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A Medical Chest: Is it important?

OF COURSE.

Whether your bugging out with a group or bugging out alone it is extremely important to have someone with some degree of medical knowledge and/or skill. If you’re bugging out with a group and you’ve got a plan in place, but no designated “medic”, you have a problem. If you’re bugging out alone and you don’t have any basic medical knowledge, again, you have a problem.

It’s easy enough to say “I never get sick” or “Ill tough it out” when it comes to an illness or injury in everyday life, but if you’re bugging out, everyday living will cease to exist. Whether you’re hunkering down in a bunker or climbing up foothills or mountains, sh*t is bound to happen. Maybe someone in your family brought in a simple cold. It doesn’t take long for that simple cold to turn into a sinus infection, which once your immune system is beat down enough, can turn into pneumonia. Consider you’re climbing in the foothills or hunkering down in a forest and you drink some bad water…maybe your Lifestraw has already filtered its limits, or maybe your water wasn’t heated for long enough. Bacteria can take hold of your body’s systems within days, sometimes hours, and cause unfortunate and inconvenient effects such as vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration and eventually, death. You get my point.

So what can you do to prevent this? Well, stay healthy, take your vitamins, and boil your water. Stating the obvious, right? Prevention is great, but like I said, and I’ll say it again, sh*t happens. A contingency plan for those SHTF moments is the key to efficiency and more importantly, survival. You can create a top-notch medical kit addition to any bugout bag or kit easily and cheaply. All it takes is basic medical knowledge and a small pack to potentially save you, your family or your friends in a SHTF situation.

The Doomsday Book Of Medicine: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way

I wish that there was a six star option

“I’m a dentist, and I have just enough medical knowledge to be dangerous. This marvellous book has so far exceeded my expectations that I am amazed that so much useful knowledge can be packed into one book! Hats off to Dr. La Guardia! The information in this book can be used immediately to improve your health, and expand your treatment options in many areas even if there is never a crisis event for you and your loved ones. The panorama of medical, herbal, and traditional treatments in one easy reference makes this one a MUST HAVE! for everyone interested in healthy options and preppers/survivalists in particular. Cannot recommend it more highly. If you can only buy one medical reference book, this is IT!

 
Absolutely THE BEST prepper medicine book!”
DR. DALE W HUDSON

The Basics of a Medical Chest:

Ibuprofen: So Underrated. It’ll help with mild pain, but more importantly, it can help take down and break a fever. How fun is it trying to function at your day job with a fever that turns into a massive headache that turns into hot flashes and cold sweats? Now imagine dealing with that while you’re lumbering through the wilderness. Not fun.

Pepto Bismol: Once again, underrated. Not only will this reduce your burning desire to throw up those repulsive MRES, but it has the potential to get diarrhea under control. Having to stop every 5 minutes to see a bush about a horse? Inconvenient AND unpleasant.

Benadryl: Works for both people and dogs, making it a vital part of my personal bag. Hiking through the woods and your dog steps on or eats a wasp? I know I don’t want to carry my almost 50 pound dog for very long, how about you? 1 MG per pound of body-weight will take care of that problem. It can also be used to ease a dog’s anxiety, just lower the dose a bit. If you’re traveling or hunkering down with someone who has an allergy whether it be to a food or animal, a quick response with a dose of Benadryl can make a bigger difference then you would expect. I carry a bottle of Benadryl and a tube of Benadryl Cream for topical use.

Medi-Lyte: Uncommon, but not unimportant. I used to work in the oil fields during the big boom, and this was something I always kept stocked for my guys. It is used to replace electrolytes from excessive loss of liquids. I’m talking sweat, vomit, whatever. You can purchase 500 tablets on Amazon for twenty bucks. 100% WORTH IT. Oh, and try two tabs for a hangover, it’ll do wonders ????

Hydrocortisone Cream: Once again, suitable for both you and your dog. Hiking out in the woods comes with a price. While an occasional bug bite is not something that will really bother you, being covered in them probably will. The same goes for your dog. Mosquito bites, tick bites, flea bites, poison ivy, weird rashes; it covers it all. Literally.

Triple Antibiotic: This one is basically the jack of all trades. Use it on burns, cuts, scrapes, and anything else you’re worried about getting infected. I would suggest only using it the first 1-2 days after the injury is sustained. After scabs are formed it won’t do much and there is no point in wasting precious supplies.

Everyday Allergy Meds: Sudafed, Zyrtec, Claritin, because there is nothing worse than trying to walk long distance or climb bluffs or mountains with a runny nose.

CPR Rescue Mask, Adult/Child Pocket Resuscitator

CPR Mask and Sterile or Nitrile Gloves: I don’t care how well you know someone; do you really want to take a bath in their bodily fluids? I didn’t think so. Carry a CPR mask with you in your medic bag and remember the basics from CPR Class, compressions and breaths, 30:2. Compressions should be done by finding the middle spot between the nipples and pumping your overlapped hands down onto their body. They won’t tell you in your average CPR class, but I will; you will hear ribs cracking, if they survive they will be in pain from it, and it is not easy on the body to lean over and perform compressions on someone. You will be sore. Saving someone’s life though- 100% worth it. If you haven’t taken a basic CPR class yet, don’t be a dummy. It’s 50$ on average and takes only a few hours of your time.

Hot Hands: There is nothing worse than being sweaty, cold, and out in the wilderness. Once you’re cold it is very hard to get warm, but a hot hands pad can make the world of difference. Toss one onto the top of your head and cover it up with a hat. My dad has told me since I was little; heat rises. Keep your head warm and your body will be warm.

Various sized Band-Aids, bandages, ace wraps and anti-bacterial wipes: Obvious, but easily overlooked. I was on a mountain climbing trip in Montana this fall, and I got stuck coming down at night. Not smart, and not fun. I tripped on a tiny rock and my ankle bent and twisted. The next morning I had a 7 mile hike to a primitive forest service cabin across two mountain ranges and I could barely walk without my ankle giving in. An ace wrap and some duct tape made the world of difference.

The Not-So-Basics:

I don’t expect you guys to have giant stockpiles of these things lying around, but I can guarantee you if you dig through your cabinets and junk drawers you’re bound to find one or two of these things lying around. Please also remember I am not a doctor, and I’m not god, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Having these things does not guarantee a life saved.

Elite First Aid Fully Stocked GI Issue Medic Kit Bag, Large

Epi-Pens: Unfortunately, these have gotten harder to come by recently, on account of obnoxiously high prices, but if you or your family member has an allergy that requires you to carry one of these, don’t leave it behind when you bug out. Not only could it save your life for what it was intended, but it could save someone in your groups life should they encounter an unexpected allergy source.

Muscle Relaxers: If you’ve done any hiking, walking or running long distances you know how exhausting it can be on your body. Imagine doing it for days at a time while trying to find the perfect camp location. These come in handy to both relax your body and your mind, making it much easier to carry on hiking or even sleep. Personally I can take one of these and continue on with my day, but I’ve heard stories of people taking them and falling asleep within the hour, so remember that everyone responds differently.

Antibiotics: I know I can’t be the only one that’s been prescribed antibiotics and not taken all of them. Do you have a stockpile of half taken antibiotics? In everyday life it’s not a good idea to take half of a dose and leave the rest behind, as it puts you at risk for antibiotic resistance, but if you’re in the wilderness or an emergency situation and you need antibiotics, I think you can afford to take that risk. The same goes for your basic antifungals.

Higher Dose Pain Relievers: If you have left over pain killers from a surgery or injury, pack them up and take them along. I will let you imagine all the possible injuries that may require their use.

Israeli Pressure Bandages: These bandages have been carried by the Israeli Army for ages for a good reason. They compress, clot, and cover a wound. The instructions are on the packaging, and they are fairly simple, lightweight, and about 10$ a piece on Amazon. Worth it.

Suture Kits: Also available on Amazon, although they are usually labeled “for veterinary use only.” They will work in time of need. It’s basically a needle and thread. Buy a few and practice stitching up an orange, or if you’re looking for a little more “real world” (and gross) experience, a pigs foot. It’s pretty much what you see on TV. Unless you went to medical school, you will not be an expert, but if it’s absolutely and undeniably necessary, you’re better than nothing.

I have all of these things in my bugout bag, and it only takes up a very small portion of it. Scrounge up what you can from what you already have, and buy the rest when it’s convenient or on sale to keep costs low. If you’re low on space, take the pills out of the bottles and package them in plastic instead, but remember that the bottles can have other uses in your bag.

I have no doubts that with even 1/2 of these items in your bag you will be better off than your average prepper. Never underestimate the power of basic medical knowledge and preparation. Good luck out there!

Other self-sufficiency and preparedness solutions recommended for you:

The Lost Ways (The vital self-sufficiency lessons our great grand-fathers left us)

Survival MD (Knowledge to survive any medical crisis situation)

Backyard Liberty (Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…)

Alive After the Fall (Build yourself the only unlimited water source you’ll ever need)

The Lost ways II (4 Important Forgotten Skills used by our Ancestors that can help you in any crisis)

The Patriot Privacy Kit (Secure your privacy in just 10 simple steps)

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A Medical Chest: Is it important? OF COURSE. Whether your bugging out with a group or bugging out alone it is extremely important to have someone with some degree of medical knowledge

Americans like to spend money on their landscapes – a LOT of money. According to the National Gardening Association, the amount invested in lawns and landscapes in this country has ranged from $29 billion to almost $45 billion annually over the last few years.

Research has shown that there’s some practical value to well-planned and maintained landscaping, including an increase in appraised real estate value and a significant reduction in utility costs, but whenever I see someone spending their Saturday installing expensive rolls of turf grass or hundreds of impatiens, I’m tempted to ask the question my grandfather asked my grandmother about her houseplants: “Why would you grow something you can’t eat?”

I’m not anti-lawn (not totally anyway; the kids DO need a place to play football), but as a vegetable gardener and someone with an interest in preparedness, it troubles my spirit to see so much time, energy and cash going to pretty specimen plants and yard grasses and so little going to food crops for a particular household.

The information in this book can be used immediately to improve your health, and expand your treatment options in many areas even if there is never a crisis event for you and your loved ones. Click on it for details.

Imagine a food garden that you only have to plant once in your life-time, that takes up very little space, that will provide food for you and your family for the next 30 years

But is it possible to have the best of both worlds? And even if you already have a large vegetable garden and orchards, the diversity of edible landscapes can help fill in the gaps in your food security. For instance, think about what would happen if an insect or disease problem wiped out your apples or corn. Plus, plants worked into a landscape are more covert. The average person wouldn’t likely be able to identify a berry- or nut-producing shrub in a landscape bed unless they actually laid eyes on the berries or nuts.

Creating your Edible Landscape

Below are twelve plants to consider for your home environment that are both attractive and edible. Depending on where you’re located, some of these may not grow well in your particular USDA hardiness zone, so do your homework. Your local extension service can recommend other alternatives. Many of these can slip nicely into traditional landscapes, too, in case you have a homeowner association critiquing your every move.

Blueberries

Blueberries have appeal in all four seasons. The white blossoms of spring, the summer fruits, the red fall foliage and the bark texture visible in winter all make this plant a good fit for your landscape, and a healthy blueberry bush will bear for up to 50 years!

You’ll need cross-pollination, so select at least two different varieties that bloom at the same time. And as with all crops, know the pH of the site you’ve chosen before planting. Blueberries prefer an acidic pH of 4.5 to 5.3, so if it’s higher than this, you can adjust by adding a small amount of sulfur.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR A CRISIS TO USE THIS BOOK. Click above for details.

Serviceberry

When I was a child, my grandmother always sang the praises of the “sarvis” tree, also know regionally as shadbush or Juneberry. The fruits look similar to a blueberry, although the two aren’t related. The serviceberry is a tree, not a shrub, and can reach heights in the landscape of up to 25 feet tall (and even taller in a natural environment).

serviceberryripecloseup

Bake them into pies, puddings or muffins. Dehydrate them like raisins.

I had to attend a conference this past summer, and I discovered that serviceberry had been used quite effectively in the inn’s formal, manicured landscape, and it was bearing prolifically among the more conventional ornamental choices.

Kousa dogwood

This Asian dogwood looks similar to the flowering dogwood native to the eastern U.S., but it’s more disease-resistant, it performs better in full sun, and it has edible fruits the size of a small plum. These can be eaten raw or used to make jams or jellies.

Cornelian cherry

Not actually a cherry at all, but another species of dogwood, the fruits from this tree are tart and versatile. In the U.S., they’re typically used to make jam, but in parts of Europe or the Middle East where this species is native, the fruits might be used in the distillation of vodka or served as a salted summertime snack.

Passionflower

Nine species of passionflower are native to the U.S., and other species are commercially produced in tropical climates for juice, which can be found on the shelves of most larger supermarkets. Juice can be produced from most of our native species as well, but the maypop or purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is considered the best.

PassionFlower

New research suggests that passionflower may treat insomnia and anxiety as well as prescription drugs, but without the side effects.

Where you may typically have ornamental vines like clematis running up a mailbox or trellis, consider passionflower instead.

