t have to worry about basements, flooding and things of that nature. Nice deck out there. And look at this. You got a nice three car shop and garage which looks very well maintained. I mean this is immaculately kept. You can tell that the people who lived here really took care of it. And that’s a big thing because you know, moving into someone’s home is like getting into their old underwear.

So at least you know, if they kept that underwear nice and clean. Now this is awkward. I’m not sure I like this gap. That wouldn’t be. You know how people are like, yeah, I like that gap. You know how everybody’s about that gap? Not this gap. That’d be a hard gap to clean. But hey, it’s a mobile home, what you gonna do? There’s a lot to be said about a little cozy place like that. You even got the nice polished concrete, beautifully landscaped. And I think if I’m not mistaken, there’s even a paved driveway. So here’s where we get the aerial perspective.

Now, in addition to having access to this river here and remember, this is all crown land, which means that you can go in there, you can access it. If I’m not mistaken, but don’t quote me on this, you can hunt there and you can also harvest wood To a certain extent, one of the problems of this property is who the hell is this? Because there’s a cutout of this section. Somebody else is going to own this land right here, this 10 acres or so. It is a little weird because they also have access to this bar body of water.

But chances are most people are never really going and doing too much. Now let’s just take a few more. Let’s really soak this in because take a look at this for the price. I’ve not seen land which is more beautiful than this. You’re getting your nice steep valleys, getting lots of topography on the landscape. It’s varied terrain. It’s a nice mixed forest. You have a lot of flatland to build on. You have water that’s above ground in addition to right here. And now granted, it’s going to be difficult to get down there and access this readily.

You’re gonna have to build some kind of trail or stairway down there or something. But you could do it right. It’s definitely doable. That’s really incredible. Usually when it looks this good, that means that accessibility is hard. Now, in terms of the soils, let’s see what kind of soils we’re looking at here. So we take a little sample. So the dominant soil order is going to be leuvisolic. We also have a little bit of organic and so levisolic is more of an acidic soil. So you are going to find more conifer trees, evergreens. But it’s not going to be soil that you can just readily throw a bunch of seeds in and start growing stuff.

You’re going to have to do a little bit of composting and soil development in order to, to bring it up so that you can do crop farming and things of that nature. Another thing that you’re going to want to look at, especially when you’re looking at Alberta, is the Canada’s mining and mineral map. Because pollution is a big, big problem. Now if your property is on a river, you’re going to want to be looking at where the headwaters of that river. So where does the river come from and what sort of industrial activity is going on around that body of water or on that body of water.

Now because you’re getting closer to the mountains in this region, even though there’s a lot of industrial activity, that means that the water ain’t traveling too far because most of it’s coming down from the mountains. I’m not seeing a whole lot of action in around the Edson region. For example, there was this property that I was looking at, and it looked incredible. And then I kind of zoomed out on Google Earth and I noticed that there was this big, like, black area. It was a peat mine. And so I never noticed because you’re just looking at your square quarter section of property, which is 160 acres typically in Canada, that you’re buying.

So basically I noticed that there’s this big discolored region about two sections over. And I went back in the historical record and I looked, and five years ago it didn’t look like that. And then every year this industrial area was expanding and it was encroaching closer and closer towards the property that they were trying to sell. So that basically was a sign that eventually this industrial activity is going to be right on the border up against this property, which is being divided by this river. And all of this nasty stuff that they’re doing is flowing into that river.

So this is why it’s important to look at a mining and minerals map that is going to have an effect on your land. It’s going to have an effect on its resale value and the general health of the ecology. So this is another map. This is terrestrial eco regions of Canada. This outlines the physiographic region. So each region is defined by distinctive geographical features. And so, for example, this region is considered western Alberta upland. Western Alberta upland is different from the continental ranges or, you know, the boreal transition. So we’re not quite in the boreal transition zone here yet.

This is important to know because you’re going to know kind of what the general surrounding ecology is going to be. Why that terminology might be useful is, let’s say you wanted to look up farming in western Alberta uplands, or what sort of wildlife is there in western Alberta uplands, that sort of thing. It’s just a useful classification system for you to access more information about the general region that you’re looking at. So this is our climate normals map. This is going to provide you a wealth of information and you can input very specific parameters. What we’re looking at right now is mean temperature.

