This article on bug out bags comes from my own experiences and discussions I have had with a wide range of so called subject matter experts (SME’s) on survival. The group I normally discuss these types of topics with consist of a few experienced US Army Special Forces (18B), our lone Air Force Load Master and several USMC senior enlisted and Warrant Officers. I will preface this article with, there are normally copious amounts of alcohol involved during most of the conversations, but ultimately the opinions expressed in this article are mine and any mistakes are mine and mine alone. I will also state that I tend to think in military terms and will do my best to keep from using military terms as much as possible. I also want to clarify that my bug-out bag is actually a get home bag as I travel a lot and for weeks at a time. I will also be addressing this article to individuals, not couples or small family groups. Anytime you have to prepare and plan for more than your own survival it becomes way, way more complicated in some ways and simpler in some ways. We will discuss group survival at some point in the future.
So I was beginning to feel left out as everyone with an opinion has written an article about Every Day Carry (EDC) and Bug-Out Bags. Some of the articles are fundamentally good and others are just trying to sell one gadget or another. I am not going to cover EDC bags today, as I can’t even agree with myself on a single EDC bag. As I write this I have no less than three EDC bags in my vehicle. Just one of many things I irritate myself with, I can never just change out items from my EDC bag(s), I always start another one from scratch kidding myself that I will replace my current bag with the new one. Doesn’t happen, I just add the new one to my vehicle, telling myself I will hand down the old bag to one of the kids. I really don’t know where I picked up this bad habit. After spending over five years in Afghanistan and over three years in Iraq (after I retired with over 20 years in the Marine Corps), this is how I turn out. I’ll have to spend some more time thinking on this subject as I never had this problem while in-country on assignment. Oh, I would occasionally change an item out of my EDC for a new or better piece of equipment, but I digress, no EDC discussion today.
As with almost all subjects, the phrase “it depends” tends to come up a lot when discussing bug-out bags. Several factors first need to be addressed prior to selecting your actual bug out bag. These are a few of the main factors you must first address with total and complete honesty; mental preparation; physical condition of the person carrying the bag; what type of terrain you will be carrying the bag over; season of the year; and what individual survival skills the person has. We will discuss each of these factors in detail.
First, are you mentally prepared for this? Do you have the common sense, mental agility, determination and adaptability to survive? Of course we have all thought about it, we all read or watch a video and say “I can do that”, but have you trained both your mind and body to actually do those things? Simple everyday things become a major production. Let’s be blunt, when was the last time you had to use the bathroom when you were out in the woods? How vulnerable did you feel, squatted down with your pants around your ankles? Trust me this only is made more difficult with age. Normally this would only take a few minutes most of the time, but with all the equipment you are now carrying, taking it all off, tearing your pack apart to find your TP. Now try this at night, in the rain. Having fun yet? All of these normal small daily chores must be thought about and prepared for, both mentally and physically. If your travels tend to be to the same areas this makes planning easier, not easy, but easier. When was the last time you picked up your fire kit and went outside and started a fire in the rain or slept on the ground or made a cup of dandelion tea? If you have done any of these, you are in a class almost by yourself. But at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter how much you have trained or what causes you to bug out, once the situation or event reaches up and slaps you across the face, do you know what to do first or second? If you are in a rural area you might (maybe, it depends) have a little more flex in your time table. But if you are in downtown Washington D.C. or New York City, minutes count. The nature of your operational area (where you are when the event takes place) will help determine how much and what type of training you need to do before the actual event. Way before an event you have to make preparations (this includes education, training and equipping yourself), than you need to have a plan (a plan is not to make two marks on a map and say I’m going to walk from point A to point B), without a plan you won’t last long but someone will come along and be able to use your gear, thanks, I prefer high end titanium, so please only buy the best. Last but not least, you have to know when to execute your plan. Educate yourself on the key indicators (another topic for another day), be mental prepared to recognize the key indicators and act accordingly. Or you could sit around on your ass for the next three days thinking the government is going to fix the problem. You could do that, I would not suggest this course of action, but chances are that if you are at day three of an event and you haven’t moved yet, than you need go no further than the first patch of grass and begin digging your grave. Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt your feelings. Suck it up buttercup, get your shit together or don’t waste my time.