Currants

Currants are related to gooseberries but have no thorns. Currants are one of the few fruits that perform well in partial shade, so if you have a corner of your yard that doesn’t get solid sunlight from morning until evening, consider these.

Currants

From early June through August, this bright, tangy fruit is at its flavorful peak. Enjoy it in recipes that are sweetly irresistible.

Currants come in a range of colors, from black to red to pink to white, but be mindful that some types could be illegal in your state. This is a carryover from the early 20th Century, when it was discovered that black currants were an alternate host for white pine blister rust, a disease which negatively impacted the timber industry.

Rhubarb

With its large leaves and red stalks, rhubarb can fit nicely into an ornamental bed, serving as an effective groundcover. Once established, a rhubarb patch can be productive for more than 15 years, and it’s very winter hardy.

rhubarb

Rhubarb is often dubbed the “pie plant,” and the stalks, soft and delectable when baked, do make a divine pie filling.

The stalks are an acquired taste, but many folks like to mix them with strawberries in pies and cobblers. In Asia, they’re used as a vegetable and added to stews. More unusual methods of using rhubarb would include dried and candied stalks, and some folks even like to eat them raw.

Sunchokes

Native-to-the-U.S. sunchokes grow aggressively, and they’re difficult to eradicate once established, so never plant them where you might want to grow something else down the road. The tubers can be used like potatoes, and they’re often promoted as a potato substitute for diabetics, since their storage carbohydrate is inulin instead of starch. Inulin converts to fructose rather than glucose in the digestive system.

Sunchokes

Jerusalem artichokes, or sunchokes, are starchy tubers like potatoes and turnips.

Sunchokes are also known as Jerusalem artichokes, but they’re no relation to the actual artichokes found in the supermarket. Since it’s technically a native sunflower, the mature plants will produce dozens of small, yellow flowers on four- to nine-foot plants.

Amaranth

Glancing through the catalog of a company that carries amaranth will give you an idea of the diversity of varieties. Amaranth can be grown as a grain, a forage, a leafy vegetable or as an ornamental. The colors and seed head shapes vary wildly. For flour production, amaranth is naturally gluten-free.

Be wary if saving seeds from amaranth, because they’ll cross-pollinate with weedy cousins like lamb’s quarters or pigweed.

Build Your Own Medicine Chest. Click above for more details on this book.

Bamboo

There are two warnings that go along with a desire to establish bamboo in a landscape. The first is that bamboo can be extremely invasive. If planting the running varieties in particular – as opposed to clumping varieties – be sure to use a subterranean barrier, or else your neighbor’s hay field may soon become a bamboo forest.

The other warning concerns the use of bamboo shoots as a food source. While the shoots are popular and high quality, there exists a slight possibility of infection by the fungal pathogen ergot. Ergot affects other grass species such as rye, wheat and barley, too. Ingestion of ergot can cause hallucinations and death.

However, you can learn to identify the presence of ergot easily, and it’s more likely to occur in wet weather.

Once you’ve dealt with the invasiveness and the potential for ergot, bamboo can be an excellent plant for the homestead. In addition to the shoots, it can be a perpetual source of material for structures, furniture, fencing and trellising, and it’s an effective privacy screen.

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I’m tempted to ask the question my grandfather asked my grandmother about her houseplants: “Why would you grow something you can’t eat?”

Some have already come and gone, because the season comes earlier and earlier every year, but for a lot of the country, tax-free shopping for school related supplies is right around the corner. There are also sales associated with back-to-school, the beginning of the hunting season cycle, and the changing of seasons that we can take advantage of, and some states and retailers will also be sticking some merchandise on sale for National Preparedness Month in September.

Along with those sales, retailers tend to throw a sale or two up ahead of the holiday rush in October and November to make room for new stock, and there are sometimes additional sales or tax holidays in August and September for preparedness and energy-saving appliances.

Check here The Ultimate Preppers List of Supplies

In some cases, taking advantage of tax holidays and sales is just about saving a little money that we can then apply to other budgets. In other cases, a sale or the absence of tax is what drops something inside our budget ranges.

Sometimes though, even when it’s not a preparedness-related sale, there are things we can stock up on that applies directly to preparing for the worst. Today we talk about how you can save on prepping supplies.

1. Savings For Stockpiles & To Apply Elsewhere

Clothes and hunting gear are an entire cookie for preppers, especially those with kids. Hand-me-downs and thrift stores are great, and I’ve made some great finds at the beginning of various weather and sportsman seasons at Salvation Army and Goodwill. Still, some things are nice to have fresh. If you’re trying to maintain an every-other-size stockpile for somebody who’s still growing, combining store sales with tax-free holidays can be a way to basically earn enough to pay for another garment or two.

Similarly, if we budget ahead of time, we can sometimes score electronics and appliances for gifts and our households without paying tax and sometimes with additional total-purchase or single-item discounts and store markdowns.

I don’t typically shell out enough to qualify for some of the energy-saving appliances or generators, but we’re all at different levels and not all of us head to Howard’s Appliance Center of Augusta or the Habitat Restore in Louisville. If there’s a big item on the docket for the next year or two, planning the purchase around a tax-free holiday is kind of a no brainer.

Saving 3 to 9% on a six-dollar pair of shoes doesn’t put that much change back in the jar. Saving 6% on a $1,200 generator or whole-house fan system, now … $72 will buy a fair bit of wheat, oatmeal, gauze pads, tampons, or mulch, and it’ll make a big dent in a battery-operated electric tool or weed-eater or a good pair of boots.

*Some stores will just offer a discount on total purchases during that weekend or the days and weeks leading up to school, and those can be great ways to save on pretty much anything.

2. Back-To-School Supplies for Preppers

Saving money is nice, but sometimes we don’t always see the potential in back-to-school tax-free and sale season for anything but clothes and potential savings that make the crumb snatchers a little more affordable. There are all kinds of things that qualify (by state – look up your rules and restrictions) that we will be buying another time or maybe haven’t even thought of.

There’s no way to cover all of them. We have some darn clever folks on this site who can undoubtedly think of another dozen examples each that back-to-school sales and tax-free holidays can make more affordable. Here’s my top twelve:

3. Maps

Some places will count their road atlases or county/state books as educational, and some states don’t care at all. That can lead to serious savings on our pre-printed atlases and maps.

grease-pencil[1]

4. Printer Paper & Toner

I’m constantly printing local area maps, pre-made missing posters, directions to natural resources and resource locations like pallet dumps and bamboo stands, DIY instructions for builds and even common repairs for things I would currently watch of YouTube, and recipes. I’m also routinely printing user manuals for tools and appliances that I pick up second hand.

Paper and toner can help with entertainment and education as well.

I can create my own search-a-word and crossword puzzles with some free sites to have on hand for holidays and birthdays even for adults, and I can print preexisting targets, puzzles, games and coloring sheets to help break monotony. Homeschooling site downloads can ensure any children will continue to be at least somewhat educated even if that great big disaster occurs.

We can print out all kinds of things, and if we’re going to go that road, we might as well budget and get as much of it on sale and tax free as possible.

5. Scissors

Some states and stores will restrict the types of scissors you get, but if they’re anywhere on the list, most will include anything but kitchen and garden shears. Scissors are one of those things that makes our life easier, so if you need some good ones for trimming hair, cutting herbs, and getting into packaging, now’s a good time to get them.

sewing-scissors[1]

6. Colored Pencils, #2 Pencils

They’re not just for kids. When I come do a site assessment, I routinely have a pencil. The colored pencils don’t erase real well, but they also don’t smear even as much as lead/graphite, and they sure don’t run or bleed in 40-70% humidity or rain like ink will. Sure, I could buy special notebooks and paper, but why spend more?

7. Notebooks, Binders

This can be a chance to get good notebooks with binder-insert holes and heavy-duty paper instead of the cheap-o’s. A variety of sizes is great to have on hand for daily life, but especially if we want to stick a couple of mini’s or steno-sized or half-sized notebooks in plastic baggies and then a backpack or pocket to carry around.

contact-paper-sheets[1]

Clear contact paper or similar plastic craft sheets have a multitude of uses in daily life and preparedness.

8. Contact Paper/Plastic Sheeting

This stuff can not only make our carry-around maps a little more durable, they’re great for covering maps to pin to walls. Leave a border of the plastic around them and use a map pen or grease pencil over top of the contact sheet, and we never punch any holes or totally booger up what can be a precious resource even today.

We can also basically double-over contact paper to make a durable but easy-folding and easy-rolling overlay sheet – or twenty – that can keep information like resource locations, cache locations, and points of defensive or evasive interest separate.

In the same vein, if we attach our doubled-up sheet to a dowel or two, we now have a portable board that we can carry around with us to neighbors, to educate a handful of kids at once, to explain to the existing residents why it’s in everyone’s interest to pitch in on a fire break, and to facilitate trade between households.

We can also slap this stuff against a lot of walls, and instantly have a dry erase board for tracking chores, harvest, canning, a monthly calendar, or working out build designs or homework problems.

(A lot of those can also be accomplished by hanging a sheet on the other side of a window, but a couple rolls of contact paper is cheaper and lighter to move around, and won’t kill or injure anybody if it falls off the wall.)

chalkboard-spray-paint-1[1]

Chalkboard spray paint lets us turn a wall or a spare board into a reusable writing surface for daily life or emergencies.

9. Chalkboards, Chalkboard spray paint, dry erase boards

All of these offer a reusable alternative to paper without resorting to charcoal on walls, today and in an emergency. It could be keeping score in a game, it could be teaching a kid order of precedence for mathematical equations, it could be a whiteboard class, or it could be mapping plans for the homestead’s planting or defense. A variety of sizes are out there, from lap boards to wall-fillers.

10. Alcohol Pens, Dry Erase Markers, Map Pens

Some will be on sale or tax free by state, some won’t. They’re handy to have for all the same reasons listed in contact paper above.

dry-erase-ultra-fine[1]

Images: Ultra fine dry erase and permanent map pens are commonly counted as school supplies during tax-free weekends and store promotions.

 

11. Super Glue, Wood Glue

Super glue and wood glue will routinely slide into the arts and crafts headings of back-to-school sales and tax-free weekends. Humanity got along without them for millennia, but they sure do make some fixes nice and easy. Elmer now sells a glue-all that’s pretty good and that slides right through with other school supplies if a store is being resistant.

12. Duct tape

Sometimes you have to get the crafty colored versions of this to qualify during the back-to-school season, and there’s not always enough savings to justify the cost. However, if there’s a sale, this is one to jump on, because from little holes in screens to hanging curtains over windows for light discipline, duct tape does so much for us even outside of the tool box and range bag.

13. Hygiene

Some states are now recognizing the endless lists students are supposed to report with, and including things like tissue paper of both types, hand sanitizer, liquid hand soap, paper towels and bleach/Lysol wipes in their tax exemptions. Some will do it for preparedness weekends, too, but back-to-school is where I see them most often.

14. Hats, brimmed

It’s not clothing or accessories. It’s gear. Honest.

With my father and man-of-the-house, and my own slight addictions, I can’t imagine not already having a ton of hats on hand. They’re also not something I expect to be totally un-findable in a world-ending event. However, I grew up in the Deep South, spend a lot of time on boats and near shorelines, and lived in Arizona for years. A hat with a brim really is life and death in some places, not only for its shading and prevention of open sunburn blisters on ears and necks, but also by saving the eyes in snow as well as woods and fields and especially urban environments. Brimmed hats can also keep rain out from under the back of your collar and from streaming down your ears.

Ball caps and knit ski caps totally have their place, but if a state is allowing for hats, it might not be a bad idea to pick up one with a brim. Boonie styles can be wedged in nearly as small a space as a ball cap, there is a reason cowboy and ranch styles are still worn while working, and there are a whole array of sports types with a full-circumference brims to fit both hot and cold seasons.

15. Do Your Homework

We can save a lot of money and be better prepared for storms, personal reversals, and crises of major proportions by taking advantage of tax holidays and seasonal sales. There are numerous sites that list tax holiday weekends. I happen to like this one.

It breaks tax-free weekends down by state and then the untaxed items, and it provides quick links to the specific pages for each state’s rules and requirements. Definitely read the rules and requirements, because states like to include and exclude some oddball stuff. Regularly.

It would not be crazy talk to print out and carry the applicable untaxed or sale items list and carry it to the store(s) with you. This is the only way a buddy of mine got the entire staff of a hardware store in Virginia to actually abide by the state tax holiday, because they were totally unaware. It’s also nice just to keep it handy instead of relying on memory or the shopping list.

The link above undoubtedly misses things, and there are a number of states that usually run a weekend somewhere between August-November to push either appliances or generators and other preparedness items that aren’t listed yet. That happens with all of them. For example, this is the only one that lists Texas’s new preparedness category for the August 5-7 weekend that I’ve found. If I hadn’t already known about it, I could have missed it.

Prevent those regrets by searching your state, any surrounding states if you’re on a border or the savings would be worth a couple tanks of gas, and “tax free” or “tax holiday”.

