Thoughts on my BOB. Need input

C

CShepherd

Joined
Feb 27, 2006
Messages
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Hello all,

For those of you who followed my "Critique my kit" thread you know that I've been tweaking my survival gear. Well I'm very happy with the suggestions and mods I made to my PSK so I'm starting on my BOB.

Here's what I've got so far.

Most likely threats to need a BOB in SE TN.
1. Tornado - could destroy my home, and if bad enough quite a bit of the area. Luckily we don't have that large of ones due to the woods and hills but they do happen.

2. Winter storm - we get some real nasty snow/ice storms from time usually every 10 years or so. Otherwise the snow is very rare around here. If we get hit with one of these storms then it would actually be a bug-in than a bug out. As for that we are fairly well set with kerosene heaters, means to cook without electricity and such.

3. Industrial accident - we have a a chemical plant and a nuclear plant within relative close distance. Other than getting out of the area along with everyone else not sure what to do here.

So with these possibilities identified I sat down and tried to divide out my needs. Here's what I came up with.

Evacuation
  • Road atlas of the U.S. (we have family in WA state and it's a possibility of the need to head that way).
  • State maps of TN, GA, NC, AL (closes states to head to so the detailed maps would give me better back road routes.
  • TOPO maps of Bradley CO where I live. In case of overland travel to get out.
  • Compass - obvious. Also have a GPS that would go with me.
Food
  • 3 days - 2 freeze dried meals each per day with pemmican/other protein snacks for in between. I like the freeze dried due to longevity and ease of prep.
  • Cook Pot - have a 2qt stainless pot.
  • MSR stove/fuel - burns great and uses white gas which can be found quite easily. Not a fan of canister stoves because of this. Ideally I would love to have one of the multi-fuel stoves but this is what I have.
  • Bowls/utensils.
Water
  • Minimum of 1qt per person per day.
  • Filtration - MSR waterworks filter to get more
  • Treatment - Iodine tablets for secondary treatment. Also good to have for cleaning wounds.
  • Storage - have 2 five gallon jugs plus plenty of 1qt bottles.
Shelter
  • 200' paracord
  • 2 tarps
  • sleeping bags
  • emergency blankets
  • Popup camper - this would likely go with us if we had to drive out.
First Aid
  • FAK - have fairly substantial one
  • feminine needs - enough said
  • diapers
  • wipes
  • additional meds
Clothing
  • pair socks each
  • shirt each
  • pants each
  • jacket each
Misc
  • Knife - Cold Steel SRK (plus almost always have 4" on my belt and folder in my pocket)
  • Multitool
  • Shovel - cold steel
  • Saw - gerber folder
  • Garbage bags x5 - large black plastic contractors bags
  • work gloves
  • particulate masks
  • 1/2 roll duct tape
  • paper/pencil - have waterproof pad
  • Sharpie
  • Flourescent spray paint - for bug in
  • Headlamp/spare batteries
  • Flashlight/spare batteries
  • PSK
  • Cash - $300 in small denominations stored in various places in the BOB
  • Gas - 10 gallons
  • Firearms - Glock 23 and spare mags, Mossberg shotgun and shells

This will be carried in 2 packs between my wife and I. Should have mentioned that it is the 2 of us, a 2 1/2 yr old daughter and one on the way.

So, what do you all think?

Charles
 
The only thing Im going to add are signaling items (psk?) you know, mirror, whistle (fox 40), flares, lights. And more socks, I have 3-4 pairs of socks, socks are allways getting wet, and wearn out, especially if the situation includes alot of walking, who knows right?

Just to clarify, this going to be a 72 hour kit?
 
You are fairly squared away. Fonly hada good point for signalling. I won't get picky, you will certainly think of, and read about other items you can add.

Gotta love the pop-up camper, great resource.
I had a 20 foot hardside RV trailer for years, loved it.

With that said, just make sure you have a topped off propane tank, and a quick way to fill your water tank in the pop-up camper. Even a spare 20# propane bottle might be an idea....or grab the one from your grill, if you have one.

If you did have to 'BUG Out' in winter, the propane heat would save your butt, for sure.

Also, if you were leaving with the camper, have 2 full sized coolers, one for the perishables, empty that fridge and freezer. The other for non-chilled items like cereals, oatmeal, canned and dryfoods.

You could easily plan for 7 to 10 days, totally autonomous, and fairly comfy, living in the pop-up camper.

DO a search on BOBs, here in Wilderness Survival, also search PSK, as those threads have a lot good info, too.