Second, you have to be honest about how much weight you can carry on a given day. Sure I can throw 100 pounds of stuff into a pack, and I can even carry it for at least 15 to 20 miles on a fairly flat, good surface if I have decent weather and a tail wind. But can I do it on the second day? After sleeping on the ground, after exhausting myself, after treating all the blisters? Nope, the second day even given the same conditions I’m down to half that distance, maybe. It would depend on many factors, such as; did I drink enough water and take in enough calories the previous day; did I take care of my feet; do I have to stop and replace water used on the first day; did the weather change (get hotter or colder); or am I just wiped out and exhausted from over doing it on the first day. So the bottom line is first try and be in the best physical shape you can be. Second, be realistic on how much you can carry and for how far. If you have not recently carried a pack for any distance than you are not going to get very far that first day or the second or third. Know your limitations and don’t push yourself over the edge. Trust me, get off the beaten path and slowly build up, it will take you a couple of weeks to get into a rhythm. I know, you need to get where you going as quickly as possible. If that’s the case than you need to begin training now, not after the event occurs. Also, your boots (well broken in) should always be attached to your bag/pack. One is no good without the other. Of course that means you need two pair at a minimum as you need a hot weather and cold weather pair.
Third you need to know the terrain you are going to be traveling. I currently travel far from my home on a weekly/monthly basis. Depending on how long I will be in the area dictates if I take my own vehicle. Normally, I will drive my own vehicle if my work location is in a state that has ccw reciprocity with Texas. An example of this is I do a lot of work in the D.C./Maryland area, but when I do I always stay in northern Virginia so I can have my bug out equipment. (I even took the time to get my concealed carry permit for the district.) Anyway, I always have a broken down large scale US Rand McNally in my vehicle and attempt to set aside the hours required to map out return routes by foot or by water (water routes are another subject for another day). It helps pass the time while I am away from my family and it allows me to tailor what I bring in my bug-out/get-home bag. So you might be wondering what some of the advantages are of knowing the terrain you might have to survive in. This can be very confusing if you are in a built up area. I’ll use the area between Baltimore, MD and Washington D.C. as an example. Let’s say you are working at or near BWI when the event happens. All motorized transportation is dead. Your goal is to get south of D.C. into the Virginia countryside. Do you stick to the highways and walk, buy, barter, or burrow a bicycle and ride the roads to safety? How long is it safe to be out on the road with a pack on your back once the power goes out? Do you always travel with your EDC weapons? Think before you say yes, Maryland is death on illegal weapons. So stay on the roads, use the railroad beds, use hiking trails, head west to the next crossing point of the Potomac River? Without prior planning this is all guess work. What is the shortest route? Where are the choke points if there is civil unrest? Most experts agree that there will be a small window of normal response to a major event. Everyone will be in the wait and see what the government is going to do. However, in major built up areas that window might be very small indeed. Major built up areas are not your friend, but without putting some time into what we would call area familiarization, you greatly reduce your chances of survival. So let’s put the major built up areas on the back burner for now. Assume you can wing it and survive getting out of the city and now you are in the Virginia countryside. From this point on it is a piece of cake. Right? A much less population density, good back roads, plenty of wild game, rivers and lakes just teeming with fish. Again, it depends, do you have the skills to scavenge, hunt, and live off the land. Do you have any snares or yoyo fishing reels with you? You must be able to collect resources using the least amount of energy possible. This is only common sense, if you use more energy to collect than you gain, it is quick way to starvation. Do you actually know how to set a snare or skin a small animal or clean a fish? If you do, than knowing the types of plants and animal life could greatly contribute to your ability to do more than survive. Almost anyone can survive for a long period of time barring freezing to death or the lack of potable water. There is a big, big difference between surviving and thriving. If wildlife and vegetation is plentiful, than anyone can survive, but can you hunt, trap, or scavenge enough food and water to restock your go-bag and get you back on the road to your planned destination. Again, if you expend more energy collecting the supplies than you gather than you will never reach your destination. If you have not pre-planned your bug out routes out of a place like D.C., LA, or New York City, than your chances of surviving civil unrest or a disaster (be it natural or man-made) go way, way down.