Here’s some other self-sufficiency and preparedness solutions recommended for you:

The Lost Ways (The vital self-sufficiency lessons our great grand-fathers left us)
Survival MD (Knowledge to survive any medical crisis situation)
Backyard Liberty (Liberal’s hidden agenda: more than just your guns…)
Alive After the Fall (Build yourself the only unlimited water source you’ll ever need)
The Lost ways II (4 Important Forgotten Skills used by our Ancestors that can help you in any crisis)
The Patriot Privacy Kit (Secure your privacy in just 10 simple steps)

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Sometimes though, even when it’s not a preparedness-related sale, there are things we can stock up on that applies directly to preparing for the worst.

As preppers we strive to acquire skills, knowledge and yes tools that can assist us should we ever be faced with dire circumstances. The actual disaster that you might be facing and you own situation at the present time would necessarily determine what would be required of you to survive. For instance there might be a wildfire burning in the next county over with winds driving toward your house. With some time you could pack the family in the wagon and head out onto the highway to find a hotel or stay with friends a safe distance away. This is a real survival situation for you if the flames were approaching and by the act of bugging out you were responsible for saving your family. Had the flames kept going and you didn’t leave they all might have perished with you if the fire reached your front door.

But for some of us we don’t look at that example as a survival scenario. You had a car and the banks were working as well as your cell phone. You had a place to go and have plenty of clean, dry clothes in your bags packed safely in the mini-van that you just refilled because the pumps are still working fine. You are still able to buy food at a restaurant and aside from the fire, everyone is safe.

A survival situation doesn’t have to look like a reality TV show. I think far too many people imagine survival as being dropped onto a deserted island with nothing but a knife, water bottle (5 camera men) and your wits to keep you alive. Do these things happen to some people? Sure, but not usually unless you purposely head out into nature with the express intent of getting far away. I know that you can get into danger by simply hiking local nature trails over the weekend but how many of us living in the city or suburbs (outside of some real crisis) have to look for shelter, food, find our way to civilization or make a fire?

When I talk about survival tools I am not coming at this from the standpoint of surviving in the jungles of Central America but these emergency survival tools could help there too. Survival to me is staying alive regardless of the location and these five emergency survival tools will help you maintain room temperature.

Can you cut it?

I have been asked this before but I do think the single most important survival tool besides a clear calm head is a knife. Knives have been around forever because they are so incredibly useful. You might think that you wouldn’t need a knife unless you were whittling a stick into a spear or slicing the skin off some animal you trapped in a snare, but you would be wrong. Knives offer so many uses that their importance can’t be overstated.

OK, so you believe you need a knife, but what kind of survival knife? How would you carry it? How much should you spend on a good survival knife? These are all great questions, but each individual needs to answer them for yourself. I will give you my two cents though. There are really two types of knifes for me. There is my big knife for cutting big things and taking a beating and then I have a smaller knife for cutting smaller things. It is not as sturdy.

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Kershaw Leek – Excellent EDC knife

Why have two types? It comes down to convenience really. For my EDC (Every Day Carry) knife that I have on my person at all times away from home and usually in my home I have a small folding knife. Now it isn’t so small that I can’t cut anything with it, but it isn’t too large that I can’t stick it in my pocket. I have this because the closest thing I am going to be getting to lost in the wilderness is a park. My small folding knife will still cut almost anything I would need it to and it’s compact size makes it easy for me to carry every day to work.

If I am going into the woods as I hope to do here in the next few weeks with my survival dog on sabbatical, I will leave the folding knife at home and carry my larger Gerber LMF II. This knife is a fixed blade that is far sturdier than my folder and can be used to chop down small trees if I need to. Both of them have a purpose and I chose my knife based upon where I will be, but I always have one on me. You should too.

Looking for love in all the wrong places?

Have you ever been lost? If you are taking a walk in the woods you should carry a compass and a map. I have and love my GPS, but if that goes out I still have my map and a compass. With a compass you don’t have to worry about EMP rendering your device out of commission. Actually, where I have been backpacking we sometimes lose the satellite signal so my compass is the low tech fallback option for finding my way back home to my family.

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A great compass is a simple lifesaving survival tool

Now, it’s all well and good to have a compass but you need to know how to use a compass and map too? Most anyone I know can pick one up, point it and say, ‘that way’s North’ with authority but will that be enough? Check out this great video on using a compass and map if you need a refresher.

Come on baby light my fire!

If I had a dollar for all the articles I had seen (and a few I have written myself) about the importance of being able to start a fire, I would have… I don’t know; a hundred bucks? Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people out there who are trying to convey the importance of being able to start a fire. Why is fire so important? Just like these other survival tools, it can save your life.

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BlastMatch – Single hand operation

You can learn how to start a fire with a fire plough or the magnifying glass trick or my personal favorite, starting a fire with a bottle of water but really there are easier options. The easiest option is a simple Bic lighter. I have dozens of these strewn around the house and in both my bug out bags, get home bags and the bag I take hiking with me. They are cheap, easy to use and do what they are supposed to do. But, what if they get wet?

Two alternatives to the good old Bic lighter are both called fire steels. I have a Swedish Fire Steel which is a rod that you need to strike with a stainless steel striker or the back of your knife blade to make sparks that are over 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit!! This isn’t just cheap fireworks when you are bored but combine this with the proper amount of dry tinder or WetFire cubes and you will have a flame in no time.

I also have a BlastMatch all-weather fire starter which is the same concept but you can use this one-handed. Perfect for if you are injured or you need to use one hand to block the wind or keep that bear at bay. Both of these great survival tools are waterproof so that gives them an advantage over matches (unless they are waterproof obviously) and Bic lighters. Sure a Bic will dry out if you have the time, but what if you just escaped a raging river, all your gear is soaked, the sun is going down and you are freezing cold? Also, they will last for thousands of fires and you can’t say the same for matches.

Gimme Shelter

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Survival Bivvy

Quick, what is the first thing that will kill you? Lack of food? Dehydration from no water? A backhand from a Polar Bear? If you answered polar bear I might have to give that one to you but unless you are in the arctic or dumb enough to climb the fence at your local zoo, the chances of you seeing a polar bear are slim.

Most people fret about starving or dying of thirst though and that isn’t really what you have to worry about the most. Exposure will kill you faster than thirst or hunger and it is something to consider. Have you heard of the rule of threes? The rule of threes goes something like this:

  • You can live three minutes without air
  • You can live three hours without shelter
  • You can live three days without water
  • You can live three weeks without food

Now before you start saying that the most important thing is air, let’s just say that this is a given. If you are suffocating you definitely have big problems, but that isn’t likely either. Most of those survival shows I talked about at the beginning show you how to scavenge for food if you are lost in the wilderness, but like the rule of three says, you can go weeks without food. Will it be fun? No, but you do have bigger problems.

Shelter in this rule means getting too cold (hypothermia) or two hot (hyperthermia) and both are just as bad for your body. If you find yourself in a survival situation there is a tool that you can use to regulate your body temperature and this can keep you alive. In the heat you have to get out of the sun. In the cold you have to conserve heat and a survival bivvy works great for both purposes. As a sun shade you can turn the survival bivvy inside out and let the reflective material reflect the sun off you. It also doubles as a signaling device. When you are cold, climb into the bag and the reflective material will reflect your own body heat back on you keeping you warm.

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Fenix Headlamp – Perfect for hands free tasks in zero visibility

I can see clearly now!

Lastly, and one of my favorite survival tools is a flashlight. Well, more precisely it is light because light can solve a world of problems. Can you imagine being lost and not being able to see? One wrong step could land you in a hole that might break your ankle or you could step off a cliff. When I am backpacking I have a Fenix headlamp that I love. I just strap this to my head and I can walk around and do most anything I normally would because I can see clearly where I am going, what is ahead of me and I don’t have to use my hands.

During the day a headlamp is a little bit much but I also carry a small but bright flashlight as part of my EDC. You would be surprised how often I have to use this thing so it does come in handy.

What are some of your favorite survival tools?

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As preppers we strive to acquire skills, knowledge and yes tools that can assist us should we ever be faced with dire circumstances. The actual disaster that you might be

When Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern board of the United States, it left millions of households without power, and most importantly, food. With preparations for the expected power outage, the food outage would not have been a problem even if grocery stores, crops, livestock, and plants had been flooded, all thanks to proper food storage.

Food is essential for survival. Whether it be an earthquake, hurricane, super typhoon, floods, or any natural calamity, you may lose access to water and food supply. As such, most people go for keeping emergency food storage. While for others, storing food is important for small emergencies. The question is, how do you effectively store food? Reports come in with stored food filled with salmonella, E. coli, and other microorganisms, which, instead of saving you, would put you in the hospital. More than keeping the right amount of food, storing them right is crucial. Here is a survival guide to food storage to keep you and your family safe.

1. Know The Right Types Of Food

Know which foods to store and how to store them. Keep your emergency survival food supply varied but make sure to have honey, salt, milk, and wheat in your supply. To encourage variety in your supply, go for other grains, beans, tomatoes, cheese, and even onion. If you are storing foods in jars, make sure that the jars are airtight sealed to avoid the development of bacteria within. Marinated foods should go into the freezer and kept there until used.

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The types of food you store could go on and on but what you store is extremely important. Go for non-cook foods that could be served even during a power outage. Have MREs (Meal Ready To Eat) stocked as well as canned goods. Keep spices as well to give flavor to the food you will be preparing in times of emergency.

2…And Consider The Size!

Size matters, and so does the quantity. The volume of food should be enough for you to keep in the storage room. Choose containers that can be easily stacked, avoid transparent containers, and do not forget to put labels on everything. The labels should have the contents of what is inside the container and the date it was processed; including the date it was stored. This way, you would easily know when to use it and when to replace it.

3.Timing Is Everything

Yes, you have to get the emergency survival food supply going but you should not rush into getting this done ASAP. Take the time to learn the basics of food storage and keep it consistent. Start from a small food supply and add items to it slowly. You may start by using your refrigerator as your storage area. Utilize your freezer and learn the canning process to utilize your cupboards as well. If you have learned the proper storage and restocking techniques, this is the key to start working on a larger room for food storage.

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4. Find The Perfect Storage Place

One of the many food storage tips you will hear is finding the perfect storage place. Your storage room should be cool, dry, and well ventilated. If you plan to store dried goods, you have to prioritize the temperature you have in your room to avoid spoilage, which is a waste of money. A cool storage room inhibits the growth of ethylene, a ripening agent, along with other decay producing enzymes. The storage room you choose also dictates the quantity of the emergency food supply you will be able to store. Keep your room small, having too big of a storage room makes it hard to do inventories in. Remember that this is your personal emergency food supply in case of natural disasters so keep it properly stored.

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5. Restock!

If you have worked on your emergency food supply, you should know that these would only last for a couple of months up to a year. Create a regular rotation to replace the older items on the storage supply. Remember to replace everything that you have used up and those that are spoiled. Make it a part of your regular routine to keep the food fresh.

Remember that everything that goes in first must be the first to go out, starting from the ready-to-eat foods. Canned foods, which have rust on the lid, are already spoiled so be aware of these signs such as molds, discoloration, and smell.

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6. Keep It Listed

Start a food plan with a checklist of food you need. Not only will this help your shopping faster, this will also help you keep track of the items that have been used up and needs to be replaced, from the canned goods up to the frozen food. Without a list or inventory, your food stock may go down to a single can of beans or to a jam-packed storage room.

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7. Consider The Humidity

Consider the humidity in the room. Have the foods properly stored in their original packages. This packaging is designed for the food to be in great condition given a room temperature or even too much humidity. Humidity also increases the probability of molds to appear on your stored food.

8. Avoid Sunlight

To keep the longevity of food, avoid storing them in direct sunlight. Exposing food in direct sunlight promotes oxidation, decreases the nutritional value, and most importantly, spoils it easily. To keep this from happening, cover the windows and other areas which may allow sunlight to go through. Watch out for foods rich in vitamins A, D, E, and K because they are quick to degrade under sunlight.

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9. Clean, Clean, Clean

Storing food effectively is based mostly on the proper handling of food when you store them. Wash your hands, clean the room, clean the containers, and don’t let any insects get inside the storage room. Keep the fresh produce, raw foods, canned goods, and ready-to-eat foods separated from each other.

Nowadays, having food storage is not a choice but an essential part of every household’s survival plan. This list will help you start your food storage right.

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When Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern board of the United States, it left millions of households without power, and most importantly, food. With preparations for the expected power outage, the

Preppers have become known for a lot of things in the media, but until recently it wasn’t for any prepper skills. We are known for underground bunkers, stockpiling tons of freeze-dried food and weapons. Preppers are frequently portrayed as preparing for the end of the world (on more than one occasion) and we generally get lumped into a very large classification of people who seemly panic and overreact to everything. For many years, if you were someone who considered themselves a prepper you could expect to be the butt of many jokes.

But somewhere along the way, that perspective started to change and for the most part, preppers aren’t viewed quite as harshly as we used to be. In fact, I don’t believe Prepper is such a bad word anymore.

