Been Awhile

I apologize it's been a while since I've written. I'll blame it on the untimely coincidence of many great things happening and limited access to a personal computer.

There are a number of things that prompted me to write briefly today. I first must tell you that we realized recently that we are expecting our first child after 10 1/2 years of wedded bliss. Like most expecting parents I'll sure there will be more on this.

In the meantime we have also been quite busy with activities pertaining to preparedness and response as it relates to disasters and other emergencies. I've written about this topic in the past and this continues to be an area we feel the Lord leading us.

Today I want to touch on the idea of what we call "go bags". The basic concept is the building and maintaining of a cache of supplies that are ready at all times and can be grabbed on the way out the door in case of emergency. These are going to look different from home to home and that's fine. I will tell you about our approach more so you can see the process by which we built them.

One of the reasons no two go bags are alike is that it's important that they reflect and meet individual needs. Also, life experience, expertise and lifestyle can greatly influence their intent, appearance and contents.

My wife & I have an extensive background in the outdoors, particularly, and in this case, backpacking. You can probably already imagine and guess correctly that we have chosen to build our go bags from a backpacker's perspective using full-size mutli-day wilderness worthy backpacks. We have several reasons for doing so and these are the more universal principles I wanted to share.

1. We started with what we already had on hand. Because we have backpacked for years we had a couple of spare packs that we could afford to have packed and ready at all times in case of an emergency. If you have military experience you may choose to use a rucksack or duffel. If you are into sports, you may choose to use an older equipment bag. An inexpensive plastic tote or even a cardboard box could be used if you are on a tight budget.

2. We chose things we are most experienced, familiar and comfortable with. We know what they packs are capable and how to get the most out of them. A flight attendant may choose to use a piece of luggage with wheels or without. A smaller kit could also be kept in a large briefcase, messenger bag or purse.

3. We made our choice based on the most practical solution for our worst case scenarios. In our case we live near railroad tracks. If there were to be a large chemical spill and our city needed to evacuate we would most likely drive to the family farm. The limited accomodations there may require camping gear which is often most easily moved in a backpack. Also, if we were to breakdown along the way we could continue on foot to our destination. If worse, and all major infrastrutcture was disabled we would still have an easily managed highly portable self-contained urban to wilderness survival kit.

4. This really brings us back to the first reason. Becuase we chose something we already had it means we are not tying up valuable assets. We have on occasion used the emergency backpacks for times of recreation. We can justify doing this, temporarily emptying the usual contents, because when we're backpacking we already have most of what we would need to survive multiple days of self sufficiency. In fact, a relevant side note, backpacking or some of the other more primitive forms of camping are excellent ways for individuals, groups and families to learn and hone personal preparedness and response skills.

In future posts I would like to tell you more about how we chose the contents of our go bags. But for now, since I hope you have already gotten started, make sure you keep your kit, in whatever form, somewhere where you can grab it quickly on the way out the door. Some people store them in their vehicles and that certainly has its advantages too. We chose the coat closet by the front door. This would also be a good time to also emphasizing putting everything you need in a single unit. When time is short you need to be able to grab and go not have to take inventory or risk leaving an important component behind.

Until next time,

- Wade Baker