This month’s newsletter article has been a long time coming. This is primarily due to the broad scope of the topic and the subsequent need to break it into digestible chunks. This then is the first in a series of articles I will be releasing on the topic of emergency preparedness, otherwise known as prepping. Prepping, as a general activity, can encompass everything from stocking fresh flashlight batteries for hurricane season to full-blown off-the-grid living. Each person’s idea of what prepping entails varies dramatically based on many factors. For example, whether you are alone in life or have a family, whether you are on the go or a homebody, whether you live in an apartment in the city or a house in the country, whether you are young or old, your financial assets, and even the time of year can impact what and how you choose to prep. Rest assured that we will explore all of this and more in this series over the coming months.
To get us started, I have elected to kick off this series with something more tangible that each of us can, and should, embrace… the so-called go bag. To be honest, I’ve never really liked the term ‘go bag’ as it doesn’t really fit my personal need scenario. As a frequent traveler, both cross-country and around the world, I think of my portable survival kit as being something that is most likely going to get me back home should a crisis arise while I am away. Because of this, I tend to refer to it as my ‘get home’ bag. Regardless, whether you call it a go bag, a get home bag, a bug-out bag or something else, we are all essentially talking about the same thing— a predetermined set of essential items tailored to your specific needs and organized into a grab-it-and-go pack or satchel.
Before you get too excited, we will not get into specific items for a go bag in this article. We’ll break all that down in next month’s issue. For now, I want to get your mind in the game regarding the rationale for a go bag. Trust me, I will take you through building one soon enough, but without the requisite understanding of the guiding philosophies behind a go bag, you may find yourself throwing a bunch of stuff willy nilly into a pack that may later prove to be useless trinkets at best and a weighty liability at worst. We’ve also talked about turning this subject into a formal class that could be offered to our patrons. If you find this idea compelling and would consider attending a go bag construction class, please contact us and let us know.
Let’s get this part out of the way… you don’t need a zombie apocalypse to justify this most basic level of prepping. A well thought-out go bag has equal utility during hurricane season, civil unrest, a mass casualty event such as a highway pileup, or even a day at the beach when the unexpected injury occurs. Crisis and danger comes in many shapes and sizes. The best example is through a true story. I frequently gift basic go bag set-ups to friends or family on birthdays, graduations, etc. Back in late 2013, I gifted a go bag to my sister on her birthday, who then augmented its contents to suit her needs. While the jokes flew around about zombies, nuclear war and even locusts, no one could have predicted what would happen just three short months later. In January of 2014, the city of Atlanta got 3 inches of snow. Now, for those of you who have ever lived up north or even visited northern cities during winter, 3 inches of snow is laughable. For Atlanta, however, it was unprecedented and it quickly brought the city to its knees. Compounding the problem was that metro Atlanta had exactly one snowplow, and it was out of service because it had never been used… ever. Throw in the typical daily traffic on Atlanta’s highways and it was a recipe for disaster. No one there knew how to drive in snow and ice. The metro beltway and thousands of surface roads became icy parking lots for days and many thousands of Atlanta motorists literally abandoned their vehicles, braved the cold and tried to walk home. Many more stayed in their vehicles and awaited rescue that they weren’t sure was coming any time soon. Among them was my sister. She was too far away to walk, but remembered her go bag. In it she found heat, nutrition, light, medication, communication and more. Was she miserable? You bet. But she was safe and felt no compulsion to put herself at further risk by hopping a guard rail and hiking home through numerous dubious Atlanta neighborhoods. She sheltered in place for more than 24 hours and waited for help to arrive.
The overarching idea here is simple. In an emergency, you likely won’t have time or the presence of mind to assemble last minute needs before you must escape looming danger. The purpose then of the go bag is to have many of the basics gathered and ready to go so that you needn’t think about it as the crisis unfolds. By preparing in advance you have a better chance of surviving the unknown with fewer vulnerabilities than those that are unprepared. This, of course, is a broad generalization that recognizes that each crisis is different, each person is different and, importantly, no amount of prepping can account for all possibilities. The goal is to eliminate the most common sources of vulnerability, thus buying you time and resources to face the vulnerabilities that you couldn’t prep for.