Oh, sure there are still sarcastic remarks you will hear occasionally from intellectual hipsters. “You’re one of those Doomsday Preppers, aren’t you?” Some people even write articles about how they just wish preppers would all die so they could eat their stored foods. Even some preppers complain about other preppers and question their motivations for preparing or argue over what is really going to happen and what is fantasy in their opinion.

There will always be arguments over style, but it seems that the ideas behind the motivation to prepare are catching on. News reports actually reference preppers from time to time and soberly relate advice we have all been saying for years. So the idea has gained some validation, but if you had to boil it down to some generic survival skills, what would those be?

I started to think about what were the must have Prepper skills that I thought each person could try to master in order to give themselves the best chance of survival. We dig much deeper into each of these areas below on Final Prepper blog, but people love lists so here it goes.

What are the must have prepper skills?

The ability to create or find shelter

There is a saying in survival circles about the rule of 3’s. The Rule of 3’s states that you can live for 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. Naturally, there are exceptions to the rule, but is a good baseline to look at when we talk about surviving. Assuming you are able to breathe, the first prepper skill revolves around shelter because exposure to the elements can kill you more quickly than most other non-human involved situations.

When we think of shelter that usually means heat or cold in the extremes. Sure having a dry roof over your head is nice but the important factor is keeping your core temperature in the healthy range. If you can’t keep warm and your body temperature drops too low (hypothermia), you die. If you can’t keep cool and your body temperature rises too high (hyperthermia) you die. There have been many people who died in the dry cold of abandoned buildings.

A simple debris shelter can insulate you from the cold and if done properly, conceal your location.
A simple debris shelter can insulate you from the cold and if done properly, conceal your location.

Shelter includes wearing the proper clothing, regulating your body temperature and augmenting your environment to keep yourself alive. It is one of my main concerns when faced with the thought of bugging out and that is why I do pay attention to the supplies my family has for their bug out bags. Additionally, I know ways to create shelter out of natural elements like the traditional debris shelter in the picture above.

The ability to find water and make it safe to drink

Following the next most important aspect of the survival paradigm of the rule of 3’s is the ability to keep yourself hydrated. If you don’t have good clean water to drink and pretty regularly, you will die. You might think this isn’t really a skill, but I consider the acquisition of water in a grid down situation very important to your survival. Finding it, carrying it and disinfecting it can prove to be a challenge for many people. Our reality is that clean water flows from the taps. When that stops what will you do?

If you only have to worry about yourself, you might be thinking that all you need is a LifeStraw and you are all set. That may help you survive, but in order to thrive you need to plan for much more water for daily use. Every person adds to that total which makes finding a reliable source of water a mandatory first step. Yes, you can find water in the woods, but you can also walk around a long time without finding any.

Some additional information:

The ability to obtain food

A good edible plant guide makes a great addition to the prepper bookshelf.

How can finding food be a prepper skill you ask? Assume for a minute that none of the regular places you go to now for food are available? How will you eat? We assume that the grocery stores will always be open or we will simply walk out in the woods and shoot a deer while we eat a nice salad from our garden with dressing made from the apple trees in our orchard and herbs from the back porch. That may happen, but what if all of those other methods were out of reach for you? What if you weren’t in your home anymore and you were on the run? I think to survive we are all going to have to rely on as many methods for obtaining food as possible.

Foraging – Yes, there are edible plants all around us but do you know what they are? Do you know how to prepare them so your children will eat them? Do you know how many stalks of that green vegetable you will have to eat to actually have a full stomach? What will you eat in the winter when nothing is growing outside?

Fishing – Fishing seems like a great fall back idea. If you have access to a lake or a river it would be easy to think that you will simply walk down to the bank with your trusty rod and reel and fill up a bucket of fish. All ponds and lakes have a maximum amount of fish they can support and they can be over-fished. If you figure about 50 lbs. of fish per acre per year, that really isn’t even enough to keep one person alive if you consider the approximate average of about 400 calories per pound of fish. Fishing can certainly augment your food stores but unless you have an insane amount of water that nobody else is using, you can’t plan on this as your only source. Obviously, if you are out on the ocean, this is not the same problem but us landlocked people have to consider that.

Hunting – We will all be hunting for our meals when the grid goes down and this is one of these myths that so many preppers believe in. If you live in the woods and have successfully hunted every year of your life, you could still starve in some catastrophe where the amount of hunters increases exponentially. Let’s assume you have 1000 hunters around where you live and each hunter where you live can shoot 10 deer per year. What happens when the number of hunters goes up to 10,000? How many deer will that leave you? Assuming you are lucky and are able to get your 10 deer, what happens the next year? All of the deer will be hunted to extinction.

Trapping – Setting snares for animals can get you a great amount of protein for your table, but that also assumes animals find them and fall for the trap. You can set all the hunting snares in the world, but if the animals don’t find your traps or there are no animals left in your area, you will still starve if you are only relying on trapping. I’ve watched an episode, some time ago, of Mountain Men on TV. One character was in Alaska, himself a very experienced trapper and he barely caught anything after many weeks on end. Certainly he was alone in the wilderness so you would assume there wasn’t any competition for food, but if he was counting on those traps to eat, he would have starved. The animals simply didn’t appear.

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Snares can catch a meal if you are lucky, patient and in the right place at the right time.

Having a plan to provide yourself and your family with food should be multi-dimensional; it should change with the seasons and should consider times when food is scarce. That is one reason to have plenty of long-term storable food, several months’ worth of food you already eat everyday as well as a garden you tend and put back extra for the winter months. Hunting, fishing, trapping and foraging are all great activities too, but they take practice, luck and materials. Don’t expect to simply pull out your book on wild edibles and feed your family if the grid goes down.

The ability to make a fire

You need fire to keep warm and burning wood is one of the best alternatives to not having a furnace powered by electricity or fuel. There is an art to starting a fire and this is something that requires a little practice. Once you have a fire going, it needs to be maintained. In a grid down situation, it is highly likely that you will be cooking over an open fire so mastering this seemly simple task can give you a means for surviving.

Starting a fire is something you can easily practice now and I am frequently amazed at people who have never in their life started a fire. The basics are covered in the video below.
Some additional information:

The ability to provide for your security – Defend this house

Defensive needs will vary by the person, location and situation. What is right for you?

So far we have covered keeping yourself protected from the elements, obtaining and either filtering or disinfecting a source of water, planning for finding different sources of food and creating fire to help you stay warm or cook that big caribou you just shot with your favorite survival rifle. There are other risks to your health and safety though and in my mind one of the biggest threats to your life in a grid down scenario where the basics of society have been lost, are other people.

People are going to be one of the biggest considerations you have to plan for eventually. If you are able to keep yourself alive, someone could come along who wants what you have. Defending your life or the lives of your family could be a real possibility in a collapse. There are many options depending on your principles, values, physical limitations, legal realities or preferences.

For me, I try to have redundancy as much as possible. For security, my default position is that I have firearms in several different configurations for different needs. Hopefully I won’t have to use them but if the world has gone to hell and somebody is trying to separate me and my family from food, I won’t be wrestling with him. He will get the business end of one of my different weapons.

That sounds well and good but what if your gun jams Pat? Fair enough question and you have to be ready and willing to get physical too. The world of combat has many disciplines and I am no expert on which is the best. Krav Maga has been put forth as an effective fighting style that can save your life. Is it better than boxing or judo or Brazilian grappling or any one of hundreds of other styles? I don’t know and I can’t say what will work best for you, but investigate self-defense from as many angles as you feel comfortable with. Your life might depend on it.

The ability to heal yourself – First Aid

People get hurt every day and in a survival situation you should have basic skills to stop bleeding, care for wounds, fight infection and prevent further injury. Would it be great if you were a brain surgeon? Absolutely, but not many of us have the time or money for school and I don’t know if brain surgery would be the best investment of your time if you are only doing this to prepare for some emergency situation.

Basic first aid on the other hand is very valuable. I don’t expect many of us will be conducting surgery but for many injuries our body has an amazing ability to heal itself. All we can do is help it and having some basic medical supplies and a little know how never hurts. Good medical reference materials are great to acquire now so that you have them on hand if something were to happen before you could get back to Amazon.com.

The ability to pull your own weight – Physical Fitness

When I was in the Army we had PT every morning. I would be lying if I said I jumped up at the sound of my alarm and bounded outside to wait in formation for PT to start with a big cheery grin on my ugly mug. PT for was luckily forced on me and I was in pretty decent shape back then. Motivating yourself to be physically healthy is hard for some people, but the better shape you are in now, the more able you will be to take the stress and physical requirements of a much harder life.

We sit around a major part of the day largely because of the conveniences we have. We don’t have to go very far for water or to use the bathroom. We purchase food by the trunk load and rely on cars to get us where we want to go, engines till our soil and we purchase anything we need instead of making it. Take away electricity, vehicles and engines and life just got much harder. Many people who are so sedentary now that they rarely get out of the house, will likely die shortly in a world gone dark when they are suddenly required to move more than they are used to. Sure, there will be a good portion of people who soldier through it, lose weight and regain muscle like they did in Wall-E, but many more will not.

Nobody expects you to be a weight lifter or a marathon runner, but how much weight can you lift? Can you do 20 push ups without slowing down? How about 5? How far can you walk with that 50 pound Bug Out Bag? How far do you walk each day now? Can you run? Act now to get in better shape. You don’t have to have zero body fat, but you need to be physically able to perform tasks to simply stay alive. Can you garden all day and defend your home too? Are you able to haul water from that stream 1 mile downhill?

Some additional information:

The ability to read a map – Land Navigation

I use my GPS on my phone more times than I want to admit. Remember the good old days when you had to know street names and before you would go somewhere new you had to ask for directions? OK, it doesn’t sound like it was better, but we were conditioned to get around in a different way that wasn’t reliant upon technology. Everyone had maps in their glove compartment. You watched for street names before blindly turning and ending up going the wrong way.

Even if the grid doesn’t go down and satellites aren’t falling from the sky you may have to rely on something besides your phone to get around. Want to get off the grid? Leave that phone behind and walk into the woods. You may need to map alternate routes to your bug out location or navigate around cities that have descended into chaos. Knowing how to read a map to get where you are going could be a much-needed prepper skill.

Some additional information:

The ability to read the future – Situational Awareness

OK, technically you wont be able to tell the future, but having a good sense of situational awareness and practicing your observation skills could help you in ways that may seem to the uniformed that you knew what was coming ahead of time. Make sure you know what is going on in your immediate area by getting your face out of your phone. Make sure you know what is happening in your city by paying attention to the news, observing the people around you and what they are doing. Follow regional and state-wide events usual alternate media and radio programs as well as keeping tabs on international news. What happens in other nations could wind its way to your neck of the woods. Will you have a plan in place ready to act or will you be caught off guard?

The ability to keep your eye on the prize – Kill complacency and the normalcy bias

I mentioned in the beginning of this article that preppers have occasionally been linked to people who predicted the end of the world, somewhat prematurely. Time after time, preppers have focused on an impending event that rallied them into action only to suffer a form of let down when nothing came to pass. Imagine being disappointed that the world didn’t stop on 1.1.2000 or the end of the world didn’t materialize when the Mayan calendar said it was supposed to.

Prepping is about surviving anything that comes your way. We diversify our prepping focus and plan for what we need to live so that we have the tools, gear, knowledge and plans to stay alive regardless of the evil creeping down the street. Just because the economy doesn’t collapse on the day they said it would, you can’t give up and sell all of your prepper supplies to your neighbor for pennies on the dollar. If there never is a military coup, don’t give up prepping and ignore that garden. You have to stay focused because the people who give up, the people who think everything is fine are the ones hit first during tragedy. Instead of believing that you are impervious and nothing bad will ever happen, continue to scan the horizon for threats and take comfort in knowing you are prepared even if on your deathbed you have been proven wrong.

Prepping is often compared to life insurance and I can’t think of a better example. I spend money on insuring the things I do not want to lose. Prepping is my personal insurance plan that I hope I never need, but if I do I want to have all the prepper skills mentioned above to help me survive.

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There will always be arguments over style, but it seems that the ideas behind the motivation to prepare are catching on. News reports actually reference preppers from time to time

Equipped with a large database of knowledge, co workers and all the equipment/supplies they need at their fingers tips.. it is no secret that America is home to some of the best doctors and medical professionals in the world. If SHTF, what happens if all the lights go out? Would the equipment still function? What if all the supplies run out? What if all the doctors are sent to make-shift-camps or hunkered down with their own families? What if there is no hospital, no 911, no help coming?

Believe it or not, this actually happens all around the world each and every day. Out there right now there are doctors, nurses and medics working around the clock without power or computers, without their co workers, without all the fancy equipment.. They are equipped with nothing more than their knowledge and whatever is packed into their medical bags. That is right, they are saving lives out of the contents of their medical bags.

Most of us are not doctors nor do we have access to the same kind of supplies that they do. However, having a medical bag is one of the most important things we should all consider while preparing for those situations we hope never happen. You may be wondering what to put in your own medical bag or if you are forgetting anything so I’ve provided my own list to help get you started.

