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"Stay 'unreasonable.'  If you don't like the solutions [available to you], come up with your own." 
Dan Webre

The Martialist does not constitute legal advice.  It is for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Copyright © Phil Elmore,
all rights reserved.

Survival Kits for Home, Bugging Out, and Daily Carry

By Phil Elmore

In late May of 2006, various news outlets reported that the Northeast Coast wasn't "ready for hurricane season." A Fox News article stated that "New York City, Long Island, and the New England coast have all been pounded by ferocious hurricanes in years past -- and as the 2006 season shapes up meteorologists are concerned that the Northeast is ripe for a storm that could rival Katrina, at least in terms of property damage." We have apparently reached the peak of the Atlantic Ocean's cycle of hurricane activity (a cycle that takes a "few decades," the news articles tell us) and dire pronouncements about what could or might occur are being fed into teleprompters faster than the nation's news anchors can intone them.

Media sensationalism aside, the threat of natural disaster is always real -- because earthquakes, hurricanes, severe snowstorms, and other phenomena don't go away simply because we'd be terribly inconvenienced by their intrusions into our modern lifestyles. I remember only too well the severe blackout that occurred in the summer of 2003, when millions of people in Canada and the Northeast United States lost power as some sort of cascading failure made its way through the grid (a failure we in America were quick to blame on Canada, if I recall correctly). At the time, the first thing we all thought was that some sort of terrorist attack had taken place. I only started to think that after I turned on the car radio and the local AM station -- running on generator power -- explained just how widespread was the outage. Then I got worried. I got more worried when I tried to reach my wife and couldn't get a signal on my wireless phone.

Everything worked out for the best. The power outage was a utility failure, not a terrorist attack. The wireless phone network was overburdened with calls, not crashed by malicious action. While our power was out for a while, it wasn't out as long as it was during what we in Central New York called "The Labor Day Storm," when it took several days to restore our electricity. It was after that storm that I started compiling the Big Red Box of Power Outage supplies. Still, after the Northeast blackout of 2003, I found myself wondering what I would do and how I could plan for future natural emergencies -- and for civil unrest. Was I prepared enough?

In the course of my life I've watched plenty of dramas unfold in different parts of the country -- disasters like fires, riots, and other "acts of God" and humanity that always seemed very distant to me. For whatever reason, the lurid yellow journalism that flowed from countless poison pens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina affected me in ways those other disasters never did. I watched with horror as breathless reporters regaled America with what we now know were exaggerated and even fabricated tales of rape, looting, and tragedy in New Orleans and elsewhere. I found myself picturing something similar happening where I lived. How could I look my loved ones in the eye and tell them I wasn't ready, that I couldn't be bothered to do anything ahead of time?

The time to prepare for emergencies is before the fact. "Survivalism" is one facet of martialism. It is, at its core, preparedness -- taking the time to plan ahead, to stockpile necessary items, to envision and (if necessary) to apply problem solving skills to unforseen adverse conditions. To be a martialist, you must be a survivalist. To be a responsible human being living in uncertain times, you must be a survivalist. To be a survivalist, you must assemble a survival kit.

There are countless approaches to creating a survival kit and there are really multiple kits a given martialist might choose to create. My survival kits are always evolving as I find new, useful gear and replace old, obsolete, or redundant items. As I spent a few early mornings watching Hurricane Katrina news coverage and surfing survival sites, I formulated a plan that I followed slowly over the course of the year that followed. I did not need a single survival kit. I needed three.

Specifically, I needed a large kit for home -- something that would contain everything I could think of stowing for use in future emergencies. (The home kit is, by definition, something that does not leave the home.) I needed a bug-out kit, too, something that could be relatively large and heavy but had to be mobile. It had to be something I could grab while leaving the home, something I could easily put in a vehicle and take with me. Finally, I needed a personal survival kit, something to augment the daily carry items I already toted. I had in my head, as I planned the kit, visions of September 11, 2001. I remembered the commuters who worked in New York city, making their way on foot out of Manhattan with only the supplies they carried with them to sustain them. To that end, I planned a survival shoulder bag that would become my constant companion as I commuted to and from (and traveled for) work.

Before we discuss the contents of the survival kits, let us address what they do not contain: weapons. Survival weapons are certainly important, but they are beyond the scope of these kits. Entire books have been devoted to the topic of guns for The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAKI). Guns should be carried on your person or stored securely in vaults or other separate locations, so we won't get into them here. Do not think, however, that I am dismissing them. There's no point in assembling survival kits of this type if you don't also consider weapons (as violence is frequently a side effect of scenarios in which the veneer of civilized, modern society is torn away). We simply won't cover them in this article.

