What is your closest real BoB/PSK encounter?

[kl101]

What is the closest you have come to needing a BoB/PSK?

Mine was 9/11/01. I was across the river in Jersey City on business. As I left my hotel in the AM I could see smoke coming up from across the river but couldn't see the source due to buildings in between. When I could finally see it was the first tower in flames my first thought was arson. I work in the financial markets and years ago there was a big fire at the HQ of First Interstat Bank of Cal in LA that was arson by a disgruntled employee in the capital markets group.

Anyway, I continued walking to work watching the fire. My view to the south was blocked. As luck would have it, I heard some constuction workers on a new building yelling and looked up to see them, at that instant I stepped to were I was behind another building and could no longer see the WTC but heard a large explosion. When I got to were I could see again, I saw the second tower on fire and knew this was something big. I was on the side away from the impact and couldn't see the gaping holes.

I went into my building as it was being evacuated and heard people talking about airplanes and all kinds of stuff. Took the elevator up to my floor, but immediately went back downstairs. Walked back to my hotel. Still didn't really know what was going on, only knew intuitively that we were under attack. Realized I could be stuck for a while so I went by a grocery store (still normal environment there) and bought food that required no prep and bottled water enough gfor a couple of days. Carted it back to my hotel, flipped on the TV to find out what was going on. Called home immediately to report in. Wasn't able to get a line out again for hours and hours. I was very glad at this point that my meeting for the day had been rescheduled for tomorrow. It was supposed to have been with Marsh Mclennan in the WTC.

I ended up staying in town for two days till I could hitch a ride with someone that was driving back home. I had travelled to town on train and had no wheels of my own.

So if I had had BoB/PSK all that I would have really been concerned with is food. If I had infact been across the river, a dust mask, water, flashlight would have been important.

Funniest ( I guess it is funny, it made me laugh at the time) incident while I was there was when I was watching from the riverside later in the day with a few dozen others. One guy in the crowd gets kinda jumpy and finally says " I can't stand it, I gotta do something to help". He jumps in the river to try to swim over, fully clothed. He gets about 50 yards from shore and starts floundering. One of the passenger ferries bringing people from the city sees him and swings by and picks him up. What a knuckle head.

Anyway, any other real BoB real life or near misses?

 

[longbow50]

While in Idaho, I was hiking and doing some roving with the longbow and it started to snow. I was a couple miles from my friends place and it was getting cold, windy and it appeared that a good storm was brewing. I tied my USGI poncho to some trees, making a lien-to type of shelter, helping to block the wind and help keep some of the wet off of me. Then I went about gathering dead and dry branches out of the pines and spotted several small pines that were dead standing and broke them up for firewood. I pulled out the tinder and my SAK and sparked the fire to life. I got into the rucksack and pulled a coffee bag out, half filled my canteen cup with water and stuck it on the edge of the working fire to heat. I fed the fire, heated my water and had a hot brew while I waited out the storm. An hour later, I was able to kill the fire and head back to the homestead.

 

[Lobo103]

Mine was when I was about 19yrs old. I had taken a girlfriend on a hiking trip in the afternoon hours at a local lake. The whole trail was maybe 8 miles start to finish. At that time I had a lot of time in the woods hunting, fishing, and hiking but no survival training or navigational skills. I had a Cold Steel GLK with me and that was about it. I had hiked this trail many times and felt very comfortable that I could complete it in several hours, what I didn't account for is that a hurricane had recently pushed through the area and many of the trails where flooded. Instead of of turning around or properly trying to circumnavigate the flooded areas I tried to go around or forward the smaller ones on the fly. Needless to say we quickly became disoriented and found ourselves completely lost well after dark. The weather was warm so I wasn't overly concerned but the GF was flipping out in proper fashion. I finally picked a direction that I knew led to a major road and just walked out. What I learned from this is that we definetly should have had some basic survival gear even on a simple short hike. Navigation, signal, and even firestarting would have come in real handy in that situation. It also taught me a lot about mindset, I was comfortable w/ my environment and not concerned with the conditions and therefore did not panic. She on the other hand might very well have been in deep sh-t had she been on her own.