When I was a kid, my friends and I would sometimes sneak out of the house late at night and play a type of "hide and seek" where we would walk or ride our bikes around town, well after curfew, and hide from or avoid cars. In that case, however, no one was looking for us, or people like us, in particular. CBOP would be more complicated, with far more serious complications. If one is caught during a covert bug-out--that is, in a city that is quarantined--you might be shot, or sent into a holding pen or facility with people that may be infected with little or no hope of escape. At best, you will be turned back, but the authorities operating the quarantine now know who you are.
As I thought about it more, I realized that this was a situation that was going to require serious preparation. So, First Step--figure out where I need to go. This is probably going to require pure speculation on your part on how far a quarantine would extend and how it would be enforced. It may be as simple as a military or police imposed curfew with roadblocks at major intersections and roving patrols. In that case, simply getting into a rural area would be enough to get past the zone of control. In other cases, a cordon may be thrown up around the city. So, you may need to simply estimate where such a cordon could realistically be set up, and plan for getting past that point.
Second Step--Google Maps or Google Earth, to get the lay of the land. Since this scenario involves getting out of town covertly, the plan is to find a hidden route that can be used. Clearly, I want to look at a general map, but known streets and roads are too obvious. I need to understand the terrain, which will require a topographic map and aerial views of the terrain. Under a CBO scenario, a motor vehicle evacuation is probably not an option--it will have to be on foot, or perhaps on a bicycle. Routes are probably going to involve maintenance roads (that generally won't be shown on street maps), foot paths or trail (both official and unofficial), canals or ditches or streams (better if they are dry, but if not ...), movement through fields or parks, perhaps even storm drains or maintenance tunnels (although getting trapped in a maintenance tunnel by a group of zombies would not be good).
To give an example, I live not too far from a small irrigation canal. I know because I can see part of it where it runs up to a major road, and then goes into an underground pipe, on one end, and have seen it about 1/2 mile away as it runs open through a field. From where it meets the major road, I also know that the canal easement has land on one side that probably was intended for a maintenance road, although it is overgrown and there are several trees visible. Driving around the neighborhoods, it appears that there are houses that back up against the canal easement. This appears to be confirmed by just plain road maps. However, when I switched to Satellite View, I could see why no road had ever been built. About 1/3 of the way from where the canal meets the road, and where it is visible again in open fields, and appears that it simply runs behind a row of houses, there is actually a small bridge that crosses the canal, and what appears to be a small warehouse, or large shop building and a storage yard. Also, while the easement was not maintained near the road, the satellite view showed that the vegetation was cut down and the area maintained for most of its length. None of this information was visible from the road, or from a standard map. If I had simply relied on that information and decided to use the "overgrown" canal easement as an escape route, I would quickly have run into problems.
Step Three will be to physically reconnoiter the areas you plan to use. You are looking not only for possible problems, but also potential opportunities. You want to look to for areas that overlook your route making it easier to monitor. In particular, identify areas that would be logical places for roadblocks, and see if your route can be viewed from that location. Also, obstructions like fences and walls may not show up on Google Earth; grates may block certain areas of a canal or ditch. On the other hand, see if there are other movement options--for instance, even slight depressions or a ditch may allow you to cross an open field without being observed. When doing your recon, think not only of someone seeing you, but also hearing you. For instance, most canal beds are filled with rocks and other debris. Could you move down it quietly?
When reconnoitering, try and use a friend that can try to spot you, or listen to you, as you scout out the particular section you are investigating.
Step Four would be a complete dry run--see if you can actually get out through your route. You may want to try this a few times under different conditions. This is not really an attempt to test the security of your route, but whether it is even possible to go the entire route. (Although, if you hear someone yell, "Hey, what are you doing," your security has been blown and you may need to reevaluate your plan).
Step Five is the final reconnaissance before actually engaging in a CBO. This would be after the quarantine has been imposed, so you can see if any situations have changes, and adapt your plan as needed. This is probably best illustrated by a real-world example. So, let me introduce you to a little known person in history by the name of Georg Elser. Mr. Elser was a simple carpenter who, in 1939, single-handedly undertook to assassinate Adolf Hitler. There were two basic steps to his plan: (i) secreting a bomb in a stone pillar near where Hitler would speak at the 1939 anniversary of his Beer Hall Putsch, and (ii) escape across the border into Switzerland. Elser spent months hiding out in the beer hall at night, slowly excavating a hole in the critical pillar that, when it exploded, would bring down a heavy balcony and part of the roof. He gathered all the intelligence needed to determine when to detonate the bomb; and information on the patrols at the border, working out exactly when and where to cross. The problem is that Elser never did a final reconnaissance.
First, due to technological limitations, Elser was forced to use a time clock. Thus, he simply placed the bomb a few days ahead of time. Problem was, Hitler's schedule changed at the last minute:
Had Elser paid closer attention to the newspapers, he might have felt that all his work had been wasted—shortly before Hitler was due to deliver his bierkeller speech, he canceled the arrangement, only to reinstate it the day before he was due to travel. But then, had Elser read the newspapers, he would also have realized that, as a concession to Hitler’s urgent need to be in Berlin, his speech had been rescheduled. It would now begin at 8 p.m. and last for little more than an hour.Hitler left the beer hall 1/2 hour before the bomb exploded.
More significantly to our discussion here is that the patrol of the Swiss border had also changed.
By 9:20 Elser, too, was far from the Löwenbräu. That morning he had taken a train for Konstanz, close to the Swiss border, and when darkness fell he set out to walk into Switzerland. But if Hitler’s luck held that night, his would-be assassin’s ran out. Elser’s April reconnaissance had taken place in peacetime; now, with Germany at war, the border had been closed. He was arrested by a patrol as he sought a way through wire entanglements.
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