THE HOME KIT

The home kit is contained in a Gander Mountain duffel bag that's large enough to hold a human body (a small one, anyway). In many ways it is simply a larger version of the mobile bug-out kit, containing the same items (but more of them). For example, it contains multiple medical kits and larger supplies of medicine (which would be too bulky to haul around in the mobile kit). There are a few variations in contents that should be obvious, too. 


For example, the home kit contains more medical supplies, food, and water rations because weight is not an issue. It doesn't contain a tent because there's no need for a tent at home (whereas the mobile kit does contain a small tube tent).

The home kit contains the following items:

THE BUG OUT BAG (BOB)

More important than the home kit is the mobile kit or Bug Out Bag. The concept is one with which survivalists and like-minded readers will be familiar. It's a prepacked, ready-to-go bag that can travel with the citizen as he or she flees an area that has gotten to "hot." When the "balloon goes up," my Bug Out Bag is waiting for me to grab it. No thought has to go into this, other than remembering to grab the bag and put it in my car. (The bag could also be carried, but it is not light enough for daily toting). 

Into the bag goes everything that two people might need to get them through everything from a minor emergency to civil unrest and all-out societal collapse -- the caveat being that the bag's contents are to get you where you are going, not sustain you indefinitely in the field.

The Bug Out Bag contains the following items:

THE JACK SACK

The third and final component of my survival kits is my daily carry shoulder bag. This is a Rothco Messenger Bag that I purchased specifically because it is similar (if not identical) to the one carried by "Jack Bauer" on the Fox series 24. I call it, affectionately, the Jack Sack. It happens to be a really great bag, too. It is of heavy Olive Drab canvas, made in India, largely open inside with several side pouches. It has one large flap that closes using hook and loop strips, keeping the contents reasonably secure but allowing easy access to the interior of the bag. 

The wide shoulder strap is absolutely necessary because I need to be able to sling this bag and carry it with me, possibly hands-free. My Jack Sack is also full to capacity; it cannot hold much more or it would be too heavy to tote. As it is, a person smaller than me would find it uncomfortable to sling this sack for any length of time. You must tailor the contents of your daily carry bag to suit your individual needs.

Jack sack contains these items:

THE MINIMAL ON-BODY KIT

Using these three kits I am covered for a variety of scenarios, including varying locations when emergencies are identified. If I am home and plan to stay there through an emergency (a decision you must never take lightly, I have a complete kit, supplemented by the BOB kit if I need additional items. If I must flee, I have the BOB kit, which I could supplement with the items in my daily carry Jack Sack. 


The author's minimal on-body kit, with Leatherman tool.

If I am away from home and must get back to it, or cannot reach home and must be sustained only by what I carry with me, I have a reasonable number of supplies in the Jack Sack. The contents of each of these three kits is a function of what I think I'll need. This means that your own kit contents will vary based on your needs, your environment, your specific issues, etc. For example, if you take certain medications, you must have a supply of them on hand. (I have eyedrops in all my kits because I often suffer from dry eyes, and I carry eyeglass repair kits because I wear glasses all the time. You might have no need of such things.)

My BOB and my Jack Sack also contain books with survival information in them. My home library contains extensive materials on the topic. Don't assume you can remember everything you'll need to know in a survival situation. Carry emergency information with you as part of your arsenal of survival gear, because you never know when you might need to deal with something that you can't simply accomplish off the top of your head.

There is one problem we've not yet addressed, at least as these three kits apply to my own daily life. While I carry my Jack Sack every day when I go to work, and when I take trips of any significant distance, I don't carry it when I'm out and about relaxing. It's more a work bag than anything else. What happens on the weekends or when taking a simple hour drive to a relative's house? The need for a minimialist on-body kit -- Minimum Accessories for Personal Preparedness -- is clear. While most of your minimum accessories can be carried on your person and in your pockets, take the time to create a small kit (as described here so you have the bare minimum necessary to live as a prepared martialist. The categories I recommend you cover are these:

PREPARE NOW OR PAY LATER

Every survival kit is a work in progress. You will discard outdated items and replace them with fresh supplies or updated and improved technology. You will think of things to add that I have not included here (or you will discard items I have included for which you do not see a need). Personal taste and individual circumstance will dictate much of what you choose to stockpile. What is important is that you formulate a plan and act on it.

It took me several months of planning, organizing, and obtainign supplies before I was satisfied with the arrangement of my kits. You cannot afford to try and do all of this planning and building when an emergency arises. The time to plan and to prepare is now, before anything goes wrong. Do not wait. Do not waste time.

Get started now.