The Medical Bag

Elite First Aid Fully Stocked GI Issue Medic Kit Bag, Large – $132

There are all kinds of options out there for medical bags. Use what works best for you. I have seen people use back packs, tackles boxes and shoulder bags. I personally went with the shoulder bag because my bug out bag is a back pack and I only have one back. I also would like to keep both of my hands free so this was the best option for me.

Sanitation and Personal Protection

Regardless of the emergency, sanitation is not something that should never be overlooked. For your own protection and the protection of your patient, always WASH YOUR HANDS!!!! I cannot stress the importance of hand washing. For this reason and so you never forget.. choose the most easy to access part of your bag to store your sanitation supplies. Most of these items can be found at your local dollar store so there are no excuses not to be hygienic when providing first aid. These very simple step could mean the difference between life or death.

**Tip: Keep a small zip-lock bag with a maxi pad and bandanna in with your sanitation supplies. In the event someone is bleeding you can buy yourself a minute to wash up by having the injured use the maxi pad to apply direct pressure, if they are unable, you can hold it in place with the bandanna.

Items to include:

  • Bar of hand soap and a case to put it in (dollar store)
  • 4 oz hibiclens hand cleanser (if your budget allows)
  • Nail clippers, nail file, scrub brush (keep nails short and clean – dollar store)
  • Large bottle of hand sanitizer (you will need a lot of this – dollar store)
  • Hand disinfecting wipes (for when washing isn’t possible $2 at pharmacy)
  • 2 oz hand cream (sanitizer and gloves dry out your hands – dollar store)
  • 3 mini soaps/3 mini hand santizers (these are for giving away. It is important to keep the patient clean, too – dollar store)
  • 50 pairs of latex free gloves (latex is a common allergy)
  • 3 pairs nitrile gloves
  • 10 surgical masks
  • 3 N-95 masks
  • 10-20 surface disinfecting wipes (dollar store)
  • 10 puppy training pads (will work well as underpads – dollar store)
  • 10 garbage bags (for plastic backing – dollar store)
  • 5 bio hazard bags (if budget allows)

First Aid Kit Emergency Response Trauma Bag Complete

Equipment

The more we have to work with, the easier it will be so some basic equipment is good to have. If your budget is tight you can pick up some of these items at the dollar store and then add the rest when you are able

**Tip: Know how to use these items!! They are all easy to use, I promise.

Rescue Essentials Shears EMT/Scissors Combo Pack with Holster, Tactical All Black

Items to include:

Wound Care

From superficial scrapes to life threatening bleeding it is no surprise that there are millions of wound care products out there. Try not to get too overwhelmed with this. The first thing we need to do is to make sure that whatever caused the injury is no longer a threat. We then need to make sure the person wants our help!! Before we rush in to play doctor, we should always let the injured person know who we are and what training we may have. In the event this person is or at any time becomes unconscious implied consent is given. Once we have established that there is no current threat to ourselves and that we have consent to help then the main objectives are to stop the bleeding, monitor for shock and prevent infection. It may be wise to divide this into 3 sections so if you are ever in a panic, you’ll be less likely to miss a step.

**Tip: Pack what items you can afford then add to it as you are able to.

The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way

Items to include:

Bleeding Control

Wound Cleaning

**Tip: this will be a lot easier if you can keep the person calm. Consider pain management ideas for while you are treating. Flushing a wound with clean drinkable water will be the ideal method. You may need to pick out tiny pebbles or dirt with tweezers and possibly even scrub it. It is very important to make sure the wound is clean. You will then want to use an antiseptic such as peroxide, alcohol or iodine. If a person had been bitten, infection is much more likely use a BZK wipe.

  • Stress ball (give it to the patient to squeeze but never in the arm they are bleeding from)
  • 5 paper bags (having the patient breathe into one for a couple of minutes may help distract them and will remind them to breathe)
  • Dermoplast antibacterial spray (this works wonders on pain for after birth, scrapes and cuts)
  • 4oz of drinking water (something so simple may not be available if you don’t pack it)
  • 60cc irrigation syringe and a perinatal bottle (I personally get better pressure with the perinatal bottle)
  • Tick remover
  • Poison ivy soap bar
  • 50 alcohol wipes
  • 10 Sting wipes
  • 5-10 BZK wipes
  • hydrogen peroxide (dollar store)
  • 1 oz (30ml) iodine

Wound Closure

It is almost never a good idea to close a wound in a non-sterile setting, you can pack a suture kit for just in case but this should be a last resort. I did not pack a stapler because I personally am not comfortable with using for a number of reasons.

  • 100s of different size band-aids (dollar store)
  • Mole skin
  • 50 butterfly closures
  • liquid band-aid
  • super glue (dollar store)
  • Suture kit
  • 10 triple antibiotic ointment packets (you can buy a tube but this would be cleaner)
  • Burn gel (for pain relief)
  • Vaseline (for making non-stick dressing)

Dressings

  • 50 2×2 gauze pads
  • 50 4×4 gauze pads
  • 10 8×10 ABD pads
  • Rolls of gauze (at the very least 2 in different sizes)
  • Medical tape
  • Reusable cold packs (for swelling)
  • Ace wrap (for sprains)
  • 1-3 triangular bandages

Other emergencies

If possible divide up other emergency supplies into sections to keep them more organized and easier to access. Try to keep these in plain view when you open your bag.

Items to include:

Section 1 – Breathing Difficulty/Chest Pains

  • Manual suction device with extra tubing
  • Areochamber mask with asthma inhalers (if someone in your group has asthma)
  • Berman oral airway kit (has 6 different sizes)
  • Children’s liquid benadryl and syringe (this works slightly faster then the tablets)
  • 10 aspirin (if you suspect a heart attack)
  • 2 CPR masks (one for you and one your assistant if you are lucky enough to have one, CPR is exhausting)

Section 2 – Hypothermia

Section 3- Dehydration/Low Blood Sugar/Weakness

Section 4 – Eyes and Ears

Section 5 – Nose, Lips and Throat

  • Saline Nasal Spray
  • Bulb syringe (for babies)
  • 3-6 Vicks Vapor Inhaler (if one person gets sick you all might and these shouldn’t be shared – dollar store)
  • Chapstick (dollar store)
  • Blistex (dollar store)
  • Abreva coldsore treatment
  • Vicks Vapor Rub (dollar store)
  • Throat lozenges

Section 6 –  Oral/Dental

Medications

If you are reading this.. then chances are pretty good that you can still run out to the local pharmacy whenever you may need to. If SHTF easy to access pharmacies may become a thing of the past. Without power and oil production it would become extremely difficult for pharmacies (or any stores for that matter) to re stock their shelves. This is why it is so important to buy these things while we still can and while we still have health care professionals to ask all our questions to.

First and foremost, everyone with medical needs should pack at least a 30 day supply (the more the better) of any medications that have already been prescribed or recommend to you by your doctor, pharmacist or health care provider. Nothing you read on the internet should ever substitute the advice from your health care provider. Seek their care and medical advice whenever necessary for as long as it is available.

The amount of medications you should pack is going to vary greatly from person to person. I recommend packing enough for yourself and at least one other person, if you can. If you have a larger group then pack accordingly. I have not included any amounts as to how much you should pack because it is important for you to carefully think numbers through based on your own groups size. Talk to your health provider before taking any new medications.

Again, you may pack these however you choose but breaking them to sections may help you find what you need faster. Toiletry kits work great for this.

Items to Consider:

Bag 1 – Indigestion and Upset Tummies

  • Tums (for heartburn)
  • Antacids (for more severe Indigestion)
  • Ginger and Peppermint tea bags (a natural aid for nausea and upset tummies)
  • Gravol tablets (for adults and children – for motion sickness, nausea and vomiting)
  • Pepto tablets (for all your tummy needs)
  • Metamucil (for constipation)
  • Anti Diarrhea tablets
  • Small cup (for the tea)

Bag 2- Fever, Pain and Discomfort

  • Tylenol (for infants, children and adults)
  • Advil (for adults) and children’s Motrin
  • Ultra strength advil liquid gels (works faster)
  • Muscle Rub (for sore muscles)
  • Preparation h (hemorrhoids)
  • Gold Bond Powder (foot odor)
  • Vaseline and Diaper ointment (I highly recommend Beaudreaus butt paste – for rashes)
  • Cold pack and heat pack
  • Numb 520 with 5% lidocaine (amazing deep numbing pain relief, this will numb someone enough for suturing)
  • Vasocaine Numbing Spray (also amazing, it’s mostly used for tattoos)

Bag 3- Infections and Supplements

  • Rehydration salts (yes, I’ve included these twice)
  • Activated Charcoal (accidental ingestion of toxins)
  • Colloidal silver (Talk to a health care provider first)
  • Oral Antibiotics (for infection – I’ve chosen 3 – talk to your health care provider)
  • Essential oils (tea tree, clove, lavender, eucalyptus and oil of oregano were my choices)
  • Polysporin and Neosporin (for minor scrapes and burns)
  • Triple Antibiotic Ointment (in a tube)
  • Honey
  • Foot Fungal Ointment
  • Nystatin (yeast infections)
  • Monistat (yeast infections)
  • Hydrocortisone Cream (treats many skin conditions)
  • Children’s vitamins (Safe for pregnant woman, children and adults)
  • Vitamin D drops (for breastfed babies)
  • Iron supplements (after blood loss)

Education

I have saved the best for last.. Education. Take all the classes you can and read all the books you can get your hands on.  In fact,  pack your favorites in your very own medical bag!! One of my personal favorites is “Where There is no Doctor“. It is also completely FREE to call or drop in to your local pharmacy to ask all the questions you may have about any items you are including in your own medical bag. Talk  to your doctor about any pre existing conditions or concerns. Your knowledge is your best chance of survival.

P.S) Don’t forget to WASH YOUR HANDS!!

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Equipped with a large database of knowledge, co workers and all the equipment/supplies they need at their fingers tips.. it is no secret that America is home to some of

Throughout history, settlements form near water. The largest and most successful settle with plentiful water. There are a number of reasons for that. One, water really is life. We require water for drinking. We also use it for cleaning and laundry. As the human species advanced, we needed additional water for livestock. Then we became stationary, mastered various forms of irrigation, and bred our crops to become more and more dependent on water. Doing so allowed us to reap larger yields of sweeter and more mild crops, but it also tied us inexorably to water systems.

Historically we were further tied to water systems for faster and easier travel and trade, and we eventually turned to it for some of our labor. First with direct-labor systems such as grinding mills, then for the generation of power that could be sent across distances, water made life easier as well as sustaining it.

We are no less tied to water now than the caveman, Viking or European colonist. We just don’t always notice. And because most of North America enjoys easy, low-cost water, we aren’t great about conserving it.

Test Your Water Use

Want to see just how influential water is, and how much we use? Easy enough. Turn off the water at the main for a day. Remember to also tape or turn off faucets so you don’t empty any hot water heaters and end up with problems.

If you’re on a well, use your backup pump system. If you don’t have a backup system, one immune to fire and earthquake and the prepper-minded EMPs, you don’t actually have a water system. Turn it off.

Do it on a standard day. A day you’re not off backpacking, not working on your three-day bare-minimum drill doing a dry camp in the living room or backyard. Really ideally, do it in summer or autumn on the day(s) you’d be watering if you irrigate gardens, and on a day you’re hunting or harvesting some doves, chickens and rabbits.

For less-immersive comparison, just monitor the water gauge. For livestock on a non-metered system, fill containers that can have checks and tally lines added quickly.

Don’t let yourself become complacent or say, “well, that’s just because” to justify the amount of water used. Yes, our grooming standards can go down and change, and we can adopt some laundry methods and clothing treatment from the past that limit our uses more. Eventually, though, hygiene suffers.

If water’s out, something else is regularly going on, from “small” family-sized crises to storms and other disasters that affect the area and region. Roads and doctors may not be available if someone does become ill.

If anything, a crisis is a time to focus more on proper hygiene.

Handwashing, especially, can make a major impact on fecal-oral route infections, which tend to be the root of most of the illnesses laymen call “food poisoning”.

If your hygiene is dependent on wipes, run that test as long as you can to get the best possible average for how many you run through per day. Whatever your backup toilet system is, use that.

Use the data to create a baseline. How much do you use? How long will your stored water last? What seasons can you reasonably count on resupply?

From there, we look for ways to increase our sources and our efficiency in harvesting and using the water we can access.

A Double-Edged Sword

Water is one of the few things we can’t do without, and a functioning stream, river or lake system or even just a marsh can make a huge positive impact on our preparedness. They aren’t without hazards, however.

Flooding is a primary risk, although healthy marsh systems can actually mitigate and minimize floods. Still, the levee systems in the U.S. are aging and Midwest floods aren’t uncommon. Colorado and Tennessee have both had major, devastating disasters due to river- or creek-originated floods.

In a protracted crisis, the hydro dams put in by the Tennessee Valley Authority and in the Northwest are likely to suffer failures, on top of the failures we see washing out roads and creating mudslides and large floods right now.

