Be Prepared 1

Your "Get Home Bag": some useful links for advice

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It's hard to fault Baden-Powell's advice to "Be Prepared", but some people have had a good go.  By building a straw man "prepper" caricature, they have probably put a few suckers off.  But if they are not "laughing on the other side of their face" now - they should be

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Mormons have a policy of storing two year's worth of food, I hear, and right now Joseph Smith's rather implausible claims are sounding pretty appealing!

Having a "get home bag" or "go bag", and giving a few minutes consideration to making sure that your basic metabolic needs are met seems not only prudent, but urgently so if you haven't given it any thought up to now. It certainly won’t do any harm.  It may be that you cannot imagine any scenario where you would "bug out", but the difference between a "get home bag" and a "bug out bag" is only the destination you have in mind at that moment, not the contents of the bag.  Actually, I have no difficulty in conjuring up some plausible situations where I would want to "disappear" for a while.  

Below, I’m going to give you some links to instructive videos, but first I’m going to try and convince doubters.

Sometimes people learn best from stories.  Let me tell you three short ones: one is a heavy-handed parable and the others two are occasions when I did stupid things. They say if you are wise, you will learn from your mistakes; if you are wise and lucky, you can learn from other people’s mistakes.

Allen is a student and going home for part of his holiday.  Being not very wealthy, he decides to hitch-hike for most of the way.  He packs his small back-pack with some books he's going to need to keep progressing with his studies, as well as a jacket, a sandwich or two and pop bottle with some water in it.  There is nothing like hitch-hiking for watching your morale behave like a roller-coaster; however all is going swimmingly ... until the chat he's having with the driver hits a sensitive political spot, and the driver stops the car in the middle of nowhere and insists that he will not take him any further.  Allen is disappointed, naturally and is not helped by the intermittent drizzle that he is now subjected to, as well as a steady force 4 wind (that's not the sort of thing that makes you stagger, just a steady breeze). But he puts his coat on and is not cold. 

It's 4 p.m., and by coincidence another student is in exactly the same position a mile up the road - except that Brian's unexpectedly significant disagreement with his driver was religious in nature. 

Brian has recently seen some "survival" programmes on the TV and YouTube, and despite his modest means he had decided to start to build a decent "survival kit".  He cannot afford the knife he wants, but puts his old pen-knife into a polythene bag, together with part of a roll of dustbin liners, a couple of candles, and a disposable lighter.  Now he needs a metal cup.  He's torn between the steel one for $22 and the titanium one at twice the price but half the weight.

 If he gets the cheaper one, he will surely just get the titanium one later, spending even more ... decisions, decisions.  I'll leave you to decide which you would do, as we watch him fill his pack with some books, a jacket, sandwiches, and a pop bottle of water which just fits neatly into his new metal cup, together with his otherwise unremarkable "no budget" "survival kit".

Callie is another mile up the road, and she was the one who called a halt to her ride.  She was a student until very recently, and now she is backpacking along one of North America's long-distance trails.  She typically goes for 5 - 7 days before she needs to hitch-hike off the trail into the nearest town to wash her clothes and herself and re-supply with food.  Unfortunately it was on the way to the town that she bailed from the car.  The driver's off-colour jokes were giving her the creeps, and her right hand was hovering discretely over her neck-knife, when she decided she would prefer to be walking into town, even if it meant getting there tomorrow, and all she had left for supper was a little cous-cous, and some yeast extract.

The trouble caused by sex, politics and religion, eh?!

Before we see how Allan, Brian and Callie fared, I'll tell you about the two times I experienced hypothermia, otherwise known as "exposure".

The first was when I was 19, and was sailing the small family dinghy in Plymouth Sound.  This is a large bay, surrounded by steep shores, where 5 or 6 rivers reach the sea.  Its shelter as a harbour is improved by a breakwater, a man-made wall across the seaward side leaving ample room on either side for large ships to come and go.  I had hesitated about going out, but I had sailed plenty of times in the force 5 or 6 currently blowing, and didn't want to waste the trip.  It was a dull day and there were a few other sailboats out, but not many in that large area.  Eventually a stronger gust than usual hit me, and the mast and I hit the water.  This wasn't the teetering "will it or won't it" capsize you see in The Thomas Crown Affair, it was a brutal knock which bashed me into the water.  There was no question of having any time to spill wind from the sail.  Before I surfaced, the dingy turned upside down over the top of me.  Fortunately no ropes snagged me and I was soon out from under the boat.