Good Luck!
 
Fonly said:
The only thing Im going to add are signaling items (psk?) you know, mirror, whistle (fox 40), flares, lights. And more socks, I have 3-4 pairs of socks, socks are allways getting wet, and wearn out, especially if the situation includes alot of walking, who knows right?

Just to clarify, this going to be a 72 hour kit?
Click to expand...

Probably should include a list of what's in the PSK. It does include a signal mirror, whistle, and led flashlight. Good suggestion on the socks. Wet socks all the time can get quite nasty, literally.

And yeah, the idea is a 72 hour kit. Being in East TN we're not that remote so within 72 hours either help should be here or we should be squared away.

Charles
 
Skunkwerx,

I've got 2 propane tanks and almost always have them both filled, or at least 1 filled the other half. Love to cook on the grill.

Good idea on the 2 coolers. I'll have to remember that.

One thing to do now is come up with an official BOB or BI (bug in) plan, post it in the house and review it with the wife. The great thing is that she is very receptive to this preparedness.

Charles
 
I would suggest at least one MRE entree and side dish per person, or a couple of cans of stuff, in the BOBs. Moist packed foods cook faster and don't need to be heated if it's bad enough, just watch for spoilage. Add some rice to your supplies, along with bullion cubes- not the tastiest stuff, but it will stretch your supplies and give the kids something familiar to eat.

More water, more gas. Even if the extra water (and I would want to double the amount in the BOBs to 2L per person) is in the camper, it is less you have to worry about.

Kids. I hate the idea of bugging with kids. Picky eaters, slow, complain, but if they are your's, I guess you put up with it. :p Have some variation in their food. Something that tastes good at home might be refused if TSHTF. Some way to carry each of them along with your packs- just made things more interesting, didn't I. Canned formula. Reusable and disposable diapers.

Along with the wife, get the rug rat involved somehow. She's 2.5 now, but she should know some of what it means to bug out. You'll be stressing, your wife will be stressing, things will be happening quickly, possibly strange and scary things- do you want to have a completely freaked out kid to?

More socks. I admit, you can always tell my kits by the obvious sock fetish, but I'd almost rather loose my knife than my boots and a pair of dry socks. Work gloves for both adults.

For the maps, get the DeLorme along with AAA and/or state maps. The DeLorme aren't as good as USGI topos, but they show the basics.
 
Good ideas.

When I had my travel trailer, part of my BUG IN plan included things like, if the house burned down, or a meteor hit it, we could live in the trailer, but stay on site.

Bugging In just requires some fore-sight, to have batteries, food, water, alternate heat sources, etc etc etc.

Some of our discussions ranged from a few days, all the way to what we would do should it turn into weeks, then into maybe months.

Bugging IN for 72 hrs should be pretty straightforward. 10 days needs more prep, weeks on end, even more prep. Add bad weather into the mix, blocked roads and you can get the picture.

You definatley have the right ideas working already.
 
Flares. Great for signaling and can start a fire when you're so cold and wet your hands are like blocks of wood. I keep them in the cars for obvious reasons and in the home BOB.
 
ironraven,

I'll look into the MRE's. Have never tried one so I'll need to pick up a ocuple and see what the wife thinks.

Rice is a no-go for us. We are both post-op gastric bypass and rice doesn't do well in our small stomachs.

As for the water, I was guesstimating what we could comfortable carry if we had to overland but agree on more is actually needed. Where we live there are streams, creeks and lakes all over the place so barring some sort of chemical contamination the filter would help to suppliment what we carry. For bugging out in the popup I would haul all the water we could carry. Roughly 15 gallons between the two water jugs and the holding tank.

My only concern with extra gas is it going bad (I've had it happen with just my lawnmower supply). I'll get an extra can or two and get some stabilizer so that's not a problem. Definitely don't want to be stuck because of a gas shortage. Only problem is that I have to store it in the garage which is part of the house and wife cannot stand gas fumes. Are thee any cans that don't leak fumes? The ones at Wal-mart are horrible for that.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Charles
 
USGI gas cans are better than the Walmart "special"- you can get plastic ones now, you don't have to try to wrestle with an old steel jerry can any more. I wouldn't store them in the house, but I know guys who've kept them in APCs.