In addition to those failures, there are mines and factories along our waterways these days. We’ve seen in just the last year what can happen as they fail and toxins leak out. Nuclear plants are routinely along waterways.

Failures combined with flooding can wash those contaminants into our farmlands, cities and suburbs, affecting creeks and wildlife long before and long after we can see the effects.

EPA Accidentally Turns Colorado River Orange With Pollution, Putting Drinking Water At Risk

Livestock are also a contamination risk to both well intakes and streams, just like human waste can already be right here in the U.S. Those risks are even more prevalent in some of the third-world nations that live without our level of basic services. Disease is rampant after earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods due to fecal wastes, and can be expected to go up after a major disaster.

Mosquitoes and the spread of ever increasing and previously “dead” diseases by insects are another risk.

Many of those risks can be limited with site selection and sculpting the land a little, by planting a few things that can help create buffers, predators, and sinks for water and its diseases and pests. An interruption in “easy” water after we’ve become accustomed to it is still the bigger and more likely threat for most of us.

While a gravity-driven well with a pressure-driven cistern would be ideal, not everybody is there. Not every well can either reach or hit the amounts needed for livestock and crop irrigation.

 

Pairing the unprecedented, super-filtration power of an all-new gravity block core with a hybrid ceramic shell, it removes 99.9999 percent of impurities, including bacteria, cysts, disinfectants, volatile organic contaminants (VOAs) and heavy metals.

Because requires no electricity, it is ideal for home use, on or off-grid.

 

Self-Sufficiency through Streams

A moving channel is a fantastic element to site. One aspect to watch for with small systems is that they don’t dry out in summer. Ideally, they won’t even dry up in the 25- and 50-year drought cycles.

Through much of history, moving water has helped us either with direct labor, such as the old mills we can still find here and there, or later by producing power for us to then use however we like.

Running streams, creeks and rivers can also turn water wheels that help us by lifting water into aqueduct systems or into cisterns that will produce enough gravity from water weight to push water further away from the source.

With even a small amount of motion, there are sling pumps capable of moving water for us. Even if a sling pump won’t reach all the way to gardens and livestock, saving us the bend-lift labor of filling buckets and being able to fill a cistern while we move the first load can make an enormous difference.

With greater rates of movement, we can create hydro re-directs to lessen some of our labors and in some cases produce small amounts of energy. We can dam small waterways to increase pressure or create channel- or pipe-based systems to generate power.

In some cases it’s not going to be a lot of electricity, but even the ability to slowly charge electric tools, appliances, and our music and photo devices can be a huge boost.

Slow it, Sink it, Spread it, Store it

In permaculture, there are several “S’s” promoted in regards to water. They simplify the desires to:

  • Catch water for future use
  • Prevent flooding even on the “daily” and seasonal scales, and by doing so prevent erosion and soil hardening via water (runoff, soil compaction)
  • Allow water to infiltrate so roots can access it, and to lift the water table for springs and swale systems
  • Keep chemicals and waste from running across landscapes and polluting our waters or gardens

Catchments are one way we capture water – storing it for later and preventing it from running wasted over the surface of the soil.

Water catchment on a huge scale was and still is used in Australia, with systems similar to water towers and large roof-to-cistern systems both above ground and below ground.

Sheep and cattle stations and small farmers also create nearly lock-style channels to store water for the three- to six-month dry seasons. Those systems can be duplicated in North America depending on local laws.

In places where regulations prohibit such large scale water harvesting or hoarding, it may be possible to obtain permits to put in lakes or ephemeral or permanent pond systems, which can function similarly and have added benefits for homesteads.

On a small scale, water can be stored using systems as complex as we like, or we can go simple and create pyramids or triangles of trickle-over buckets and barrels with no plumbing and just mesh or permeable cloth to prevent mosquito infestations.


Small, shallow swales sequester less, but can prevent damage from rains over years. Larger swales can hold more water, allowing that water a greater amount of time to infiltrate. That water then creates a “lens” beneath the surface of the soil and allows plants a longer period of time to access it.

The slope of the land and the soil type and structure play the biggest roles in the types and sizes of swale systems we put in.

Preexisting vegetation and the type of vegetation we want to put in, if we plan to move livestock through the swale systems and what type of livestock also affects what type of swale system will work best for us.

Reducing Reliance On Systems

We have to have some water, and ideally a constant source. However, even with the best of planning and siting, sometimes we run into droughts or damaged systems. One way to build resiliency to those is to lessen our overall dependence.

Silvopasture over turf can provide forage and fodder even in drought years, and lessen dependence on irrigated grains and delicate pasture and hay. Some silvopasture is coppiced, but most will be either pollarded or selective-drop of large limbs from each tree.

The type and number of livestock and the amount of labor desired affects what style of silvopasture is effective.

Our livestock selection can also lessen dependence.

Ducks tend to be wasteful of water, while with drip waterers, chickens can be highly efficient. Pigs really need a lot of water to gain weight efficiently, and they need regular access to it. Comparatively, dairy and meat goats need a little less access and less total water per pound of produce.

If we veer a little further away from the American norm, camels need less yet, and have traditionally been used for milk, meat and hides and in some cases angora just like llamas.

We can also look into more water efficient breeds from typically dry regions of the world. They may be more expensive as an initial investment and have less-efficient feed-milk-meat ratios, but in a survival situation, the fact that they do survive with little water may make them invaluable.

If we have a fair bit of property, we can also tailor habitat for hunting small game, and focus our water labors on egg and dairy producers.

Hugelkultur beds are another way to limit use and dependence on rainfall and irrigation. Once established, a properly sized and layered hugel bed requires almost no assistance at all. It retains and essentially generates moisture from within.

When we do use water, we can use it as many times as humanly possible instead of letting it run and flow past our fingers.

Gray water systems, using cooled cooking water in gardens or for livestock, and reclaiming runoff from sprouts and sprouted fodder for livestock or re-watering can all help decrease our total draw.

Then there are little things like using a cup of water to rinse while brushing teeth, and having catch basins for washing hands or rinsing produce that then gets used for laundry or put back into the garden systems – at least once, and in some cases, several times.

Water Is Life

We have always been dependent on water as a species, and civilization and modern post-industrial life has made us more so. However, we can look back at history and to some of the underdeveloped nations to find ways that we can harvest and store water against need, and in some cases, use water wheels and even small creeks or lake properties to help us move water or generate a little bit of power.

Pairing the unprecedented, super-filtration power of an all-new gravity block core with a hybrid ceramic shell, it removes 99.9999 percent of impurities, including bacteria, cysts, disinfectants, volatile organic contaminants (VOAs) and heavy metals.

Because requires no electricity, it is ideal for home use, on or off-grid.

 

There are a few tips here. The article about gardening in droughts has additional lessons from fairly recent history that can be applied to reduce water uses for human and livestock food production, large scale or small, urban or rural.

When we’re ready to delve into long-term disaster planning, water needs to be a focus. Without water, and a backup plan for water, all the rest of our preparations become null and void in a large-scale emergency.

Water can also be dangerous. It’s worth researching the local flood patterns, especially pre-levee system, and looking up the diseases, symptoms and cures common to waterways in third world nations and after disasters.

2 Comments

Throughout history, settlements form near water. The largest and most successful settle with plentiful water. There are a number of reasons for that. One, water really is life. We require

A Bug Out Bag is something that most of us are familiar with even if most of us do not have one loaded by the door or in the trunk of your car, ready to go at all times. For the uninitiated, the Bug Out Bag’s purpose is to give you everything you should need to live for 72 hours if you are forced to evacuate your location suddenly. A bug out bag should be pre-packed with all of your supplies so that you can grab it, throw it on your back and walk or run out your car, or head for the hills.

I have written a couple of other posts about Bug Out Bags and one dealt specifically on the subject of the contents of your bug out bag or BOB. My contention is that there are too many people that are throwing everything but the kitchen sink in their packs and I feel that there is something of an insane rush to get everything humanly possible into your BOB without much thought as to the why or the weight.

 

A bug out bag is not a U-Haul. It is not a Bug Out Suitcase even though I swear some people pack more into a Bug Out Bag than they do for a week down in Cancun. I have another post lined up to rehash this concept under a different theme, but I have heard others talk about packing 50 to 70 pounds in their Bug Out Bag and they plan to walk for hundreds of miles if necessary. 70 pounds???

I won’t get into weight or the absolute foolishness (in my opinion) of packing anything remotely that heavy in this post. I will talk about intelligently packing what you do have because regardless of whether you have an ultra-light pack or some behemoth weighing as much as a 4th grade boy, you need to pack this in a way that will make it as comfortable as possible to carry. We are going to talk about how to pack your bug out bag to take the most advantages of weight distribution and tried and true backpacking tips as possible. Backpackers have been bugging out for a long time and it pays to take a lesson or two from people who have more experience than the average Doomsday Prepper fan when it comes to packing everything they need for 72 hours on their back and living to talk about it.

 

 

Packing a backpack and packing a bug out bag are virtually identical. I would argue that you could just as easily bug out with a back pack as you could with any military looking pack from Blackhawk, maybe even easier. There are 4 simple rules to packing any pack you are going to carry on your back.

  • Heaviest gear goes close to your back
  • Light gear away from your back
  • Frequently used items go on top
  • Less used items go on bottom

The Basics of Pack Loading

Packing a backpack or packing your bug out bag are pretty similar. To be successful, you want to pack the right gear, but you need to pack it the right way too and that means keeping your center of gravity as close to you as possible. The last thing you need is a big pack that keeps you off balance and puts unneeded stress on your back.

Sample Bug Out Bag loading diagram.

Items like water and food usually weigh the most unless you have some really heavy gear in your bug out bag. A lot of people have moved to carrying water bladders like a Camelbak and most new packs have a place right inside the back next to your spine for carrying this. Keep the heavy stuff as close to you as possible and low as opposed to above your shoulders.

The Bottom of the Pack

Using the guidelines above, I pack the items I am going to need to get to least,  at the bottom of the pack. My pack has a compartment in the bottom for my sleeping bag so that goes in first. Additionally, having your sleeping bag on the bottom gives you a nice soft cushion when you set your pack down. I have my sleeping bag in a compression sack, but if I have any fear of rain I would add a waterproof bag instead. Running out the door isn’t the time to worry about this, so it may make more sense for you to pack your sleeping bag in a waterproof sack regardless.

Next, I add my tent or hammock gear. I still prefer the tent and it is one of the last items I need so It goes in the bottom of the bag. Depending on the trip I also have a tarp that is attached at the bottom.

The Core of the Pack

Once I have my sleeping bag and tent in the bug out bag, I pack most of my spare clothes, then food and cooking gear. I say most of my clothes because depending on the weather I will carry a fleece or windbreaker too and I want this where I can get to it easily. My main food isn’t going to be eaten until I am at camp or stopped most likely.

I also carry a JetBoil that takes up about as much room as my food and I have my fuel in that same container. My jetboil can boil water for drinking, cook food or quickly heat my water for coffee in the mornings.

The Top of the pack

The top of your bug out bag or the pockets on the outside depending on what you are using should have the gear or equipment you are going to need the most. My pack has a compartment that is waterproof and that is where the lighters and fire kit go along with my headlamp and snacks. This way if I get hungry, I don’t have to dig in my bug out bag, just unzip the top compartment. On the backside of my pack, I have a zippered pocket for tp and spare cordage. I will also carry maps and maybe a camera.

 

 

 

What’s on the sides?

The sides usually hold the water filter, maybe some additional items depending on what I am carrying like spare water bladders. I carry two spares so that when I get to camp I can pump plenty of water for washing up, cooking and even breakfast in the morning. When they are empty they weigh nothing.  My pack also has side pockets for my water bottles too and those work nicely because I can easily reach water while I am walking. One of these days I am going to pull the trigger and get a Camelbak so that I don’t have to carry it, but I still think the good old bottle is easier in some aspects.

That’s how I do it. How do you pack your bug out bag?

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A Bug Out Bag is something that most of us are familiar with even if most of us do not have one loaded by the door or in the trunk

As Preppers we take steps to plan for disasters that could force us out of the comfort and safety of our homes. These threats could range from regional weather incidents like Tornadoes, Earthquakes or Hurricanes to longer term disasters that might not be caused by Mother Nature. Even these relatively common regional weather events can cause massive damage in some places, but shelter and safety is usually within a short drive or walk from your home. To reach safety, it may be necessary to throw your Bug Out Bag into the car or on your back and get the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible before the roads are clogged or leaving is no longer possible. The hope is that you will be able to come back home as soon as the disaster has passed and conditions are safe for your return.

When you are preparing to Bug Out, there’s a lot of advice on various aspects of preparing like how to select the right bug out bag, or how to load your bug out bag. We can give you lists of supplies to actually pack in your bug out bag but in some cases, you simply won’t be able to carry everything you will ever need to in one pack.