Around this time I had some training with the Royal Navy on using a life-raft.  Traditional inflatable life-rafts had (or still have - I don’t know) a habit of turning up-side down, depositing you in the sea, and you have to know the correct technique for righting them, which involves hauling yourself in heavy wet clothes up onto the slippery rubber bottom.  You have to do this quickly before your muscles cool to the point where they are completely ineffective.

 One of the  things that were impressed on us was that that being in the sea is very different from getting in the sea-shore in the summer.  Experiments had been done with Olympic swimmers in cold water: they had been found to be unable to swim a single length of a pool continuously as they could not control their breathing.  Sometimes people die when their "gasp reflex" means that they involuntarily inhale some sea-water, and the damage that does to the delicate lung surface means they drowned later as their lungs fill up with their own serum.

In theory I knew about the effect of shock from First Aid courses.  But I don't think that came to mind after I had managed to haul myself onto the bottom of the boat out of the water, and sat laughing for quite a few minutes, before trying to consider my situation coolly.  You may recognise that as a common symptom of shock.  In theory there is no difference between theory and practice: in practice there is!

In theory I knew how to right a capsized dinghy, and I had had plenty of practice: I had been teaching people how to do it for three years by that stage.  However the jib-sheets which I needed for leverage seemed tangled under the boat, and I was reluctant to get back into the water.  I was also getting increasingly concerned about the tidal stream taking me towards the gap between the cliff and the breakwater, and out to sea.  Eventually I decided I would pull the boat towards the cliff, which seemed quite close, and if I couldn't make enough progress pulling the boat, to swim to the shore without it: I would rather be wet and stuck on the land than out at sea.  I reluctantly got back into the water and started pulling the boat, making noticeable progress.

After about 10 minutes a naval vessel came and picked me up, so I'll never know if I would have succeeded.  It was then that I had the non-experience that is hypothermia.  Non-experience because you are completely unaware of it.  Brains only work on glucose in your blood.  When that glucose is all used up by your muscles trying to keep you warm, there isn't enough to spare for the expensive luxury of operating all your brain.  Your body prioritises the most important and most primitive parts, so you continue to breathe, and balance and so on, but thinking just doesn't happen.  It's not that you are bad at thinking: it just doesn't happen.  So I had almost no recollection of what happened between getting picked up and arriving home.   That was the effect of 10 minutes immersion in sea-water in the summer!   When I had warmed up I was perfectly normal, and went for a driving lesson in the afternoon. 

The other occasion was when I was a student, and a friend and I considered going and taking advantage of a newly re-opened railway branch line to walk over some particularly scenic moors.  My problem was that I had no waterproof trousers, and I had enough experience of backpacking to know that that can make a massive difference.  Still, it was too good an opportunity to be missed and the sun was shining.

Of course later it rained, and the wind blew unimpeded over the rolling moorland.  My waterproof jacket kept the wind out of my top, but my wet trousers were exposed to the wind.  It's the wind that makes the difference, as anyone with experience of trying to dry clothes on a line can tell you. The wind removes the faster moving molecules, leaving the slow, cold ones.  The question is can you replace the heat as fast as you are losing it?  This wasn't mountains or even uplands.  The temperature wasn't particularly cold.  But it's the evaporation that's the killer ... literally.  A little later I learned from some ex-military colleagues that the British army had had no fatalities in training in the much colder snowy conditions in Norway, but had had several in the wet windy conditions in the Cairngorms and Brecon Beacons.  Ultra fit men were found lying dead next to their sleeping bags, which they could have got into if they had only understood their position.  Your brain stops working and you don't know anything about it.

At one point as we trudged over the moor I realised  (a couple of hours late) that I had to remove a hard contact lens for which I was slowly building up tolerance over several days.  I asked "what time is it?" and hearing that I was overdue, promptly took it out.  It must have sat in my hand for ... oh, a good one hundredth of a second before the wind whipped it away.  The thing that - eventually - struck me most was not just that this ill-considered act was amazingly stupid, and reveals how little was happening in my brain, but that my conversation for the next hour consisted entirely (no exaggeration) of "ohhh, that was a really stupid thing to do, wasn't it?" as my brain - glacially slowly - began to grasp that.