What is the average temperature? And we’re looking at the month of January. I always go in the coldest month because I want to know how cold is it going to get. Actually, it’s not too bad. When you get close to these mountain regions here, it’s actually a little bit warmer than it would be out here in the flatter prairies. And so we’re looking at temperatures of minus 10 to minus 5 on average. When you’re getting into the mountains and the foothills region. You want to make sure you have good satellite coverage. So always reference a map like this, which shows you the satellite coverage.

Cell towers are going to be good for about 25 to 40 kilometers or so. Now, this is a water well map. We can go and see what the water well activity is in this region. And you can see there are all kinds of wells. I mean, there are just thousands of wells everywhere. You can see that there is in fact a well. And we can even go and see the water drilling report. We can see the depth drill was 105ft the year it was drilled, and so on and so forth. Let’s go and check out our crime map.

So in the last 14 days, there is theft, there is mischief, random acts of mischief, and for all we know, that was one guy on a drunken bender. There’s a few break and enters. So there’s definitely a little bit of, you know, property crime inside the Edson region, but not really up here. So we’re about an hour and 40 minutes to Edmonton, which is a major city, over a million people. We are about five minutes from Edson, which is a much smaller city. You’re far enough outside of this city that you’re over the river. So that’s one hurdle they need to overcome if they want to find you.

Now, if this is a place where people go tubing, because this is under the ownership of the Crown, you’re going to have to be concerned about people passing through here. It is their right to access any waterway. So now let’s go to Google Maps and let’s do some analysis. Here is we’re going to go to show historical imagery. And so this is 2022. Now, this is June 3rd. So this is when the water level is going to be high. So you can see the water level is considerably higher here. So in June and there’s still snow.

And this is June 3rd. So that gives you a sense of what the climate is going to be here. Right. So this is July 27th, and as you can see, this water level is pretty high in July. Wow. I could see why people use this for tubing. I’ve done this kind of stuff before and nothing like tubing down a creek with a bunch of friends. See, this is the problem with me doing these videos. I want to buy every property. Look at how high the water level is here. Holy sh T. So I almost wonder if you’re getting some erosion.

You have these trees that are kind of holding it back here. But that’s good because that Means that there’s a healthy amount of water coming through there. And so now let’s just check out the topography. Let’s go 3D. So what I sometimes like to do is give myself a sense of the lay of the land. Now, you can do this with a topographical map, but also sometimes it’s nice to kind of just go like this. It doesn’t look that hilly, but when you’re down there in real life, it actually is hilly. You know, another great thing about this property, you’re way in the back of the property, right? So you got to come all the way down this roadway here, which is paved.

So you probably share this roadway, and people will come up here and access this. So this is one thing I’d be concerned about. What’s going on up here? Is this just their cabin where they hang out? Has you got another cabin here? Are people doing Airbnb here? You got a few properties here, there, and everywhere. Probably not a big deal, but again, these Airbnb places concern me. Chances are, if you’ve been there once and you really had a good time, you’re gonna memorize this place. And if shit hits the fan, you’re gonna be like, I know where we can go.

Before you know it, you’re gonna have 50 people who stayed here peering through the forest, salivating at all of your preps in your greenhouse and all that stuff. It’s too bad, because that really is a nice property, but I think that might be a deal breaker for me. So for the two properties that we’ve reviewed today, we’re going to get the AI to tally up the score using our property resilience scale, and we’re going to post that on the screen right here. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about these particular regions. Have you spent time here? Do you think that there’s things that we’re not seeing as preppers? I didn’t really talk too much about the proximity to major urban centers and the potential for what might happen in a nuclear disaster in these particular regions.

But. But this, actually, this general region is kind of my Goldilocks region because it’s in that transition zone between the boro forest and the grasslands. So you kind of have the best of both worlds. You have the best of the foothills and the mountains to the west. Then you have the prairies to the east. As long as you can stay a sufficient distance from large, dense population centers, in my personal opinion, that’s as good as it’s probably going to get. But let me know what you think in the comments section below. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like comment.

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