Actually a lot of security comes from elevation. If your place is the same elevation as your neighbours then they can't see into your yard very well. If you are lower, they can see into your place without really trying.
If you are on the fringes of a subdivision, then things can be hidden near buildings that block others views. Such as mounting a solar array on the ground with a fence around it or possibly covering the entire top of some old half broken down trailer/RV with panels. Gardens can also be broken up into many smaller plots around the yard and the hidden by planting other plants and flowers with them. Hidden in plain sight works very well as everyone looking assumes they know what they are seeing.
Take a walk or drivethe around the area and take lots of photos of your place from different locations. That should give you a good idea of what is visible and what isn't.

When I think about the SHTF and bugging-in, I look at three things.
Water
Food
Protecting my family
and not necessarily in that order.

If the SHTF the way I imagine, counting on government services will not be an option so utilities will not be available and things like water, heat, light and communications will be gone. So in that circumstance I would like to see at the bare minimum at least one gallon of water per day for every beating heart in the house for at least three weeks if not a month. Using that equation a family of two parents and two children (no pets) would need, just to drink, 4 gallons of water per day - 28 gallons per week - 84 gallons for a minimum of three weeks or 120 gallons per month. That water does not take into account cooking, dishwashing, toilet and sanitary needs or water for pets. If you stockpile 5 gallon jugs of water you will need 17 to 24 for 3 weeks to a month.

Grocery stores will run out of food within the first week and so you need to have at home 3 meals per day per person or 21 meals per week and 63 meals for just the three week period that I consider the minimum amount of time, but if you are intending to stay long term you will need to multiply both water and food by the amount of weeks that you believe you will be bugged-in.

Now comes the one area I don’t think a lot of people are prepared for and that is keeping what is yours and keeping your loved ones safe. That means keeping your garden and green house free of those who wish to help themselves to your vegetables. A fence is nice but it has to keep people out 24/7. A dog is nice but they can be senselessly killed.
The house itself needs fortified windows and/or metal shutters. Doors also need to be fortified and made impenetrable.

Finally you will need and be prepared to use weapons to defend your and your loved ones lives.

Your wood stove idea is a great one and I would suggest a back-up generator.
Stockpiling wood will take up a lot of space but will prove to be a God send in the long run.
Once people know that you are better off than they are, they will want what you have. Sadly, tough love scenarios and maybe even life and death scenarios may become the norm.

This is something we're talking a lot about at our house too. Do we stay or do we take our chances somewhere else? I have to say, living in the inner city, we'd love to stay but that's not going to be the easiest in the long run. If you've read "One Second After" it gives you a lot to think about. The area we're most concerned with is security, because as has been said, once people know you've got something worth protecting, they're coming and it's up to you to decide how you're going to handle it. This is really putting a kink in the prepping plans. Should we stock a year's worth of food and water if we have no way of protecting it? Because if it comes down to 100+ people wanting that food and water and if we were to have a gun? No contest. The mob wins every time. That being said, we are starting to amass food and water but with plans of moving it once we have a BOL. In the meantime, we too are making 72 hour kits, we're about to list the inner city house, and we've got dreams of finding a safe BOL. Especially with a little one, I just don't want to take the chances of being "stuck" after a period of time when any travel becomes seriously dangerous.
It's scary enough when it's just you and your significant other to think about...when kids are involved, it's a whole other set of nightmares and none that I would ever feel comfortable dealing with. Well done you glasshouse, with staying sane thinking about four kids and a wife! The nice thing about suburbia is that there are a lot more people who are going to be in your exact situation (small kids at home) and when SHTF it might be easier to form some great connections with those who are thinking along the same lines in your neighbourhood. Suburban communities have another advantage too: less ways in and out to protect and defend. We moved from Tuscany to the inner core and while we were grumbling about only having three ways in and out when we were in suburbia, I'm really rethinking that position now in my 'rabbit warren' of streets and avenues. Hence the listing of the current house.
I read somewhere that a great way of psychologically 'protecting your home' is making up some "WARNING! HOUSE UNDER QUARANTINE!" signs (you can find pretty legit looking ones on the web if you look) and spray paint some big biological symbols on the outside. Yellow "police" tape works as well. 'Cause when SHTF people are still going to be scared stiff of catching anything...never more so than when the hospitals are out of commission. Might help? Might not? This was a guy in the states who recommended it so I'm not sure how it would work north of the border. Thoughts, anyone?

