We played Joel Skousen’s Exit & Build 2 keynote a while back and the response was huge. In that talk, Joel mentions a workshop he was giving the next day. A lot of you wrote in asking to hear it.
It was an exclusive Sunday session. Never released publicly until now.
This is Joel getting into the mechanics of Strategic Relocation. How to read the threat maps and narrow the whole country down to two or three states. What his state ratings actually measure: population density, private land availability, building permits, statewide land use planning, growing season, water quality, taxes, corruption, crime, personal liberty, gun rights, alternative medicine freedom, homeschooling freedom, and proximity to military targets.
Then he gets into basements, which turns into one of the most practical stretches of the session. Which states actually build them, why most of the South doesn’t, and how to get one poured anyway without paying ten times what it should cost.
Then he opens the floor.
Real people with real properties asking about their actual situations. Alaska. The Upper Peninsula. Northern British Columbia. Georgia. Kentucky. West Virginia. A woman living off grid in a yurt in California asking whether there’s any way to stay. A doctor asking where a physician can still practice freely. Somebody asking about burying a shipping container as a shelter.
He also names which news sources he trusts and which ones he thinks are compromised, and he doesn’t spare anybody, including some names this audience holds dear.
About Joel Skousen
Former Navy and Marine Corps fighter pilot turned architect. He began writing The Secure Home in 1979, making him one of the genuine pioneers of the modern preparedness movement. Author of Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places, still the definitive reference on threat-based relocation, and co-author of The High Security Shelter Book with his son, a structural engineer. He has published the World Affairs Brief weekly for decades and has designed high security residences and retreats across North America, Canada, and Latin America.
Joel is speaking at Exit & Build 6
November 5-8, 2026 at Mollie Engelhart’s Sovereignty Ranch in Bandera, Texas.
He’s giving a full talk plus an in-depth workshop, and he’ll be around the whole event to talk relocation, preparedness, and whatever else you bring him. You can walk up and ask him about your own property.
Four days on a working regenerative ranch with hands-on implementation zones where you leave having actually done the thing. Also speaking: David Avocado Wolfe, Curtis Stone, Doug and Stacy, Alec Zeck, Glenn and Eric Meder, Mollie Engelhart, the Sacred Honor crew, and more.
Get your ticket: https://exitandbuild.com