So you made it out of the city into the countryside. You can finally relax and get a good night’s sleep and lo and behold you wake up around 0400 in the morning, freezing and find a heavy frost had fallen during the night. Damn you think, I didn’t pack my under blanket for my hammock, or change out my summer weight clothes for my winter weight stuff. You will be ok for a couple more weeks but what about when the weather really turns cold. Again, choices, you can push on and leave it up to chance that you will find someone that you can trade with for some heavy winter stuff, or you can alter your route to the nearest town and attempt to buy or trade there. Remember prices for items are driven by the law of supply and demand. It will cost you more for some long johns standing on a farmer’s front porch in 20 degree weather than in 50 degree weather. Cold weather zaps your strength and endurance, it also calls for more calories and more water, that uses up critical resources, shorter days means more traveling in the dark or just less time you can move during the day. Are you familiar enough with your gear to set up camp in low light or complete darkness? So far you have not built any fires other than in your small cook stove, now with cold weather truly happening, you will need to make or find shelter ever night. Truthfully, when was the last time you took your poncho, some 5/50 cord and constructed a shelter. For me it has been over 28 years ago while attending SERE school in Brunswick, Maine. Again more energy and resources used. Now I always travel with a Warbonnet hammock with a Superfly tarp. Light weight and all the comforts of home, but that’s a topic for a different post. Anytime you have to build an open fire you are increasing your risk of unwanted visitors and fires can be dangerous to you and your equipment unless properly constructed. If your gear has no fire damage than you haven’t been using it much or not at all. Smoke and the light from a fire can be seen or smelled for a very long distance. Again, contact with locals should be done with the utmost care and only if you really, really, need to. Contact with refugees should be avoided at all costs. I know it sounds harsh, but you can get sucked down a rabbit hole really quickly by trying to help other people. You must remain focused on your mission, getting home to your own family as quickly as possible. Making contact with locals or refugees is another of those topics we will discuss on another day. So what are the most important skills to have and really know? I tend to rely on the basic needs from Maslow’s hierarchy, food, water, warmth, rest, security, and safety. Only after the basic needs are met do I worry about the higher level psychological needs. Don’t completely disregard the psychological needs, as being cut off completely from your family will definitely have a hand in the game. No one is exempt from worry and worse, depression. The more difficult time you are having just covering 5 or 10 miles a day could become depressing to the extreme if you have not prepared your family and yourself for handling such an event. Just one more topic that I cannot do justice to in this paper but will cover it in more detail in the future. Let’s begin with the first topic, food. This is where you have to be totally honest with yourself. Pick a normal three day period and keep track of every single thing you eat and drink. I would bet there is a large percentage of you that do not drink a single cup of water every day. Oh, you drink, but it is a cup of coffee, sometimes several a day, or one or more sodas, or a couple of Red Bulls, maybe a glass of milk or juice at breakfast. Next let’s talk about how many calories you inhale each and every day. Come on, don’t be bashful, most of us take in about 2200 to 3000 calories a day. A single serve package of SPAM has 230 calories. A packet of Quaker Oats Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal has a total of 160 calories. I picked these two products because I carry both in my bag. Now it’s time to get serious, if you are carrying a bug-out pack that weighs about 40 pounds and a rifle or pistol or both and are walking up and down small hills all day, every day, 2200 calories is not going to do it. Be honest, how many of you have ever skinned a squirrel or a rabbit and cooked it over a fire, much less eaten one? A quarter pound of squirrel meat will net you about 173 calories, broken down into about 31 grams of protein and almost 5 grams of fat, not much depending on how much energy you spend getting, cleaning, and cooking the squirrel. Back to my point about your 40 pound pack, so just how much food do you think you can carry? Three days, five days? Why am I asking? Well that seems to be what everyone recommends but the way I look at it is that’s great if you know it is only going to take you three or four days to get to your location where you have other supplies. But if you are like me, far away from home and it will take at least a month to get home than three or five days of food is not near enough. I’m not going to get into too many details on my own plans for getting home but I will talk a little about the food situation. The eastern U.S. is teeming with wildlife. But I do want to warn you, very experienced deer hunters come home a lot more days without even seeing a deer than they do with a deer in the back of their truck. However, here is where a little bit of knowledge can help out in a huge way. Know your plants and trees, always at least have a small book that has pictures of plants and trees that are useful, also have a tree tap, it is amazing how much sugar you can get from tree sap, sugar equals energy. Small things like bouillon cubes can make a huge difference at the end of a long day walking. Protein powder can go a long way, be caution you can’t live forever on it, but once a day or so as a pick me up is fine. It is fairly simple to establish small food caches on planned routes. Amazing how a little bit of planning can make life so easy. Mile markers and exits rarely if ever change. A properly developed cache can survive for several years. We will discuss caches in detail on another day.
Before you can even think about running out and buying a Bug-out/Get Home Bag, you first have to decide what is going into that bag. If you have time and space, gather all the stuff you think you need for your bug-out bag. Once you have it all together, do a detailed inventory of every single piece. Put some thought into it and if you are missing critical items, work those into your budget and get them. You should have at least a primary and a backup of important items. I know the old rule, that one is none and two is one, and for the most part I agree with this. Organize like type items and separate your primary items from your backup items. The backup items will go into the bottom of your bag, these backup item can go into heavy duty zip lock bags or stuff sacks. Clearly label each bag. Once you have all your gear and supplies, put them into a large trash bag and weigh them. I am not one of those types that dictate you can or cannot exceed 40 or 50 or 60 pounds. What I am going to say that this technique will give you a baseline to train for. If your gear and supplies (don’t forget to fill your water bladder) weigh 60 pounds than you need to be able to carry that amount of weight. Trust me, I don’t care how much planning and training you do, once you are carrying your pack everywhere with you, you will find out real quick what is really important in your pack and what isn’t. History show this to be true. The Oregon Trail was easy to follow due to all the discarded items along the trail. Do not let the size of your pack dictate what you can or cannot carry. If you think you need that much gear to get you to where you need to be than by all means go for it. But be smart about it.
The Irritated Prepper 