If SHTF then the neighbors are either going to be an asset or a liability. As I look around my neighborhood I see problems and little in the way of help, but I hope I am wrong. I am not moving anytime soon, so I am working on making friends with those I can. My whole defense will, by necessity be in hiding in plain site.

As a member of the Primary Reserve I am assuming if something bad happens there is a good possibility I might be asked to be somewhere else. This is a worry, but everyone in my family is in the process of learning to shoot, and we a forming a plan,and it is based on staying put. We do have the potential to move somewhere with more mutual support, but I am planning to stick it out to near the end. I see no long term upside to abandoning my community, unless it is the last resort.

Besides, it is not the neighbors I am most worried about, it is all of my wife's family that worries me! 🙂

At the end of the day, I can think of dozens of scenarios where bugging in will be the most practical thing you will want to do and where you will most probably only use a fraction of your food and water stores. In these scenarios your neighbours (and in-laws) will not be a blight upon your stores and will most likely only need a little advise for weathering the event. As the severity of the *S that HTF goes up and its likelihood goes down yours and all of our preps will be put to the test and most of us will have to consider bugging out.
For what its worth, my advise is to prep for what you consider to be most likely first and most definitively. Once you feel you have that covered to your satisfaction, start considering the higher impact / less likely scenarios that you want to address. I'm a big fan of the little things like keeping the fuel in my truck above the half line all the time and learning how to repair things which I might not have done in the past. If instead you are most concerned about the end of the Mayan calendar, I hear Greece is now selling small islands in the Aegean to help pay off their debt ;).

Antsy

If you store lots of canned fruits/things that don't need to be cooked and won't have a smell (from the food or a cook source) that attracts people and you can live off of that for the first few weeks you will not attract attention...by the time a few weeks have gone by the population in your area should be much smaller

Canada is going third world...

For some that is unimaginable.

Being in a third world country is not for the faint of heart.

You have to work your butt off and there is no security for
anyone.

Look at Mexico, think they really love their crap hole Republic?

To survive is not a sprint to the guns and have a year's supply of food, it is more likely a long drawn out survival grind, year after year as your wealth is eroded away, until poverty and starvation.

This is the reality of the real live third world republics overseas, not a nut in camouflage clothing and a can of baked beans.....

Glasshouse I am in the same boat as you, new to this and four little ones (ages 8 and under). We have been working on Self-sufficiency, my wife likes this term better than prepping or survivalism and in truth it does more than likely better describe us.

I think and hope that most of the senarios that could take place will be ones in which we would bug in. So to that end we have started growing a garden again, my wife has started canning, and we have upped some of our other food type purchases to increase our reserve stock just in case.

We made 3 day bags for the three oldest munchkins who can lug a small backpack around. I advise you to talk through this with your kids and explain why you are making them and what they are for, but letting them know they do not need to be scared. The hope is to never have to use them, just like our fire extingusher or smoke detectors.

I aqurired my PAL and also did my restricted portion. Mainly I did this so I could again start hunting and last year was able to fill a tag for a deer. This year all our friends are now asking us if we would "share" some of the deer meat with them. My list is long enough I might have to see if I can get a moose or two as well.