As for it going bad, that's easy- set up a rotation and get a fill funnel or nozzle that fits on your cans. When a can is the rotation, don't fill up at the gas station. Pour the gas into your car, put it in the trunk, and top off the car and refill the tank at the gas station. :)

I'd failed to cross the two threads, sorry- you might have trouble with MREs if you've had gastric bypass, most of them have a lot of carbs. I've got a very good, very large friend who had looked at it, and he passed becuase it limited his food options in an emergency too much. He's the only guy I know who's rooting for a major crisis so he can loose some weight. :P
 
ironraven said:
I'd failed to cross the two threads, sorry- you might have trouble with MREs if you've had gastric bypass, most of them have a lot of carbs. I've got a very good, very large friend who had looked at it, and he passed becuase it limited his food options in an emergency too much. He's the only guy I know who's rooting for a major crisis so he can loose some weight. :P
Click to expand...

Not a problem. I've got so many different threads going I can't keep track of them.

We had the proximal bypass, meaning the skip the least amount of the small intestine which in turn creates the least problems. It does still have it's restrictions but they're not as severe. I can actually eat minute rice and baked potatoes (they don't swell as much in the stomach) but do try to avoid them. Guess the idea is to maximize the protein.

I'll look around for some of the GI cans. I hate the walmart ones. The carbs in the MRE's wouldn't be too big of a problem so long as they're not loaded in Sugar. That's one of the problems I'm having, a lot of these types of foods don't have nutritional information readily published. I did find a MRE site the other day with all of it for their meals. Most of them weren't too bad in the sugar.

Thanks,

Charles
 
I threw in a hard hat with mine. A lot of times you can find one lying on the side of the highway somewhere. Also a small bottle of unscented bleach. Good for sanitizing and a drop or 2 in questionable water.

Looks like you got most of it covered. Don't forget laminated ID tags for all the kids too.
 
I hate to pile on more junk, but one of the things that got me serious about emergency preparedness was that pair of tornadoes that went through Nashville in April, 1998. When that happened, this desert rat realized in a hurry that Tennessee is covered with trees--not itty-bitty tough mesquite trees spaced a good ways apart, but big, tall trees standing close together. When the tornadoes went through, a heck of a lot of those trees came down (sometimes three-foot-thick centuries-old giants which went down and took 20-foot-wide holes out of the ground when their roots came up.) A lot of those trees came down across roads (houses, cars, people . . . .); still others came down across power lines, which they dragged down into the roadways.

For nights, the smell and sound of chainsaws hung in the air. I didn't have one. Actually, I don't like them that much--but I did find myself wishing I'd had an axe. I don't mean a little hatchet or tomahawk, but a real, full-sized axe, which I think would be enough to clear most of the lumber that you'd likely find obstructing your travel. Went out and got one, and made sure it was sharpened to my Grandpa's standards (= shave hair off your arm; makes cutting go much more efficiently than the factory dull edge). It needs a good sheath, of course.

You'll also want--and I wished I had for the first hours after the disaster, during which time I was relying on word of mouth from passers-by just to find out the extent of the damage, predictions regarding power restoration, etc.--a battery-powered radio. Really great is one that works with a hand crank. Also nice is one that would pull in the audio from any available TV channels (I have a battery-powered one of those, but not a hand-cranked version), as the TV stations may sometimes have coverage the radio ones don't, just depending on whose reporters are where. If you do keep an emergency radio, it may be a good idea to keep the batteries outside the radio, in a plastic bag tied (not taped or rubber-banded) to the radio. That way, if the batteries leak, they don't destroy the radio in a way that you can't detect until too late--but they're still right there with the radio so you don't have to fumble around too long to find them.

Good luck! I commend you for looking after your wife and little ones as providently as you are doing.
 
hatchetjack said:
I threw in a hard hat with mine. A lot of times you can find one lying on the side of the highway somewhere. Also a small bottle of unscented bleach. Good for sanitizing and a drop or 2 in questionable water.

Looks like you got most of it covered. Don't forget laminated ID tags for all the kids too.
Click to expand...

Real good idea on the id tag for the kids. I have something similar attached to a lightstick and a key to the house that can be tossed out to law enforcement in case you are barricaded in the house with an intruder. Gives them info of who's supposed to be in the house and a key so they don't have to bust my door down.

I'll make one up for my daughter.

Charles
 
Return of the J.D. said:
I hate to pile on more junk, but one of the things that got me serious about emergency preparedness was that pair of tornadoes that went through Nashville in April, 1998. When that happened, this desert rat realized in a hurry that Tennessee is covered with trees--not itty-bitty tough mesquite trees spaced a good ways apart, but big, tall trees standing close together. When the tornadoes went through, a heck of a lot of those trees came down (sometimes three-foot-thick centuries-old giants which went down and took 20-foot-wide holes out of the ground when their roots came up.) A lot of those trees came down across roads (houses, cars, people . . . .); still others came down across power lines, which they dragged down into the roadways.

