The Bug Out Bag:
OK: Whole different set of circumstances; whole different intended purpose; whole different size and set of gear. Here we go…

The Bug Out Bag is meant to be that bag which you can grab on your way out the door, for whatever emergency reason, the contents of which can keep you alive for three to seven days. Some readers who live in truly remote areas may feel that isn't long enough. Other readers in urban areas are going to have a hard time imagining circumstances wherein they'll have to live out of a single bag for three days. Isn't there a Wal-Mart someplace?

The BlackHawk HydraStorm Force 5 pack / hydration system is what I use for my Bug Out Bag. It's available in three different colors. 

Keep in mind as you read through this section on Bug Out Bags that they are meant to augment what you normally carry. Each day when you fill your pockets, or hook stuff on your belt - whatever those items are count toward your survival equipment. The following pictures show my daily carry items, and then what that looks like with the Bug Out Equipment added. It can get quite significant and you should be mindful that your body is your first weapon: if you don't maintain your health, then having prepared Immediate Response, Bug Out or Battle Bags won't make much difference. If you can't carry the weight of one of them walking for a half-mile without being winded then you have larger issues than what equipment you're carrying.
 

Let me give you my example of potential emergency situations and you can adjust the logic to your own set of circumstances. Where I live, my county is surrounded on three sides by water. It's a peninsula. There is a nuclear power plant and a large natural gas storage facility in the county. They are located not too far apart. If something goes wrong at either one, I may need to "bug out" of my house pretty fast, not knowing how long I'll have to stay out of the area. Some of the items I'll include in my list of necessities for the Bug Out Bag apply to that specific set of circumstances (and I'll point them out as I go). Your specific set of circumstances will determine what you put in your Bug Out Bag. But as humans, there are some things we should all have. A last note I'll make is this: not everything listed here has to go in the bag. It can go on the bag in separate pouches or via bungee cords, or whatever you work out. The essence of the idea is that you should be able to grab the bag handle or shoulder strap and keep on moving, confident that you have what you need for several days. Here we go:

One pair of spare undergarments: socks, underwear, t-shirt. Anyone who has lived in the field for a few days, without benefit of hot showers and clean sheets, knows how refreshing it can be to simply change your undergarments. Clean dry socks are imperative if you're going to spend any amount of time on your feet.

Personal hygiene stuff: OK folks - this one is a no brainer. Soap in a ziplock bag or other watertight container, because you're going to need a shower at some point. Washing your hands will matter to, but you may not always have a water source or that much time. For that I recommend a small bottle of sanitizer. A toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss if you're so inclined. To take up the least amount of space I recommend travel size toothbrush and paste. These are easy to find and inexpensive. Toilet paper. Oh how I would have killed for this at times in the Army when we were in the field. Now, a roll of toilet paper - especially if it's the nice soft padded kind - takes up a lot of space. Not to be rude, but ask yourself how many times each day you actually need it? and how much you need? I'd recommend two relatively small rolls. Take an empty toilet paper roll and crush it flat. Then fold it in half lengthwise. Around that, wrap what you consider to be the amount you'd need for three days. Then do it with another one and put both in your pack. Believe me it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it!

A fleece jacket or hooded jacket. Some folks like hoods; some don't. I like hoods simply because they can help keep you warmer by covering your neck, ears and head. The fleece holds warmth pretty well, even when it's damp. While you might be leaving during the day, you'll have to recognize that you might be stuck outdoors at night. Having a warmer outer garment is a necessity. Also, if you don't' normally wear a hat when you're leaving your house, include one in your Bug Out Bag. I'd suggest a "boony" hat: a soft polycotton hat that is commonly used by forward recon units in the various military services. Instead of a stiff bill that sticks out above your forehead / face, the boony hat has a softer 360 "bill" that protects your face, ears and neck from sunlight or rain. When you get one, wash it in cold water and set it out to dry. Once it's dry, treat it with a spray-on waterproofing chemical. You can get aerosol cans of these at most sport shops or hunting retailers. Once that has dried, fold the hat and stow it in your Bug Out Bag. You'll appreciate it down the road.

An emergency poncho: the cheap plastic kind you can get at theme parks for $2. Clear, yellow, orange… it doesn't matter. What matters is that it can keep you dry and takes up minimal space in the bag. Water saps body heat four times faster than air. If you're wet, you're that much more susceptible to hypothermia (loss of body heat / lowering of body core temperature). That's a bad thing. For as cheap as you can get these things, I'd make sure I included one in my bag.