The perfect bug out bag will give you basic supplies, food and shelter to live for at least 72 hours, hopefully longer without being so heavy that it will kill you. A bug out bag is designed to give you what you need to survive without the benefit of your home and all its supplies but it is only a short-term solution because it will be impossible to carry every single thing you would ever need for any potential scenario. What if the disaster is longer than 72 hours? What if you aren’t able to come back home ever again for some reason? What if the grid goes down and you can’t get to your money any more due to bank holidays, power outages or some currency crisis?

How can you protect your money?

There are a lot of things that we put in our bug out bag but a supply of money is one of those at the very top of the list when we start to consider what we might need in order to survive. I am not talking about lost in the woods survival here but surviving in a society that still operates in cash. Until we have some TEOTWAWKI event, money still has purchasing power so having some extra cash on hand is wise. You might not be able to access the money you have in the bank anymore like the people in Cyprus, so I recommend keeping a relatively large amount of cash hidden somewhere that nobody can find it outside of your bank. Having all of your money in the bank makes this a single point of failure so having a decent amount of cash on hand, as long as you take precautions could save your rear if the banks decide they can’t or don’t have to give it back. How much should you keep out of the bank? That’s up to you but I try to keep as much as possible outside those doors that can lock me out.

Zimbabwe Dollars ranging from 10 to 100 billion printed within a one year period. The magnitude of the currency scalars signifies the extent of the hyperinflation.

Maybe your money will still be accessible, but with inflation it simply won’t buy you anything at some point in the future. This isn’t without precedent as it has happened in the Weimar Republic after WWI and also in Zimbabwe. As a hedge against actions beyond our control; some people are storing precious metals for long-term protection against inflation. Holding physical gold and silver could be crucial to your family’s survival if the currency collapses so many preppers are acquiring silver and gold coins should the Dollar fail someday or the banks prevent you from accessing the money in your accounts.

While those beautiful shiny coins could save your life financially speaking if the fiat money you have ends up being worthless, they also have their disadvantages. When it comes to bugging out, you have to consider the weight. If you have been quietly purchasing precious metals for years in anticipation of an economic collapse, have you given thoughts to how you will take all of that with you?

There are a lot of options when it comes to precious metals. Some people like James Wesley Rawles advocate using pre-1965 US coins because of their silver content. Smaller denominations, in easy to understand measurements would be easier to barter with other individuals he reasons and I agree with that theory. Instead of spending my weekends sorting rolls of quarters from the bank though; I have settled on 1 ounce Silver coins as my precious metal of choice. I chose silver coins because they were more affordable than gold and I could see paying someone with a silver coin being much easier than chiseling off a piece of my gold coin. Gold coins because of their worth are easier to carry, but harder to make change for. I could carry one gold coin or 70 silver coins. When you are bugging out that weight will start to add up.

Let’s say it was the end of the world and you had to bug out with only the items in your bug out bag, your trusty AR15 or preferred end of the world firearm and all of the money you have. If you had one gold coin you could easily carry that around practically anywhere, but the problem comes in when you wanted to purchase something with it. You couldn’t go to a restaurant and pay for a meal with a fraction of your gold coin. You would want some smaller bills (coins) so to speak.

So, instead of gold you chose silver and now all of your silver is loaded in your bug out bag. Just 200 silver coins will weigh over 14 pounds. What if you had more silver? What if you had cashed in your 401K and have 1000 silver coins? That would be over 60 pounds and I don’t care who you are, adding that much weight to your bug out bag will hurt you sooner or later. Not to mention, if you lose your bag or someone steals it, all of your money is gone.

A bug out plan with Precious Metals

So what is a good prepper supposed to do? I still recommend having some precious metals because I don’t have faith the long term health of our monetary system. Does that mean I am right? You have to investigate that for yourself and make up your own mind. If you do plan to purchase some precious metals how can you plan to bug out on foot with all that coin?

You can’t.

What? Is that your great advice? Well, not exactly but you have to plan on this happening. I have some silver and this works for my me and my family, but I would not load it all into my Bug Out Bag. I also might not load it all in my vehicle if I was bugging out either. So what would I do?

I would bury it. Yes, I would bury my precious metals in containers I could dig up later. This poses a couple of problems too though. What if I can’t make it back to my buried treasure? What if I couldn’t find it after it was buried? These are the realities of storing all of your money outside of a central location but they can easily be mitigated. If I had a bug out location, I would bury some, probably most of my silver there. I probably wouldn’t bury much more than a handful of coins if any along the route. I would also bury a lot at my current location. If I was planning to bug out and had time I would dig it up and take it with me, but if the plan was to bug out on foot, I would only take a small amount with me in my BOB and leave the rest buried.

How much would I take? For a bug out scenario I would probably take 20 silver coins and several hundred dollars. All of this money would be divided into different hiding places and probably with different people. This way if one person gets robbed or lost you don’t lose all your money.

You may be asking what the point of buying silver is if it is going to be so hard to carry. You may be saying the same thing about bugging out. This article may be bringing up more problems than solutions but these are things to consider if you plan on bugging out. Having to bury your money in the ground isn’t ideal but neither is losing all of your money when the banks need a bail-in. Having to bug out isn’t ideal either and it helps to plan for how you are going to take your money with you or keep it safe until you can get back.

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As Preppers we take steps to plan for disasters that could force us out of the comfort and safety of our homes. These threats could range from regional weather incidents

 

Practical Preparedness – Planning by Prevalence

When we jump on preparedness sites, sometimes we’re immediately struck by the enormous loads of things to buy, do, and learn. We immediately start hearing about WROL, battle rifles, ammo counts in the thousands, pressure canners, INCH/BOB bags and locations, pace count, and primitive skills. World- and nation-altering events such as nuclear war, internet-ending viruses, Nibiru, Agenda 21 and NWO, and the like pop up. They all have their places, but sometimes things get missed and it can make for a very overwhelming introduction. It can make it hard to prioritize where to spend our time and financial budgets even for those with experience and years of exposure to the prepared mindset.

To make it a little easier to prioritize, we can work in stages. We can look at what is most likely to occur in the near future and our lifetimes, and use that information to help us decide where to focus our time, efforts and resources.

Zone-Ring Systems

In permaculture, planning is based on zones. The basic premise is that you start at 0 or 1 with the self or home, and move outward through 2-4 and eventually into Zone 5. The inner rings have the most immediate contact with the resident, while the outer rings are visited less frequently. Other systems also use similar ring concepts of involvement, frequency and impact.

The same can be applied to preparedness, just like we modified a Health Wheel to fit our particular interests and needs. In this case, instead of looking at the frequency with which we’ll make contact with an area, we’ll be looking at the frequency with which things occur and impact our worlds.

Like permaculture, I’ve gone with five general categories. In this case, they are: Daily, Seasonal/Annual, 5-10 Year, Generational, & Lifetime/Eventually/Maybe. There are some examples for the average Western World resident. Later in the article there’s a few tips for planning for and around those most and least-prevalent scenarios.

Zone 1/First Ring – Daily Occurrences

A layoff can be just as devastating as a zombie invasion if you aren’t prepared.

Daily emergencies are those that strike somebody somewhere every single day in our English-reading modern life. While some affect larger groups, these tend to be personal or family related items. They’re the kinds of things the neighbors might not even notice. Some examples are:

  • Layoff, cut hours, cut wages
  • Major bills (roof, medical, HVAC, veterinary)
  • House fire
  • Major injury/developing disability
  • Theft, burglary, mugging
  • Vehicular accident & malfunction (temporarily removing transportation)
  • Temporary power outages (hours to 1-3 days)
  • Personal physical altercation (mugging, home invasion, the drunk at a bar, date rape)
  • Missing person(s), family death

When considering the financial aspects of preparedness, also consider the things that might not affect jobs, but do affect our income and-or our ability to offset daily costs. For instance, an injury that prevents gardening and picking up overtime or a second job as a stocker, pipe-fitter, or forklift driver, or a developing disability that renders an arm/hand weak or unusable and prevents needlepoint, canine grooming, or weaving.

Zone 2/Second Ring – Seasonal/Annual Occurrences

These are the things we can consult our Almanacs and insurance companies to consider. They regularly tend to affect a larger number of people. It might be a block or a street in some cases, parts of a town or county, or might impact a whole state if not a region. They’d be things like…

River ice jam flooding

 

  • Busted water mains
  • Boil/No-Boil water orders
  • Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes
  • Wind & thunderstorms
  • Wildfire
  • Significant or extreme snowfall
  • Summer drought
  • Temporary outages (2-5 days)
  • River ice lockups and floods
  • Active shooter or bomb threat, terrorist events

Let’s hope that last stays firmly in the “annual” category or shifts back to the third prevalence ring for most of us. Let’s also acknowledge that in some places and nations, it’s already more common to be caught in crossfire of some sort than it is to live peaceful lives, and for some of them, it’s as or almost as common as paying monthly bills or going out to eat.

Zone 3/Third Ring – 5-10 Year Occurrences

These are the things that happen regularly, but infrequently. Some occur on cycles. Some, as with the natural disasters above, are a nearly predictable cycle. Some aren’t really predictable, per se, but as with tornadoes in one of the nations’ tornado alley or hurricane-prone areas, you learn to expect them. We can expect them to affect a larger area or more people in many cases.

  • Natural Disasters from above
  • Mudslides
  • Major industrial or business closures/layoffs
  • Drought (personal & widespread impacts)
  • Widespread livestock illnesses (such as the avian diseases that pop up regularly)
  • Temporary outages (3-14 days)
  • Changing life phases (child-birth & toddlers, school-age kids, driving-age youths, empty nests, retirements)
  • Fuel cost cycles

Zone 4/Fourth Ring – Generational Occurrences

The span covered by the term “generation” tends to change if you use the strictest definitions. Most account for a generation to cover about 20-30 years. Some examples of things that very much tend to be generational include:

  • Major wars (mental & physical disabilities, income effects good & bad)
  • Recessions, depressions
  • Fuel cost cycles (more extreme)
  • Serious multi-year “weird” weather (droughts, floods, late or early springs)
  • 25- & 50-year flood levels
  • Some diseases

Zone 5/Fifth Ring – Lifetime/Eventual/Possible Occurrences

A lot of these are going to affect not just a region, not just one nation, but many. In some nations and regions, they may fall under the fourth ring of prevalence instead of the fifth. Some of these are also the big-fear “gotcha’s” or clickbait types that seem to draw folks in. Some are truly believed in, and I try not to judge people on what they believe. Poles have shifted in the past, Yellowstone has erupted, we’ve had serious solar effects on power, and asteroids have struck our earth. Will they happen again in our lifetime or eventually? Some almost certainly. Some are a firm “maybe”. Some are … possible.

  • Great Depression
  • Devastating Midwest seismic activity
  • National or global pandemics in the Western world
  • Major Ring of Fire activity
  • Significant volcanic eruptions (the atmosphere-blocking ash type)
  • Major global climate change (for the hotter or colder)
  • EMP, devastating solar activity
  • Nation-crippling electronic-based virus(es)

Alternative Scale Systems

Like permacuture’s zoning, the business world can also give us some scale systems to apply. High-probability, high-reward, urgent-response items are given priority, while lower-chance and less-likely risks are tended to later. We can create the same for our preparedness.

Another way to look at the five rings would be to apply a timespan for event duration. Perhaps 3-7 days, then 3-6 weeks, 3 months, 6-12 months, and 18-months+.

Like using prevalence, using time spans creates a measurable scale that works off a “most likely” basis. Most of us, at some point inside 1-5 years, will have some sort of financial upheaval or power outage that makes the supplies in the first few rings useful.

Ensuring we have everything we need to cook, clean, stay warm (or cool), and pay bills for those periods will keep us more balanced in our preparedness, and make us better prepared for the things that are MOST likely to occur in our near future and our lifetimes.

Applying Prevalence Rings

It’s inarguable that if you’re ready for the New World Order to freeze the planet and then send out FLIR drones to drop nuclear bombs in the midst of a planned or unplanned foreign-nation bank account hack while satellites are inaccessible due to solar storms’ interference, you’re pretty much good.

That’s not a particularly practical place to start and it might not be the best plan for resource allocation unless everything else really is covered.

There are a world’s worth of things that occur on a small-scale, inside homes and towns, that happen a lot more frequently than the dinosaurs and mega-mammals die out.

I see an awful lot of people hyped on one thing that can go wrong and might one day go wrong, but they exclude all kinds of things that do actually happen.

They forget that we sometimes have disasters that mean daily life is taking place all around us, or in the rest of the county, state, nation and world. They neglect fire extinguishers and smoke detectors for the sexy-cool aspects of preparedness like the rifles and Rambo knives.

Fact is, most of us will experience something from the first tier or two in our lives at least once, and for some of us, they’re regular parts of life.

In many cases of upheaval and crisis, we’re still going to want electricity, most likely.

We will still have a job or need to find a new one, will still be expected to present ourselves showered and with money to receive services, will still have doctor’s appointments, hunting and squatting in county-state-national parks will still be frowned on, and combat gear in the streets will still be the exception rather than the rule.