Much later in this series I will delve into the different types of crises and how they differ in scope, threat level and preps, but for now we will focus on the prepping mindset and many of the basic rules. The goal today is to get you thinking about your specific routines, your training (or lack thereof), your lifestyle, the locations you frequent, the dependents you support and more so that you can apply some basic common sense to the activity of prepping. The application of forethought and a little planning will put you far ahead of the curve compared to the unwashed masses. Throw in some basic and affordable tools, and the knowledge to use them, and you will be in the top 5% of those in any given crisis. An exercise that I frequently engage in is to consider the people I work with, or my neighbors, or my family members, or random people I encounter. I try to imagine their reaction to a true crisis based on how I see them handle minor inconveniences in our otherwise convenient world. I’ll have to settle for praying for most of them because I know they won’t make it!
This brings me to one of the most understated reasons to have a go bag. In a crisis, say sweeping riots and lawlessness, the unprepared individual is less likely to die by starvation or lack of water than they are to sheer violence. Various think tanks believe that it is the interactions people will have with violent elements in our society while seeking supplies that will claim the most lives early on. As I have pounded into my wife and daughter, when the crisis unfolds, the last places you want to go is a grocery store to gather supplies or a gas station to top off the tank. These are the places where the most conspicuous early-stage looting and violence will occur. If you are properly prepared, even with a basic go bag, you can bypass many such needs and completely avoid interacting with unknown players in a spiraling mob. Your go bag, in other words, gives you choices and flexibility. Avoiding unknown people while you head for the safety of home is always a good idea. Desperate people do desperate things.
You’ll note that thus far I haven’t said a word about guns. While a go bag may or may not include a firearm based on your distinct situation, my point here is probably not what you’d expect. I have heard the following statement made in jest by some and dead serious by others, “I got a gun so I’ll just take what I need from someone else!” Don’t be that person. In fact, don’t be either of those people… the taker or the victim. Look, guns will only get you so far and the very act of using one places you into those negative interactions that are better avoided in a crisis.
It is at this point that we must begin to discuss some basic rules of thumb when it comes to building your personal kit. In the next installment of this series we will dive into a list of specific items and categories you will want to consider, but first we need to lay some important groundwork around the philosophy behind your go bag. First and foremost is that your personal kit must address your personal needs. Sure, you can copy a prep list posted by some survival expert online, and it will likely be a good starting point, but that survival expert isn’t you. Do you have a medical condition? A child? A dog? An allergy to certain foods? Are you a woman of menstruation age? Do you wear contacts? These things and more must be taken into account as you build your personal kit. While 50 different go bags may have many items in common, there will be deviation along certain predictable lines.
One thing I have to say is that you should not get lured into buying these complete go bag kits often peddled online. While some of them have some small degree of merit, they are frequently overpriced and often contain underwhelming products that are not best-in-class by a long shot. You’re paying for someone else to collect some basic first aid/pocket knife/flashlight/water purifier products that I wouldn’t bet my life on. Many of these products are made overseas and are not survival grade. They don’t last in real-world use and they may even be unsafe. By selecting your own products and understanding their usage, you’ll end up with a quality and well-appointed survival kit that actually works. More on that next month.
To be clear, your go bag is about saving YOU. Not your neighbor. Not your girlfriend. Not your brother-in-law. It is about saving you. Sure, you will encounter situations where it is appropriate to help someone else using gear in your bag. I’m not suggesting you ignore someone that is injured or in need. I’m specifically talking about the people close to you needing to build their own bags. If each individual is responsible for their own kit, then you aren’t stuck lugging enough crap for a small army. Unless we’re talking about very small children, even kids could be taught to assemble their own. Heck, my dogs even carry their own supplies in harness rigs! If you have a family of four, you should probably have four bags, similar in scope, but tailored in weight and contents to the individual. In such a scenario, not each piece of gear needs to be duplicated. Highly specialized kit components, like a solar charger, might only be needed by one party member.