A "space blanket": one of those aluminum foil looking blankets that come in nice small packages - just like the ponchos. I see them all over the place. Again, you need to prepare for day and night outdoor exposure. Retaining body heat is always a concern. This is a simple item that uses little space.

MREs: "Meal; Ready to Eat" - military issue food in a heavy duty plastic pouch. Depending on how long you think you might need to sustain yourself out of your Bug Out Bag, I'd recommend one to three at a minimum. You can live on ONE MRE per day provided you also have water to drink. Beyond these meals, I'd recommend you supplement your diet with power bars: Hoo-Ah Bars are excellent and one of them eats like a meal. If you're not into military food, or can't find it to purchase, any dehydrated vacuum sealed camp food will do. Remember that you don't want to have to carry a bunch of other items to make food - such as butter, sugar, oil, etc - so get food that requires you to add only water. Additionally, if you're going the dehydrated vacuum sealed route, you'll need a small cook set. You can get a "mess kit" which contains a pan, bowl, dish, cup and set of cutlery. None of it's pretty, but it works.

Shelter material: (room permitting). I've made many a "hooch" out of a military-issue poncho and a couple lengths of cord. It's even easier to do with the poncho and some bungee cords. The need for shelter works with the needs listed above to stay dry and warm. If you can't find a surplus poncho, get yourself a 4'x8' tarp. Something else that will come in handy for shelter making is a fifty to one hundred foot length of parachute cord, otherwise known as 550 cord or paracord. You can find it in a variety of colors in 500 foot spools. Buy a spool and dole it out among you and your friends. If you're creating multiple Bug Out Bags, you have enough on that one spool for between five and ten bags depending on how much you put in each.

Hydration / water: My Bug Out Bag has a hydration system built in that holds 3.0 liters of water. It is also equipped (as necessary) with a filtration system. If you don't have a hydration system built into your Bug Out Bag, then you will have to carry water bottles. At a bare minimum you need one liter of water per day. Water isn't light. Fresh water weighs about 7.5 pounds per gallon. Three liters is about 4/5 of a gallon (approximately). So, doing very rough math you'd be carrying about six pounds of water to start. That supply needs to be constantly refreshed. If you don't have a filter system (which is what I recommend) make sure you have a bottle of water purification tablets.

A basic first aid kit: In my mind, the most used item in there will be some type of pain killer, i.e. Motrin, Tylenol, Aleve, etc. For most of us, walking twenty miles in a day will be crippling the next day. Unless you are in decent physical condition, you should expect to feel the discomforts of your situation within the first day or two. Often, the emergency circumstances that forced us to bug out in the first place don't allow us to sit around and relax the second day. You've got to be able to keep moving. Because you should expect to be on your feet so much, moleskin is something you should have in there to help patch blisters on your feet. Keeping your feet clean and dry will help decrease injuries. More light is now shed on the need for that clean pair of socks listed above. Another thing that should be in your first aid kit is any prescription medication that you need regularly. Yeah, that means that you have to check and update your Bug Out Bag at least monthly. It doesn't do you any good to have expired medications or supplies in it. First aid kits will be addressed in a separate article. NOTE: I know people who advise carrying an Emergency First Responder first aid book. This is an excellent idea bearing in mind, however, that on the move in emergency situations, you may not have a lot of time to sit and read what to do next. This is an excellent reference tool to have available - but recognize it as something you can only use time allowing.

Fire making tools: I have "strike anywhere" matches wrapped in a Ziploc freezer bag in my bag. They are often hard to find and will eventually run out. If you can't find strike-anywhere matches, get regular wood matches and dip the heads in melted wax. It waterproofs them and helps them burn longer once struck. Put a couple dozen of them with a piece of scratch paper into foil wrapping or a film canister. If you don't have matches, a decent replacement is a flint bar - which you can usually find at K-Mart, Wal-Mart, or any outdoor store, and a piece of steel to scratch against it. To get a fire going using that method, you'll need some sort of easy to light starter material. Cotton balls soaked in Vaseline are a good simple fuel source for this. Pack a dozen or so in a small Ziploc bag, or get yourself some empty film containers and use those.

Speaking of film canisters, if you have a couple of them, fill one with a couple of small fish hooks, four to six lead shot weights, and some fishing line - about 15-25 feet worth. Wrap the line around a small piece of cardboard and tape it down with a piece of first aid tape. Anywhere you can find to fish, you can then find food. Extreme to think this way? Maybe. But I'm working on the presumption that you ran from your house because of a dire emergency: the kind of emergency that tends to interrupt regular services we have come to depend on such as grocery stores and gas stations. Hence, fish and walk.

