“I think my [passport] country will go to war with my host country. What should I do?” asked one of my social media followers the other day. It’s unsettling to think about, but with rising global tensions, it’s also a very real possibility. If you’re an expat in an area where conflict could ignite, what steps should you take to ensure you can survive and thrive even in case of war? These are the tough questions that led me to start The Prepared Expat. While today’s guide won’t cover every scenario, I’m here to offer a framework that can help you prepare even for a war between your passport country and your host country. Let’s get into it.
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The Goal: Avoid Danger
The overarching goal is to not be in a war zone unless you have really good reason to be there (e.g. a doctor etc.), have counted the cost, and have made wise preparations. If you’re someone who wants to survive in a war zone, this article isn’t for you and I suggest you look into more specialized resources.
Instead, the best way to survive a war or invasion is to not be in the war zone or invasion area. That means moving, and moving early, to get out of danger. I wrote about how movement saves lives in my previous article Lessons Learned: The Good Earth and How Movement Saves Lives and so I won’t belabor this point here, but if you haven’t read that article, do go back and read it.1
Movement saves lives, and early movement saves even more. The key is to be able to leave, and fast, and get to somewhere safe.
The key is to be able to leave, and fast, and get to somewhere safe.
Before Danger Appears
There are some things you can only do before danger appears; if you wait until the time when you know for sure that you need a preparation, it’s likely too late to make the preparation you need. On the other hand, if you prepare for a danger, your preparation itself may prevent the danger from occurring. That’s the paradox of safety, which I’ve written about extensively before.
So, right now, before danger arises, there are four things that you should do.
Preparation One: Know what the threat is
Before you do anything else, make sure you’re getting good and reliable information about the situation. Invasions and wars are often, but not always, predicted. The US warned that Russia would invade Ukraine before it did. The US gave plenty of warning before it invaded Iraq. There was evidence Hitler would invade Poland before he did. While there was no warning of the October 7th attack on Israel, Israel broadcast in advance the areas of Palestine that it would attack. Wars and invasions are often predicted in advance.
If you haven’t already, make sure to read my article about how to sign up for emergency alerts from embassies around the world. If country A is about to invade country B, you can be sure that the embassy alerts from country A and country B will start giving warnings to their citizens about it.
Less predictable, though, are accidents. Think of how NATO accidentally bombed China’s embassy. Accidents happen and can create tensions between countries. Even if an accident doesn’t lead to a war, it can lead to protests and mobs.
Even if your passport country isn’t in conflict, people may think you’re from another country and attack you anyway.
Keep in mind that what happens between your host country and other countries could create a problem for you. For example, you may be in a Middle Eastern country where mobs get angry at the US, and even though you’re German or British or French, they may think you’re American and attack you anyway.
This is as good a point as any that, as you evaluate risk, you need to be evaluating risk as an expat across four quadrants, not in a simplified one or two-quadrant way. If you haven’t read Risky Business yet, make sure that you do. I’ll even send you the risk analysis tool for free if you sign up for my free newsletter.
All this is to say that you have to be aware of what’s going on in the world and especially what’s happening in your host country. Getting good information about a potential problem before it happens, or as soon as it happens, will help you act, for early movement saves lives.
Preparation Two: Make sure you can leave
Some countries in the world require permission for their citizens to leave the country; your host country may also have exit requirements you need to meet in order to leave. Particularly if your passport country is going to war with your host country, or vice-versa, you may not actually be allowed to leave through normal channels. It’s not unusual during a war for citizens of other countries to be interned, placed under house arrest, or barred from departure. Another reason why your goal should be to leave before war breaks out.
But make sure that the requirements to leave, whatever they are, are met before a problem breaks out. That means recent passports that aren’t about to expire, valid visas, exit permits, travel documents, up-to-date vaccinations, etc. Check your exit requirements and make sure you meet them. If you believe it’s possible you might be barred from leaving your host country, remember that this blog isn’t legal advice and I’m not telling you what to do, but you may need to get a bit creative.
This is especially important if your family has multiple nationalities. Ukrainians married to Russians and living in Russia, for example, will probably find it harder to leave than families that are only Russian.
Preparation Three: Choose your locations and make sure you can get there
Making sure that you can leave is only part of the plan. You also have to make sure that you can enter the location that you choose to flee to. Below I’ll tell you about locations that you would need to flee to, and once you’ve chosen those things, you’ll need to make sure that you can enter those countries at a moment’s notice.
Visa-free is best (citizenship, permanent residence, or country-by-country arrangement), visa on arrival is next best, and a long-term, unexpired visa is the next-best option. In a true emergency, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to apply for a visa in time to flee the danger.
Preparation Four: Get your finances in order
Surviving and thriving in an emergency will cost you a pretty penny. Last-minute emergency plane tickets can cost you a pretty penny, and hotel prices in safe zones skyrocket in a crisis, and a fast exit most likely will mean you lose your income for some time. So while most financial experts suggest that people have 3-6 months of emergency funds saved,2 I recommend 6 months of living expenses plus enough funds to buy last minute plane tickets to your passport country.
Having the money is critical, but it’s not enough. You also have to make sure that you can access obscene amounts of money in an emergency crisis, which may include banks being shut down. I’ve written an extensive guide on this topic: Cash in a Flash: Fluid Finances for Expat Emergencies.
After Danger Arises
When a risk or threat appears, what should you do? There are three steps that I’d recommend that you take. All are forms of movement, for movement saves lives, and all are primarily about avoiding danger, not mitigating it when it occurs.
