A few years ago my wife and I made an RV trip from east Tennessee to Albuquerque, NM, and we had to go through Memphis. We timed it so that we traveled through on the Interstate, at about 11:00am on a weekday morning, on the theory that most of the thugs would be still in bed or passed out from the previous night's excesses.

Except for the horrible roads (one cabinet in the RV opened up and spilled its contents on the floor), we made it through OK. On the trip back we did the same thing, also went OK. When TSHTF, any day now, I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR that city.