For nights, the smell and sound of chainsaws hung in the air. I didn't have one. Actually, I don't like them that much--but I did find myself wishing I'd had an axe. I don't mean a little hatchet or tomahawk, but a real, full-sized axe, which I think would be enough to clear most of the lumber that you'd likely find obstructing your travel. Went out and got one, and made sure it was sharpened to my Grandpa's standards (= shave hair off your arm; makes cutting go much more efficiently than the factory dull edge). It needs a good sheath, of course.

You'll also want--and I wished I had for the first hours after the disaster, during which time I was relying on word of mouth from passers-by just to find out the extent of the damage, predictions regarding power restoration, etc.--a battery-powered radio. Really great is one that works with a hand crank. Also nice is one that would pull in the audio from any available TV channels (I have a battery-powered one of those, but not a hand-cranked version), as the TV stations may sometimes have coverage the radio ones don't, just depending on whose reporters are where. If you do keep an emergency radio, it may be a good idea to keep the batteries outside the radio, in a plastic bag tied (not taped or rubber-banded) to the radio. That way, if the batteries leak, they don't destroy the radio in a way that you can't detect until too late--but they're still right there with the radio so you don't have to fumble around too long to find them.

Good luck! I commend you for looking after your wife and little ones as providently as you are doing.
Click to expand...

I've got a small chainsaw but it would have a tough time with anything over about 10 inches in diamater. An axe is a good idea and I've thought about just putting one in my Pop-up for when camping.

Charles
 
if you have a threat of severe icestorms you may also want to add a dedicated ice pick/axe for chipping away the ice that can build up in the most inconvenient places.

also some sort of large wood eating tool (felling axe, chainsaw etc) for cutting up large trees that fall in inconvenient places.

otherwise it sounds like you pretty much have everything covered
 
One thing, I didn't notice and forgive me if I missed it.

Is a supply of prescribed meds and glasses or contacts back up.

Many people often forget about entertainment. I know alot of us can stare at a glock for 24 hours straight but I have found after 3 days of staring it does get a little boring. I pack some books.

Also, it is great to be prepared and I am as well but it is just as likely that all your gear could be destroyed. It is important to mentally have a plan that takes that into account. Where can you get gear, food and higher caliber weapons in a spontaneous situation iin your area?
 
Kids freak out over not getting to watch their favorite show on TV, and they pick up on the emotions of those around them real quick, which just adds to everything. I can't imagine how bad it will be for our daughters twins. I've included feel good stuff for them. They are still very young, but have favorite toys and as that changes, I'll change what's in the BOB. A favorite blanket, pillow, book and food will all help her and your wife get through the fear and panic sessions much easier, not to mention you, because it just seems that the guy is the one that stresses over everything, especially when he can't do anything to help.

Ear plugs may be needed, a mask for each of you that will filter biological hazzards, surgical gloves, protective glasses and other protective gear.

I don't know if I would have your daughter drink too much iodine. Pick up some of the Katadyn Micropur MP-1 water purification tablets. They are the best you can use.

Do you and your wife shoot/own guns? If you are forced to walk the streets with the masses, or are bugging out in your vehicle, there will always be those that will be preying on the people that seem to have their stuff together. You will want to be able to protect your family. Too many will hope that there are plenty of law enforcement around to protect them, but in an emergency, that responsibility belongs to you and your wife.
 
I agree. I'd give the wife or yourself something that outranges the scattergun a bit. It could be very lightweight, even a 10/22, but the drawback of the shotgun is range. For pure survival, it's awesome, but two legged creatures need some distance.
 
siguy said:
if you have a threat of severe icestorms you may also want to add a dedicated ice pick/axe for chipping away the ice that can build up in the most inconvenient places.

also some sort of large wood eating tool (felling axe, chainsaw etc) for cutting up large trees that fall in inconvenient places.

otherwise it sounds like you pretty much have everything covered
Click to expand...

I've got a small 18" I believe chain saw but do need something else. Might consider a decent bow saw as they are easy to carry in the vehicle and work great.

Also have a small hand version of a pick axe that'll work great for de-icing. Used to have an actual ice axe when I lived in AK but left it there when I moved back to TN.

Thanks for the ideas.

Charles
 
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