Step One: Get to an emergency local location
Let’s assume for a moment that an accident between your host country and passport country has happened—an accidental bombing, a plane collision in the air, a border dispute flared up, a ship collided on the ocean, etc. These kinds of events hopefully won’t lead to a declaration of war, though they could, but they could cause a mob to try to target you. Or perhaps it was an accident between your host country and a country that people think, in accurately, that you’re from. You still may become a target.
The first step is to get out of immediate danger.
You need to get away from a place where people know that you live and get to a place, often at a moment’s notice, that gets you out of immediate danger. Mobs are unpredictable and you have no idea what would happen if they show up at your door; it’s best not to be there. Get to a place where the people who want to harm you wouldn’t expect to find you.3 This gets you out of immediate danger so that you can make wise decisions about what to do next.
Step Two: Get to an emergency third country
If things appear to be escalating, if countries are predicting war, or if a particularly bad accident has made it seem like a conflict may be imminent between your host and passport country, then it’s wise to take early action and get out of your host country. Rarely, though, would you be able to get all the way back to your home country. Perhaps those flights are canceled, or expensive, or perhaps they’re just too hard to book at the last minute. A good rule of thumb is that the longer a flight is, the harder it is to book and the fewer flight options there are each day. However, short flights to nearby places are typically easier to book and have more options.
Thus, your goal is to get into a third country as quickly as you can, and that probably means a nearby border country rather than your passport country. If you plan to get to a border country, then you have more options for transportation too—you could fly, which is most people’s default, but consider that a train, bus, or driving your own car might be a better option in a crisis. You could even walk across a border in extreme scenarios. Many refugees do.
Get into a third country as quickly as you can.
So, which countries border your host country that are close-by and where you could flee? Consider what their relationship with your host country and your passport country is like; would they choose sides in a conflict or try to stay neutral? Would that third country force you to return to the host country if they asked or made an extradition request?
The best third country to choose for an emergency location would meet these conditions:
- Be visa-free for your passport, or visa upon arrival, so no prior planning is needing
- Offer at least 30 days visa-free. That gives you enough time to figure out how to renew or make plans to move on. A one-week visa is likely not enough time.
- Be neutral between your passport country and host country in a conflict, and be friendly towards your passport country. You don’t want to fly out of a dangerous situation and into another one.
- Be less than 3 hours of travel from where you live. This not always possible, but you want to get into a third country as fast as you possibly can. So long as you are in your host country, or in its airspace, you’re subject to its laws. The faster you get into a neutral country, the better. Being nearby also means that, if the danger goes away, you could easily return to your host country.
PACE your plan
Keep in mind that you may want to think of PACE as you choose countries and transportation to the country. PACE stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingent, and Emergency. Your primary plan may be to fly to your third country, but in an emergency all the flights might be full, so you may need to use an alternate method of transportation (e.g. take a train or bus). That, too, may not be an option in a crisis so you’ll want a contingent plan (e.g. driving) and an emergency option (e.g. biking and walking across the border).
Likewise, it’s wise to have multiple countries that you could go to in a crisis, for wars spread or can involve more than one country. In anything important for life, redundancy is critical.
When you know where you’ll plan to go, make sure you’ve done Preparation Three, above, and have met the requirements to enter the country or countries that you would flee to.
Step Three: Choose a long-term location
Once you’re in a safe third country, you can gather better information, see how things transpire, and make non-urgent decisions for the long-term. For many people, your immediate reaction will be to go to your passport country, but don’t assume that this is the right choice for you. Instead, spend a few months in the third country to make a wise and carefully considered decision.
If the conflict was a temporary flashpoint, perhaps relations will quickly go back to normal and you can return. Many historical tensions or conflicts were this way. For example, NATO’s accidental bombing of China caused a temporary flare of relations and could have led to war, but it didn’t. If you were a US American living in China at that time and got to out to another country—say Japan, South Korea, or Thailand—you would’ve been able to return relatively soon when it was apparent that war would not break out. On the other hand, if you were a US American in Ukraine in January of 2022 and left for another country, you’d quickly realize that the war won’t be over anytime soon and you can make alternate plans.
Use the four-quadrant expat risk analysis to determine when it’s safe to return to your host country. Sign up for my free email newsletter, and I’ll send you that risk analysis tool for free.
In the specific scenario of my social media follower, his family has two passports because his wife’s citizenship is in his host country, and his is in a different country. This complicates their situation a lot, for they would need to find a long-term location that’s safe for both of them. That’s unlikely to be either his passport country or his wife’s passport country, as either could face risks in the event of a conflict between the two countries.
Conclusion
The possibility of war between your passport and host country is a scenario we hope to never face, but being prepare can significantly improve your chances of surviving and even thriving through the crisis. By staying informed, ensuring your documents are in order, carefully evaluating your risk, and having a plan of where you will go, you can avoid much of the danger. Remember that early movement is key for avoiding danger and having redundant options will give you the best chance for avoiding danger. Surviving and thriving as a Prepared Expat isn’t just about surviving the worst-case scenario—it’s about being ready to act swiftly before danger becomes imminent.
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Footnotes
- Given that this article was Runner-Up for the 2024 Biggest Flop TP Award, it’s quite likely that you didn’t read it. That’s a real shame because its lessons are so important for expats and for this question. ↩︎
- Three months if both adults work, six months if only one adult works or if both adults work for the same company or in the same sector. ↩︎
- That’s if a government in conflict allows you to leave. During WWII, the US not only didn’t let Japanese people leave but interned even US citizens of Japanese descent. During a war, expect to be treated as a pawn by a government—detained, interrogated, traded in prisoner swaps, etc. Depending on where you live, going to a different location may not just protect you from a mob, it may protect you from a government that’s out to use you as a pawn in its conflict. ↩︎