Later we saw a small chapel up ahead.  Sanctuary?!  We very hopefully tried the door to the porch.  Unlocked!  I'm not sure how bad it would have got, if we hadn't happened upon this place.  The inner door was locked, but it was luxury to shut the outer one and stand out of the wind at last in the dark porch.  I got a spare jumper out of my pack, put it on under my damp clothes.  Of course the water had wicked upwards from my trousers, and my shirt was wet.  I wanted to tuck my jumpers into my trousers, but my hands were too cold to undo my trousers (or more accurately, the muscles in my forearms were too cold to operate my hands).  Andy agreed to try and help, but he struggled too, with his cold hands and trying to do the familiar action but from the unfamiliar side.  So he went round behind me and tried successfully to undo my trousers.  It was only later that it occurred to me that if someone had come in at this point, they might not have understood just why two men were standing in the dark in this position.

That moorland walk is roughly the position that Allen, the first student is in now, and it could easily be fatal.  He feels warm enough to begin with; but then slowly cools to the point that you do stupid things, like sit down and rest, switching off that heat supply from your legs. But you feel tired without any blood glucose, so its something hypothermia victims often do. Those stupid things could include walking in front of a vehicle, or even taking clothes off, when you get to the point of your thermo-regulation ceasing to function properly. 

Even waterproofs which are old, thin, cheap, and leaky are approximately windproof, and stop the wind evaporating the water in your wet clothes.  Lots of people have the foresight to take a waterproof jacket, but somehow waterproof trousers seem a step too far.  In reality they make a lot of activities possible.  Looking back, I remember going skiing without any specialised "ski-wear"; being stuck on the chair-lift in mid air for an hour in very cold conditions, after which a lot of other people were very upset about getting cold; walking over snowy Scottish mountains; and ... (ahem) ... windsurfing across an estuary in a suit and tie under my waterproofs, just to see if I could.  (I had intended buying something on the other side to show that I’d been there, but being very stupid it had not occurred to me that I would not be prepared to leave the windsurfer where it could be stolen, whilst I went to a shop).

While Allan’s fate is uncertain, Brian on the other hand, makes a plan to warm up.  He walks down to a patch of woodland by a stream.  He collects wood which he puts under a bin-bag to stop it getting any wetter.  He fills 3 bin bags with leaves from the ground, uses one as a cushion to sit on, and puts one to act as a back-rest against a tree.  The other he will use later as a small duvet .  With the help of his knife (to expose dry wood), and a candle he eventually succeeds in lighting a fire.  Later, after it's dark, he has put on a bin-bag as a skirt over his trousers, one as a make-shift windproof outer coat, and one covering his head; and with the help of the fire in front of him, a hot drink inside him, and a hot-water bottle (i.e. a mug of hot water) by his femorals to warm his cold legs, he gets warm.  He is able to fall asleep for a few hours.  He wakes up around 3 a.m. cold and very uncomfortable, as he didn't get enough time to make much of a cushion under him before it got too dark; nor enough time to collect much firewood, and the fire is now out.  But, after walking round in circles for a bit, he lights a candle, puts it in his mug, and holds it between his thighs under the upper bags, where the warm air eventually warms him up.  Next day he's exhausted, but alive.  After a day or two to catch up on a bad night's sleep, and a cold that lasts a week, Brian is fine.

If you think that my point is that with the aid of a small kit you can manage the proverbial "survival situation" that so many men fantasise about, you're wrong!  My point is that if you have prepared for the situation with a small bag of the proper kit, you don't just survive, you thrive.  Brian was not functioning well the next day.  Callie's bag weighed only 10 lb, not much more than theirs.  But she was kitted out for the situation. https://lighterpack.com/r/15jins   Your physiological needs are the same whether you are caught out away from home, or "bugging out", or backpacking for weeks.  The same simple collection of items, in a bag, means that your experience can be like Callie's.  

