Packing the "Go Bag"

 

The Steepmeadow urban homestead is the result, in part, of an interest in survival that started in January, 2017. 

The thought was late in coming, but it seemed to me that without some planning for the worst, a person could find themselves in a lot of trouble very quickly in the face of myriad threats. 

We're more vulnerable than we'd like to think to dangers of real political upheaval and unrest, economic depression and hyperinflation, hunger, disease, not to mention more common dangers like hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, ice storms. And then there are the truly catastrophic dangers of nuclear war, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack - where the airburst of a single smallish nuclear device could bring down the entire power grid of the U.S. and destroy every electrical circuit in less than a second. No computers. No electricity. 

I dove into reading a lot of nonfiction and fiction about the subject. If you want to read a terrifying group of novels to read that will set you on the path to preparedness, let me suggest these three:

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029 - 2047 by Lionel Shriver. It's the story of a massive depression that takes place in the U.S. after the U.S. dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency, and how a family survives (and doesn't).

One Second After by William Forstchen. This one describes (I won't vouch for the author's politics or literary genius) in page-turning detail the aftermath of an EMP attack. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel which describes the impact of the "Georgia Flu" pandemic that wipes out civilization.

I started the preparedness journey with a "go bag" which I think a lot of people do. 

That said, it's really an absolute last resort. The very last thing I would want to do in an emergency is leave home. If you really want to survive a disaster long-term, you need a homestead. This why we are trying to grow our own food and take our energy needs off grid. 

That said, I've had friends ask me about the go bag and what we keep in ours. Since it is snowing early, and I had to do a little maintenance (update the prescription meds) on the bag, I thought, "What the heck, why not write a blog post?"

What you want in a go bag is an easy to transport bag that will have all of your essentials for 72 hours. 

Our bag assumes that we're dressed for the weather. In winter, I'd hope we aren't forced to leave the house without boots and warm coats.

Ideally, you'd have time and the ability to load up your car (which we always keep half full of gasoline - 250 miles of range - enough to get us to Thunder Bay, Ontario). But you might have to walk. 

What is realistic? What are we planning for? We live about three miles downwind from a train track, and about a mile from a freeway. We might need to temporarily evacuate because of a toxic chemical spill. In Minnesota, I think the greatest danger is a tornado, followed by something like the "inland hurricane" they had in Iowa last summer, where they had 100 mph. winds that blasted a 700 mile area. If we were standing out in a light rain, looking at a mass of broken junk where our house used to be, we would be in a lot better shape if we had this bag in our hands. We'd be able to fire up the disaster recovery plan on any PC, and start making calls to insurance right away. The other big one for us would be an ice storm that brings down power for an extended period of time. But that - like most disasters - would be a stay at home event. 

The Bag

The actual bag that we're using is a carry-on sized wheeled backpack that I originally bought to travel to Iceland. It isn't some massive hiking pack, (that's the "never coming home" bag). It is compact. I think it is ingenious because you wouldn't always have to have the weight on your back. It has roller wheels as well. That was awesome in Iceland, and I think it would put us in good stead if we had to cover any number of miles. 

This photo depicts what we'd leave the house with. The two mesh packs on the side are for Zipper and Muffin. No way are we leaving our beloved cats. If we've got time to grab it, we'll be bringing our really good paramedic-quality first-aid kit, too. If there's an emergency bad enough to make us flee our home, we might need it for ourselves or for other people. Our bag is optimized for Kiki and me.

Note that it isn't some camo-colored "tactical" backpack. This is not an accident. In a disaster, we want to look like anybody else, turn into "grey men." We don't want people to think, "Oh, look at those people. They look really well equipped. Let's steal their things and beat them up a little bit." These things look like any ordinary school kid's backpack, just a little bit bigger.

Food, water & shelter, communication and disaster recovery are the priorities.

Food

Since this is designed to keep us up and running for 72 hours, we're not carrying a lot of food. We've got two bricks of survival bars, each good for one person for 72 hours. We supplement this with some "survival food" tabs - ultralight weight and packed with vitamins with a 25 year shelf-life.

Also, we bring some cat food in cans. (We put in fresh cans each time we buy a big box of them.)

Water

You really don't want to get dehydrated. But on the other hand, water is heavy and bulky. We have an MSR Mini-Works pump which can basically make any decent water potable, and is good for thousands of liters in our "never coming home" bag. 

But for the 72 hour bag, we've settled on a one liter Nalgene bottle and a little vial of 50 iodine tablets for making drinking water. It tastes terrible, but it will do in a pinch. 

Shelter

I really hope that we never have to actually spend a night in the shelter that we have in the go bag. We have a little Mylar tube tent and two Mylar emergency sleeping bags. If we ever need these things, we will be in a very bad place. Still, better to have them than to not have them. They reflect your heat back onto you, and you should be able to keep from freezing in most situations. 