If we are wrong and something serious enough happens that we all need to bug out.....well that is why I started attending the Calgary area meeting and getting to know others around and helping to make a plan. So I encourage you to do the same. The folks who I have meet there seem like a good bunch of folks and not all that crazy.....just mildly paranoid (i believe it was dangphule who said it). 😆

...You have to work your butt off and there is no security for
anyone...

Something about that line just seems to strike a cord when you look at "job security" and the real lack of it around us now a days, from both the employee and employers perspective.

Have to agree with crybaby for the most part. Third world nations are an eye opener for sure. I lived a short time in East Africa - police were totally absent, and when available they were unreliable at best. If essential services stop here it will be much the same thing. In the long view, I think we can expect the erosion of our living standards and quality of life. In the city, in such a case you might do fine if the electricity/water/sewer are still running. Along with that, you will likely see an increase in crime as people desperate to provide for them and theirs.

I choose to bug in for everything except danger to life or if my house becomes uninhabitable. That (in my mind) includes:

1. Fire
2. Flood
3. No water/sewer/electricity for more than a few days
4. Disruption in emergency services
5. Massive rioting and large scale looting
6. Immediate peril (eg. home invasion, chemical spill, etc.)
and probably a few others.

Wherever you choose to live, if you can stay at home, you should. There is no way you can match the quality of life you have at home while on the road or out in the boonies. If you have to bug out, your first choice should a friends or relatives place where you are welcome and the residents have a plan for providing the necessities of life. A place you can stash some gear and food is ideal, especially if someone you trust lives there permanently. The boonies wilderness camping setup is a last resort, and one I hope to never require for more than a few days. Historically, refugee's have done very poorly in large scale societal disruptions.

My advice for anyone bugging in in the city is try to be as independent in providing your needs as possible. Find the nearest surface water sources (streams, ponds) and plan how you might use them. Plan how you will heat your home while being discreet. Plan how you will eat and cook. If you store food, great, it's a nice safety net, but you cannot store a lifetime supply, so plan to grow it or raise it. Start a community garden or start raising rabbits or guinea pigs. The "grow your own food" trend is a shining beacon of hope. At least mainstream people are thinking about it. And most importantly, learn to be discreet and learn some OPSEC (operational security). And have a plan to get out of dodge, and the will to do it when necessary.
And if you can, you could always move to a smaller town.

I should also remind you that in Alberta, we have only had our current standard of living for about 50 years. Much of rural Alberta had no electricity in 1960, and my forbears were still without electricity and modern plumbing at that time. They did it - you can too.

Learn how to poop in a hole. I'm serious. 😯

it repulses most people, but is one of the most basic and essential skills you can acquire!

.

I agree with CryBaby… Canada like a few other countries may some day be more like what we now consider third world. So we may all have to work our butts off just to grow enough food to feed ourselves and our families. As I don’t seem to a have accumulated a lot of wealth to eroded, (like ansty, kind of self employed) I am hoping that some knowledge and preparedness will help me keep starvation at bay. Poverty in the next decade or so may well have a new definition.

Man I hope none of us have to “bug out”. I still have a hard time, believing that our society could break down to the need for that. But, I also would not ever believe that I would be the person killed in a car accident.
If the future holds a slower decline… (bumpy for sure), I want to be prepared to stay in my local community for as long as possible. For some reason, I want to believe we can make it through the up coming events by helping our neighbors. Working together to solve problems.
But if it gets bad fast… do you suppose I could just hide under my bed with my supplies… wait till the dust settles…(till all the crazy people have shot each other, or starved) hopefully a month or 2 max. … then peak out to see, who or what is still left standing. .

How do people just walk away from this kind of life ?… I don’t care how big your back pack is… winters here are long and cold and hard. The weather and the seasons, were a killing factor to pioneers, and natives, who for the most part had skills, and knowledge and tools that we don’t.
Having cut a few cords of wood, and planted a few gardens, the realization of even thinking about doing this is frightening.

till all the crazy people have shot each other, or starved

How do people just walk away from this kind of life ?…

answered your own question.