Another key consideration is how little is too little or how much is too much. Both can be a problem. I have seen some ludicrously overburdened survival load-outs in my day. Try to carry too much and you can actually undermine your survivability through fatigue and loss of pace. Carry too little and you risk exposing yourself to emergent vulnerabilities you didn’t anticipate. A good example is access to drinking water. Build a super light go bag meant to get you home from the other side of town during civil unrest and you might choose to pass on water purification. After all, there’s plenty back at your house, right? Forget to update your preps and absentmindedly toss your go bag in the car to go on a road trip to Tallahassee for a football game, and you could find yourself very thirsty on the long march home during that same unrest.
To solve this, I personally believe in a tiered system. In fact, I have three distinct go bag levels based primarily on how far away from home I am going. These three are adjusted pre-trip based on where I am going, the time of year and the duration of stay. I build my go bags with the worst-case scenario in mind— that wherever I am when the crisis hits, I will not be able to travel home by normal means. In short, I’ll be walking. That’s all well and good if I start my walk in Ocala, but what about Mississippi or Nevada? It could take hours, days, weeks or even months to get back to friendly territory depending upon my starting point, and the severity, scope and duration of the crisis. It is important to understand that a go bag’s job isn’t to carry enough provisions to feed, hydrate, clothe and equip you for months. It is intended simply to give you the needed head-start until you can find further sustenance for the longer haul if needed. Whether you travel frequently and worry about getting home or you are preparing to flee in the event of a crisis close to home, these considerations apply. We’ll get into the specific contents of the three tiers in the next article, but suffice to say that my light weight satchel is ALWAYS in my personal vehicle. It is there to get me home from across town or the next county or two. The intermediate pack is intended for trips further away or to more remote areas, say, within a couple hundred miles. The most robust pack is usually included in my travel gear when I am heading many states away.
This brings us to regional considerations. Here in Florida, our winters are mild and our summers brutal. If you don’t travel far and wide like I do, then you need not necessarily include preps for staying warm, but you darn well better plan to hydrate safely. Among the least frequently considered preps is clothing. How many of you go to an office wearing a suit and tie, leather dress shoes, women’s heels or other attire unsuited to long walks or survival? Do you keep a pair of shorts, running shoes, a raincoat or other practical attire in your trunk for such emergencies? You should. Another often neglected consideration is local law. A quality blade is always a good idea in a go bag. Knife laws can vary state-to-state and it would be a shame to have your go bag get you sideways with the law when crossing state lines. Again, this is where a solid recognition of your routines, including travel, can guide primary contents and alternate load-outs where appropriate.
Finally there is the consideration of personal survival skills. While most preps require little or no skill, such as a flashlight, there are many items that definitely require training, such as a tourniquet. With virtually no exception, however, there is nothing you would put in a go bag that couldn’t benefit from some basic understanding of proper use. Even our aforementioned flashlight, carelessly used, could give away your position to hostiles who may be quite happy to take you out and steal your stuff. An exercise I believe to be quite worthwhile is where you have built your go bag and then take it to the local campground or wilderness area for a test drive. Can you actually use the items you’ve gathered in an efficient and useful way? A real emergency is not the time to learn that you don’t know how to start a basic campfire, for example. Could you survive a weekend in the woods with nothing but your bag? A week? Once we get past the next couple of articles on this subject, I am considering crafting such an outing for select individuals to put your bag to the test in a non-life-threatening weekend.
So there’s your basic overview and introduction. I am truly looking forward to deep diving this subject moving forward. I am also anticipating your feedback, personal experiences, unique prep ideas and strategies for survival in general. Naturally, as we approach hurricane season, much of this could be practically put to use without the need any of the walking dead!
Stay Calm and Carry On!
Todd Johnson - Contributor-at-Large
Lawful Defense ╾━╤デ╦︻ ShootGTR
