Prepare for your escape now. Figure that your Mom is likely to have you abducted. An escort service relatively cheap and there are dozens of them. You will wake up with a couple strangers in your room telling you to get dressed and that you have no choice but to come with them. From that point onward, they will have one hand on your arm and one finger in your belt-loop. And you will be in the backseat of a car whose doors do not open from the inside. They will take away your cellphone and it could be years before you are allowed to have communication with anyone who could help you. They depend on your disorientation and confusion to get you away from where it is easy for you to escape to someplace where it is less easy.
I can only guess at the best methods for escaping. In one case, I believe the kid being abducted attacked the person driving the car causing a car wreck. He told the police officers who investigate the wreck that he was being kidnapped. The escort service personnel were arrested and charged with assault and battery. I do not believe risking your life or the life of others is a reasonable response to even a desperate situation like this.
If the escort people use any force against you, there is a strong chance they may be liable for criminal offenses. Just remember, they will lie to you. They will claim that your parents have given them permission to use physical force. In many states, that is not possible. Get the attention of a police officer and tell them what is happening. Your best chance of escaping may be while you are being escorted. Make a scene in a public place and let people know you are being kidnapped. Yell for help, scream. I would consider yelling things like "Help, I am being kidnapped." and maybe even "Call 911. They have a gun."
Figure that most of the time you will be headed for a facility in Utah. Depending on where you are, you will be going through an airport. You might consider making a scene at the security checkpoint, refusing to allow being searched and claim that you are being kidnapped. Then, when they ask for a contact person, give them the phone number of a friend or a relative who has agreed to help you.
If they get you to a wilderness program, you are pretty much screwed. They are incredibly difficult to successfully escape. If you do happen to escape, and you are in Utah, figure that everyone you see in the surrounding area are in the 'Troubled Teen' industry. Here are some ideas you might consider. If you hitch-hike, tell who ever picks you up that you are a college student that is hitchhiking across the USA. Tell them that you were riding with someone else and got out of the car to take a piss and the driver left with all your stuff. Tell them you have a friend waiting for you in Las Vegas, so if you can just get there you will have money and will be ok.
If you get into a program, you probably will have plenty of opportunities. It appears to be relatively easy to walk away from the program. The big trick is that the programs have plenty of experience in looking in the places where kids tend to go. Possibly in most cases, the kids run with no plan and if they do not get caught in the few minutes or hours after they escape, they realize they have no place to go and just walk back into the program.
The only successful case of a kid running away from a program that I am aware of, involved a kid who took some money from his mom's purse each time she visited him at the program in Utah. When he was at a local park skateboarding, he paid some kids there to drive him to Las Vegas and bought a driver's license from one of them. From Las Vegas, he took an airplane to stay with friends he had met playing internet games. He stayed with those friends for nearly a year until he turned 18. His mom spent over $100,000 searching for him but was unable to find him. His mom sent police after his adult sister and obtained her phone records trying to find him. His sister had used an internet service to talk with him.
Some of the things he did include: 1) He acted like he was making plans 3 or 4 months out even when he was ready to leave within a few days. 2) Whenever other kids would talk about running away, he always told them it was impossible. No matter how close of a friend you think they are, they will turn you in. It is part of the program. Never trust anyone in the program. Act like you have drank the kool-aide; these guys have more experience dealing with defiance than you do being defiant. 3) figure out how to squirrel some money away. He had close to $1,000 by the time he escaped. He lived for almost a year on that money. 4) It took him almost a year from the time he was first abducted until he successfully escaped. 5) He escaped on his first attempt. You almost never get a second chance.
NEVER NEVER NEVER call your parents if you run. They always call the program and the program comes and picks you up. The program does an orientation with your parents as part of putting you in the program, and in that orientation, they give your parents instructions on how to handle it if you run away and call them. The program's instructions are something like, be sympathetic, tell the kid that the parent is going to come and pick up the kid and bring them home, and then call the program to come and pick you up.
Try to have a friend or relative who will help you be prepared in advance. Even better if it is someone that your parents do not know.