I’ve spent a lot of time, money, and resources lately on re-building up a set of Get Home Bags for my adult children that live within about 50 miles of my home. Originally, I had built them bags based upon the Bug Out Bag mindset. I’m not certain how I eventually came to the conclusion, but that’s about the worst way to go about it.

My children are smart and have a lot more awareness of emergency preparedness that the average citizen, but not nearly enough in my opinion. This means the formula for a Go Bag that I use for myself would be not the most effective use of weight, space, and resources for them. e.g. they aren’t going to use paracord and a poncho to improvise a rain shelter. They aren’t going to know the optimal knots or techniques. I need to give them a more application specific shelter.

This line of thinking leads me to really questioning a lot of the YouTube videos about Bug Out Bag assembly. Most of them advocate an in-depth list of survival items like ferro-rods, trapping kits, etc…. These are all important and great items for a survival kit or an I’m Never Coming Home bag, but are they really that important in a kit that’s designed for getting you out of your home and to a pre-planned bug out location 72 to 120 hours away.

I’m not suggesting you forget the fundamentals of water, shelter, and food or that 2 is 1 and 1 is none, but think hard about the purpose of your kits. You’ll save a lot of time and weight.

Get Home Bag

Personally, I consider the Get Home Bag as a kit to get you home if you are out and about but not more that 50 miles from home. This contents are there to provide you with gear and supplies to make your trek home easier.

I work about 40 miles from the house, 5 days a week. I can generally drive it in about 40 minutes. It’s mostly state and county roads. But what if the roads were blocked because of a storm? What if the cars were suddenly inoperative because of an EMP attack? What do I need to get home efficiently?

My basis of design constraints for the kit are: Gray man as fuck, light weight to facilitate moving fast, three days of consumables, and the general population hasn’t figured out the severity of the incident.

I’m not going to include a hatchet or saw. I don’t want to build a semi-permanent shelter in the woods. I’m not bringing three days of freeze dried meals or MREs. Yes I need calories to sustain myself, but lifeboat food and snacks for on the go eating are optimal.

Go Bag

This one is a bit of a puzzle. I’ve heard the term used a lot over the years, but it’s never clear exactly what the purpose is. I’ve heard it called a Bug Out Bag. I’ve heard it called survival kit. I’ve even heard it called Every Day Carry. Recently I completed Community Emergency Response Team training. During that training, we spoke often of equipment in our Go Bags. In that context the Go Bag was a kit team members kept ready for being part of a disaster response.

I appreciate that definition and have adopted it in my kit building and general preparations. I have a Go Bag that focuses on what FEMA and disaster response experts call the heroic phase of incident response. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is high on the list of contents. Work gloves, high visibility vests, a hard hat, work boots, and similar equipment is one module in the kit.

Trauma gear like tourniquets, isralae bandages, SAM splits and other severe injury gear are the bulk of the medical items with less focus on the Boo-boo Kit. A Boo-boo Kit typically contains items for minor issues like a headache, an itchy patch of skin, a small scrape, or an upset GI tract. Don’t get me wrong, these small issues can turn into major issues if ignored, but during heroic phase disaster response the priority is to “…aid the most people in the shortest amount of time.” For example, you aren’t going to spend 30 minutes on CPR. You are going to triage, treat the treatable, and move on. Mass casualty response is grim.

This kit is to keep you safe and sustained during multiple 16 hour shifts of disaster and mass casualty response following an incident. Beyond PPE and Medical Kit, clothing for protection against the elements, hydration supplies, and on the move snacks are the core of this kit.

However, note well, that the Go Bag is kept in a location where it can easily supplement other kits in other incidents. I keep the Go Bag in my trunk most of the time so I can respond in an emergency from most places I might be. If I were out at a show and an EMP attack happened, I’d be able to grab key items from my Go Bag and add them to my Get Home Bag as I set out to reunite with family.

Bug Out Bag

My Bug Out Bags aren’t bags and aren’t very man portable. 1 backpack per family member, 1 duffel bag, 2 plastic tubs, and an EmComm pelican case form the “Bug Out Bag”. The backpack contains the most important items. The duffel bag contains replenishment supplies for the backpacks and the tubs contain important, but not vital items. The tubs are cross loaded and numbered so no rushed thoughts would have us disposing of more vital equipment if we lose the vehicle.

The underlying assumption is that the Bug Out Bag assembly will be loaded in a vehicle and the family present sets in one or more vehicles out for one of four preplanned bug out locations. One is fairly close to home, one almost 200 miles away, and the other two 30-50 miles away. All in different directions. A series of signals and EmComm gear in the possession of all family members would alert absent family members of the bug out and our primary destination.

The Bug Out Bag gets us out of the house with important gear to keep us fed, healthy, and warm until we can return home after eminent danger has passed.

I’m Never Coming Home Bag

Bottom line up front: This is a wilderness survival backpack. It is well stocked, heavy and barely man portable. Time to go live in a National Forest or Wilderness Area.

The kit includes items for harvesting wild food, cooking, constructing a shelter, extra clothing, security gear, and limited consumables for use until a more permanent shelter and/or camp can be established. The point of this kit is to get you out of danger that there is no coming back from. Examples include a gang drives you from your home, a disaster that makes your home and a large number of others uninhabitable for a long period of time, or similar incident.

Final Thoughts

So if you’re just dipping the toe into preparedness, start with something…anything. Then the same way that elite athletes visualize their performance, you need to visualize and game your personal scenarios and revise, focus, and upgrade your kits.

Table Summarizing Constraints of Different Kits

	Go Bag	BoB	INCH Bag	GHB
Design Days	1	7-14	Forever	3
Priority Gear	Safety	Essentials	Sustainment	Mobility
Weight	##	###	####	#