Clothing

We each have a quart plastic bag stuffed with some extra undies, a shirt, pants & socks. 

A note: While we are decidedly against plastic, these things are for an emergency, and we will want everything dry, so we've made an exception. 

Communication

We're hoping that we've had time to collect the cell phones. We have an extra battery pack on the nightstand so that we could get at least one more charge into them. 

On paper, protected from the wet in a plastic bag, we have an "emergency communication plan." This will give us off-line access to the telephone numbers and addresses of people who are important to us. I recommend putting down the Red Cross Safe & Well  website, too. If you can access this, and list yourself, loved ones can find out that you are O.K. We have a meeting place specified near home (the neighborhood high school), a regional meeting place (at a nearby state park), and an out of town contact about 200 miles away (my sister). 

An emergency radio could be invaluable, and you don't want one that relies on batteries. Hence - one of these little crank radios. I've used it in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and more than once a weather prediction has allowed us to hunker down or flee before a big storm hit. I expect than in an emergency, the emergency bands might have good information about what happens next. 

 

Disaster Recovery

After the disaster it will be important to be able to reconstruct life. To help with this, we have a fireproof pouch in the go-bag (it wasn't always fireproof, until we did a dry drill, and realized that there's a good chance we wouldn't be at home, and if a fire hit, we'd lose all of the contents). 

In this pouch, we have an encrypted thumb drive that has .pdf copies of all of our important papers (living wills, wills, powers of attorney) insurance company contact information, health insurance numbers, dental insurance numbers, social security numbers. We have some cash in small bills (in case using a card to buy small necessities is not an option with the electricity down). We have a little bit of gold and silver - which has passed for money for about 4,000 years). We keep our passports here.

Medication

We keep two weeks of prescription medications in the bag. I rotate these every time I get a new 90 day supply from the pharmacy. We also keep a course of iodide tablets to fight radiation poisoning. I bought these after looking at what a North Korean suitcase nuke would do to Minneapolis if, say, it were detonated on the Super Bowl. Turns out that in our suburb, we'd probably live. It wouldn't be like a Soviet era R-36 ICBM. In the case of a single small nuclear device, it would be helpful to have a course of radiation medication on hand. I wouldn't trust the government to supply it. 

Also, we keep a bottle of fish amoxycillin. You can buy it from online pet supply retailers. A broad spectrum antibiotic might come in handy. I read about a person who watched his father die in a hospital corridor in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. If he'd have had access to an antibiotic, he might have lived. 

We have a set of toiletries. Whatever I have to deal with, I don't want to have to do it with furry teeth and a two-day beard. The camp-soap could double to wash our clothes. Also, I'm blind as a Tiberian bat without my glasses - think Thelma in Scooby-Doo. So there's an extra pair in the bag. 

It's funny: I bought N-95 masks for the same reason as the iodine tablets. I thought they'd be most useful for dust in case large buildings were being flattened. Like 9/11 in New York. So we've had the N-95's since 2017. I hadn't considered the possibility of having to evacuate in a pandemic like COVID-19. We've added work-a-day cloth masks, some hand sanitizer, and a few pairs of rubber gloves. 

Self-defense

I really hope it never comes down to it, but we do have a tactical pen (doubles as a writing instrument) and a fixed blade full-tang knife. Both have survival uses and self-defense uses. I always carry a can of pepper spray. 

Miscellaneous Tools

We have a Gerber multi-tool and a pair of work gloves in the bag. We are back-country campers, so we have planned for the obvious: rain, bugs, and sun. We have emergency ponchos, insect repellent, and sunscreen. We also have our Solo Stove. Small and self-contained, it doesn't need fuel. If you can start a fire with twigs or leaves or basically any of the ground detritus you find in any wooded area, in good weather, you can boil water in ten minutes on this stove. We know it works, because on one of our BWCA trips, our MSR camp stove failed, and the emergency Solo Stove was all we had for four days. We carry fire starting tools. I'm a fan of a cigarette lighter. Easy to use. But we also have some emergency matches, as well as these little fire starter tablets, which have never failed to produce a fire for me when we've been camping. The emergency crank radio has an integrated flashlight, but we have added a mini flashlight/lantern and three AAA batteries in a prescription bottle. It has an emergency strobe feature in case we need to be found. A few plastic zip-ties might come in hand. A couple of large plastic contractor garbage bags might come in handy for a lot of things (sitting on wet ground, for instance). Duct tape. You can always use duct tape.

As Sam Gamgee reflected on leaving Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring, you can always do with a bit of rope. We have a 50' length of paracord in the bag. If we need some light reading, we've got the SAS Survival Guide - a mini-copy - with all kinds of useful tips.

I know there are a lot of theories on the "go bag." I don't claim to be an expert. Everything I know I've read somewhere, and I have some experience with back country hiking and canoeing. This is our bag. 

Here's hoping it never leaves the closet.