In some cases, the duration of our life-altering events might only be a few hours or days. However, in many parts of the world, those hours or days can be seriously inconvenient if not downright deadly. The ability to keep a CPAP machine running, repair a down or wrecked vehicle, and continue on with life after a squirrel invasion or a tree comes down is just as important as defending the home from looters and making beeswax candles.

Being able to repel the zombie horde does me little good if my vehicle is in poor repair on a daily basis and leaves me stranded on my way to work. 5K-10K rounds of ammo times my 7 platforms sounds nice, unless I don’t keep oil, coolant, jumper cables and fix-a-flat or a mini air compressor in my vehicle so I can limp my way home to them safely – on a daily basis.

Prioritizing instead of jumping willy-nilly – and tracking instead of continuing to add to whatever my favorite prep stash is – can help prevent daily disasters from truly causing upheaval.

Overlap Between Rings

The nice thing about seriously assessing what is likely to go wrong based on prevalence in the past is that we can sometimes make just little twitches.

We don’t have to be ready for all-out neighborhood wars over food, grazing rights, and tickets to the Earth Arks to create that overlap.

A bug-out bag serves as a shelter-in-place kit as well as a “standard” wildfire or hurricane evac kit. Having a month or two of food (or far more) means we can also weather a big bill because we can skip buying groceries.

Image: How’s your insurance coverage?

Preparing by Prevalence

Resources like the Ready.gov site and our insurance carriers can help us determine what goes wrong in our area. We might be well served making maps using the information they give us about regular, fifty-year and hundred-year floods, wind storms, and snow/hurricane routes to apply to our walk-out and drive-out plans.

We can also use their information – like, what is the number-one thing that causes job-loss or vehicle and home damage in our area – to make sure we’re buffered against it.

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  Practical Preparedness – Planning by Prevalence When we jump on preparedness sites, sometimes we’re immediately struck by the enormous loads of things to buy, do, and learn. We immediately start hearing

The remembering of the events on 9/11/2001 that killed thousands is just barely in our rear-view mirror. This day fortunately passed without any incident. That day in our past saw so much death, chaos and confusion many of us haven’t experienced in our lifetimes and hopefully never will again. It was a historical day for all manner of reasons beyond the tragedy of lives lost through terrorism or sacrifice. It gave us a glimpse into the very definition of pandemonium live on TV – played out in real-time before our unbelieving eyes. As a nation, we watched in horror as first explosions rocked the towers, then the catastrophic collapse of two giant skyscrapers enveloped a city in toxic dust and sent untold thousands running for their lives.

A terrorist attack on a large city is still statistically one of the least likely events you would ever be affected by, but since that day people have come to understand some of the risks of being caught in an urban disaster differently. There are different realities in an urban environment that might require an alternate set of plans for your life. If you started to plan for an urban survival kit, what items should you consider?

Urban survival kit list

An urban survival kit is one you could carry with you and possibly stash at your work location assuming you have a safe place to go to outside the city. If you live full-time in the city, your needs for a kit might be similar but if you plan on walking out and not coming back, a Bug Out Bag might be more appropriate.

I work in a small city in a building in our downtown area and if an event like 9/11 happened in my city, I would want to have some items on hand that might allow me to escape with my health intact or possibly to render aid to someone. The items in the urban survival kit below are just ideas. Your reality might require additional survival items altogether.

I am going to discuss items that could assist you if an event like 9/11 happened in a city you were in. A disaster has impacted the city and you work in an office building downtown. Communications are down, services are down and your goal is to make it out of your building, out of the city and back home as quickly as possible.

The basics

Water – Naturally you will need water so a liter or so, maybe a couple of plastic bottles of water would meet your needs until you either get home or to a location with a source of water you could filter and resupply. Even in 9/11 the world didn’t stop. Stores were still open and you could still make purchases but this initial supply will allow you to get as far away from the crisis as possible before you have to stop and think about additional supplies.

Plastic water bottles can be reused and are lighter than other options, but a stainless steel Nalgene bottle can also be used over a fire to boil water if you really are in dire straits.

Pack down to storage pocket-size. Ultra lite-weight Waterproof and breathable. Beats carrying an umbrella.

Food – This should be something that requires zero preparation. Something like high calorie energy bars would be best. You don’t want to have to worry about boiling water (or carrying cookware) to re-hydrate your Mountain House Chili Mac, you want to get home. Energy bars take up relatively little space, you can eat them while you are walking and they will tie you over until you get to a safer location. A good option would be Bear Valley Pemmican Bars. They have 390 calories each and no chocolate to melt all over the place. Have enough for the amount of time you think it would take you to walk home and double that. You could face detours or be slowed by injury.

Shelter – You could be forced to spend the night outdoors, or trapped in a subway station or airport. For urban survival you wouldn’t need to worry about packing a tent. There should be millions of places to find a shelter you can get under. You do need to worry about warmth though. In the cooler months plan for a set of base layers, a fleece and a water proof shell. These don’t have to be expensive and the high-dollar hiking shells aren’t worth their price in my opinion. You can get a waterproof jacket from Frogg Toggs for less than $20 that is incredibly light so it takes up no space in your urban survival kit and it can keep you dry. It also doubles as a windbreaker so in combination with your base layers and fleece you should be warm for a walk out of the city.

A urban survival kit can give you the survival items you need to make it out of the city fast.

Summer conditions require a different shelter and that is usually from the heat. A good lightweight hat that keeps the sun off your head will work. I would also pack a lightweight long sleeve shirt. This may be the last thing you want to wear if it is hot, but if you are a woman who is in a sleeveless dress in the middle of summer a shirt will keep the sun off you and offer a little more protection.

Simply touching an attacker will deliver a high voltage shock causing loss of balance and muscle control, confusion, and disorientation bringing him to his knees and making him incapable of further aggressive activity

Shoes are a big deal for me probably because for some reason I have been blessed with the tenderest feet in the world. If I had to walk very far barefoot I would be hurting. I know some people who can walk barefoot over gravel. Not me so good footwear is a priority for me for that reason. In addition, you may be at work with dress shoes and they aren’t suited for long walks. Have a good pair of shoes that will first allow you to walk for days possibly and protect your feet. You could have to walk cross-country. The weather may be inclement so have shoes that will get you home no matter what. I wear either leather boots with good soles or hiking shoes every day. I know some people who wear flip-flops and I would hate to see them try to climb their way out of a collapsed building or pile of rubble with nothing more than those on.

Security – I carry a concealed firearm with me just about all of the time. If something happens I will at least have a 9MM for protection. In a true disaster, desperate people might be out to harm you for any one of a million reasons. Having a means to defend yourself is an important, but often overlooked necessity. If not a firearm, because for some people that isn’t possible, a high power Taser that can shoot out 53,000,000 watts could incapacitate someone quickly. Barring that, Police Strength pepper spray is an alternative. Sabre has a compact size that gives an advertised 35 shots. That could get you through a lot of bad guys. Going down the list a good survival knife is a fall back item which has other uses, but the last thing I want to do is get into a knife fight with anyone.

Health – Running from disaster can lead to injury or you could have been injured in the attack. Simple first aid items can help you stop bleeding or wrap up wounds long enough to receive care when you are in a safe location. Obviously, if you are seriously injured, I don’t expect any of us will be packing a full service medical kit in our urban survival bag.

You can pack a few of the following items that could help in the health department.

  • N-95 masks – Remember the giant dust clouds when the buildings fell? These could be very useful in a similar situation or offer some protection against other threats.
  • Nitrile Gloves – This one might not make sense because our goal is to get home as quickly as possible but a few sets of nitrile gloves weigh almost nothing and could be a disposable option for messy situations.
  • Pain Reliever – A good pain reliever could help with aches from injuries or sore muscles from carrying loads.
  • Blood Stopper –This is a compound that actually stops bleeding. Used for serious wounds to create a seal. Adventure medical kits created a Trauma Pack bandage with Quick Clot in it so you can wrap the wound, the Celox will stop the bleeding and you can keep on keeping on.
  • Sunscreen – If you are forced out in the middle of summer and you aren’t prepared to deal with the effects of too much sun, you could end up with severe burns.

In a disaster or crisis you could find yourself running for your life. Will you have the gear you need?

Hygiene – I wouldn’t worry too much about the hygiene department assuming you aren’t dealing with disease or dead bodies here and assuming you can make it to safety. Spare toilet paper might be a good item to pack just remove the cardboard insert out of a half used roll and squish it down. Put this in a freezer bag to keep it dry. Hand sanitizer isn’t something I use, but in a disaster situation where I was worried about disease and I couldn’t wash my hands I would use this before eating.

I wouldn’t bring deodorant or a toothbrush although I know comfort items are really important to some people.

The X Factor

Many of those items above could have a home in either your Get Home Bag or your Bug Out Bag, but what other items could you need in an urban survival situation where your goal is to get home as quickly as possible?

The Stanley FUBAR can get you out of a jam or be used as a weapon in a pinch.

Pry Bar – A simple pry bar can be a lifesaver. You can use it to pry open vending machines to get that lifesaving candy bar fix or do open elevator doors, stuck filing cabinets… A million uses and if you want to go all Braveheart on someone, a prybar like the Stanley FUBAR can be used as a weapon in a pinch.

Bolt Cutters – This may not be a realistic tool for some of you, but a pair of mini-bolt cutters can open doors that were previously closed. Pun intended. If you goal is to get home, maybe these aren’t needed but I can imagine a lot of potential uses depending on how bad the disaster is.

Eye Pro – You want to protect your eyes and a good pair of swimming goggles can keep you safe from the effects of Tear Gas or dust. You can even get them in pretty colors too. If that is too silly for you, there is always the high-speed ESS Military issue protective glasses. These will protect you from debris, but they aren’t sealed around your eyes. You will probably look much cooler though.

Gloves – Gloves should be available to you pretty much in every bag you have. These can be good leather gloves or something like Mechanix Gloves. They will protect your hands from cuts, heat and abuse.

Small Roll of Duct Tape – Do I really have to say why? Don’t pack a whole roll because you don’t need that weight. Just wrap your water bottle or a lighter a few times for back up repair capability.

Headlamp – A good bright headlamp, beats a flashlight every time for hands free sight when it’s dark.

Bandanna/Shemgah – These can be used for bandages, face-masks or protection from the elements.

Loud Whistle – A simple whistle is great for getting the attention of anyone you want to find you, like a rescue team if you are trapped.

Sticky Notes and Permanent Marker – Useful for leaving notes for people letting them know where you are or where you are going.

USB Battery Charger – This adds some weight but if your phones are still working, this will allow you to recharge your phone without the benefit of an electric socket. Even a small 3300mAh USB Battery charger can fully recharge your smart phone.

Maps of your city – Yes maps. What if you can’t take your normal route home? What if you are forced to go around due to a giant fire? Having even a simple map will allow you to chart out an alternate route if you are forced to. Another option mentioned on another post was to take screenshots of your city or route in Google Earth and store them on your phone as a reference.

What bag are you going to carry your Urban Survival Kit in?

So you have all of this gear stocked and ready. It could go in the bottom of your locker at work or in a desk draw, but you need something to carry it all in. There are a million bags out there and you should select a bag for your urban survival kit that not only gives you room for your gear but is comfortable, able to withstand a little abuse and blends in to the rest of the crowd so you aren’t targeted for your belongings.

Here are a few sample bags that should do the job nicely. Make sure the bag you choose fits and is comfortable to you.

5.11 Rush 24

The 5.11 bag is my get home bag that remains in my vehicle. If I can access my truck but am unable to drive to safety, I will use this bag and transfer any gear if needed. These are incredibly tough bags but do look tactical which is certainly by design. I have seen many guys rocking these bags though so I don’t think you would get too many looks if you brought this to work.

Rush 24 by 5.11 Tactical

Black Diamond Bullet 16 Backpack

Versatility in a sleek, trim pack, the Black Diamond Bullet 16 panel-loader is an excellent rig for off-trail or high-mileage scrambles which would serve you equally well in an urban environment.

CamelBak Cloud Walker 18

The Cloud Walker 18 hiking pack sports a clean, technical aesthetic with features designed to keep all your gear organized. The main compartment is accessed via an asymmetrical zipper that enables easy access and prevents cargo from spilling out when fully open. In addition to the 2 liter Antidote Reservoir you get two mesh side pockets for keeping essentials close at hand.

Osprey Axis Daypack

Osprey makes excellent bags and I have this pack’s older brother, the Atmos AG as my bug out bag/hiking bag. Excellent quality.

Tactical Taylor Urban Operator Pack

The Urban Operator has a large main compartment, medium-sized front pocket with an admin organizer. Fits most laptop computers up to 17″, water bottle pocket and contoured padded shoulder straps. 1,836 Ci volume. It’s a little tactical looking but nothing too out of the ordinary nowadays.

So there are my thoughts on some good urban survival kit items. What do you have in your bag? Do you commute to work in a large city? What are your plans if disaster strikes?

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The remembering of the events on 9/11/2001 that killed thousands is just barely in our rear-view mirror. This day fortunately passed without any incident. That day in our past saw