Lights and tools: Bearing in mind that I would have my Glock 9mm pistol on, and at least one knife in a pocket, there are items that I'd make sure I had in my Bug Out Bag to support that weapon, and to answer other utility needs not met by the gun / knife. First is two spare magazines for that pistol. Assuming I have just the gun, then the two spare magazines provide me back up ammo. Man is an aggressive predatory animal at times, and you may need that protection. If not, the 9mm is sufficient to hunt small game (if you're good enough). A separate folding lock blade knife. Yeah. I know. I've already got one: why do I need another? Because folding knives can be broken. Aside from discovering fire and the wheel, using sharp tools is probably one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. Don't be without a knife. Carry a spare. Two is one. One is none. A utility tool: SOG, Gerber, Leatherman, etc. The pliers, wire cutters, can openers and other tools available on these can make life much simpler when you least expect it. As before, I am a believer in the LED flashlight. Put one in your Bug Out Bag along with a spare set of batteries for it. In fact, get a small container to carry spare batteries, and carry six spare batteries in a waterproof shock resistant container. Lights are used for so many purposes - all in support of our vision - and you don't want to be caught without one that works.

In addition to the folding knife I specified above, the Bug Out Bag should also have the next step in a cutting tool: a sturdy fixed blade knife that you can cut, chop, hammer and pry with. Isn't that abusing the knife? Yep. So you'd better have a knife that can take that kind of abuse. The Extrema Ratio Fulcrum S knife, shown right, is just such a knife. And its sheath is designed to allow you to wear it high on your belt or low strapped to your thigh. I recommend a weak-side carry. For all your knives you are going to need a knife sharpener. The most compact and easiest to use I've found is a decent ceramic one. Shop around and get what you're comfortable with. You need to be capable with it - or you'll simply ruin the blades.

Digging Tool: Otherwise known as an "entrenching tool" in the military. It doesn't have to be big, it just has to work. Glock makes an excellent collapsible shovel and you can find surplus collapsing military issue entrenching tools as well.

Last few items:
You should have maps of your home area and the surrounding geography. If these maps show topography, then all the better, but you have to be able to see natural obstacles before you get to them. "Over, under or around" is what you have to figure out when you meet an obstacle. It's far better to avoid it well ahead of time by altering your route a little, rather than having to double back and rewalk precious landscape because you couldn't look ahead. Since maps are useless unless you can confirm the direction you're heading, get - and learn how to properly use - a decent compass. An expensive compass isn't necessary: just a simple compass that you can drop in your pocket or even strap on your watchband. Just make sure it works. Often you get what you pay for. One word of caution here: lots of folks read that map and compass bit and thought, "Heck no. That's what GPS is for." GPS requires batteries too, and there are man-made disasters that can occur that will make your GPS inoperative. Even if you have that GPS system and it works well, you'll need a backup in case the batteries die or you lose it / break it. Here again we say: redundancy is good: two is one. One is none.

A 2'x2' sheet of clear plastic. There's this thing called a "solar still". Earlier I talked about the necessity of staying hydrated. Carry water, or find water to filter / purify. Another source of water, believe it or not, is pure air. The humidity is never zero percent. There is always water in the air. You just have to know how to collect it. With that 2'x2' piece of clear plastic and a cup, you can pull water out of the air all day and night. Rather than getting into the "how to" part here, I'm going to write a separate article that will have basic survival skills described. I'll detail how to build a solar still there.

Electronics: I'm a very basic guy. I tend to believe that man did just fine getting along before electricity, and although we'd all be miserable for a few years, we'd find a way to survive without it again tomorrow if that's what happened. However, just because we can get along without it, doesn't mean we should necessarily force ourselves to. So, while I have basics like maps and compass listed above, today's reality is that a GPS system is much faster, and sometimes easier to teach someone to use. So, I'd recommend the Garmin GPS system with appropriate building maps. If you're going to carry the unit, then you have to carry spare batteries too. Also, since none of us ever expects to actually Bug Out alone, and if we do, we expect to find friends / family along the way, communications capability would be a good thing. Get yourself a set of dependable Motorola radios - the kind that have a five mile line-of-site range. Remember the spare batteries for these as well.

Due to my particular circumstance with the nuclear power plant nearby, I'd include iodide tablets in my bag. Why? Because they block absorption of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland. While lots of folks think that may only be necessary near nuclear facilities, it's something you might consider if you live near any big city. In today's world of terrorism, where we can read about "dirty bomb" plans regularly, radioactive poisoning is something we should all plan against.