Callie did not have a drama, she had a routine evening, as she had practised it many times.  She had a mildly unpleasant encounter with somebody, and she got to town a day later than she had hoped, but other than that it was unproblematic.  She didn’t have to expend time and energy making a fire, but still had a hot meal, and purified water from the stream to drink.  She lay comfortably on her inflatable mattress under her waterproof tent and wrote about the day in her journal.  She listened to a podcast; fell asleep at the usual time, and got up after 8 hours sleep.

Your aim should not be to survive, but to thrive.  It's not difficult, complicated or (necessarily) expensive. 

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Here is advice on how to prepare such a bag, from people whose advice I think worth listening to.  I don't want to repeat what a lot of other people with more experience than me have already done.   At a later date, I'll give my supplemental suggestions that I don't see elsewhere.  

All these people do things slightly differently, and I'm no exception.  If you’re really short of time and just want to listen to one rather than several, I would suggest Josh or Dixie. ... and me of course - because you can assume I'll find fault with all these folk.  However, once you start, you may find you enjoy listening to these people.  YouTube is a competitive place, and these guys have large audiences for a reason: they are extremely personable and put things across well.  I'm only suggesting one or two videos from each person, but you could go to their channel home-page and see as many as you like.  But first do your homework and go through this list.  They are all there for a reason. You can save time by speeding them up. Each video I suggest won't necessarily be one which tells you all you need, rather, it will tell you something important, and serves as an introduction to the person and their style.  

There are three common situations which mean people have a lot of experience in minimalist camping: either they enjoy backpacking (like me) and cover significant distances; or they have short walks to the sort of outdoor space they like, to spend time there doing things they enjoy; or they are ex-military.  These backgrounds are reflected in their different approaches.

This is a good order to watch them in ... and happens to be close to the order of how many subscribers they have.  (Although two have been on TV, which boosts their numbers considerably).  

1   “Dixie”. "Homemade Wanderlust" 400 k subscribers

That kit list above on lighterpack.com is hers.  The video that I am suggesting you start with (if you haven't come across her before) should give you an indication as to why her personality means she has a huge following even amongst people who have no intention of backpacking long distances as she does.  She has walked all the long-range trails which take several months that you can think of, plus a lot more.  She puts a lot of emphasis on the lightness of the pack.

 Who Can't Hike the Appalachian Trail? (271k views)

 Gear I DON'T Recommend Anymore From My Appalachian Trail List + My Alternatives and What Still Works (5k views)

2 Josh "The Gray Bearded Green Beret"  270 k subscribers

Another very likeable, experienced, intelligent guy, with obvious military background.  Explains things well; thinks in terms of kits.

 Bug Out Bag Green Berets No Nonsense Bug Out (380 k views)

 Cache Contents: Green Berets No Nonsense Bug Out (46 k views)

3   Dave  Pearson "Fun in the Woods"  164 k subscribers

Yet another really nice, generous, kind, hard-working guy.  Of all the people in this list, he is about the only one who has an ordinary, unrelated job as well as putting out regular videos, for free, unsponsored.  That subscriber number doesn't do him justice: I suspect that people who watch his videos don't need reminding!  For example, the second video below has the most views of all here by a long way, at 1.3 million!  He is from the American South, though, so I tend to watch at about 1.5 times normal speed!  His walks are usually short, with the majority of time spent having "fun in the woods".  When I re-watch his videos after a year or five, having perhaps learned a little more myself in the interim, his videos always go up in my estimation.

 Realistic 72 Hour Emergency Bug Out Bag (220 k views)

 Long Term Wilderness Bug Out Bag, My Opinions (1,311 k views!)

4  Darwin on the Trail  312 k subscribers!!

Darwin has produced one of the most popular ultralight backpacking vlogs.  He recently stopped.

 Gear to Leave at Home during a Thru-Hike

 Gear to lighten your load on a budget  #1 (850 k views)

 ditto #4 pack, tent, sleep pad, waterproof jacket & trousers.

5  Andrew "Ranger survival and fieldcraft"  80 000 subscribers

Another ex-military, who knows an incredible number of "hacks".

 Dave Canterbury's 10 C's of Survival Plus 5 More!

 Solo Overnight with a Canteen Cup Survival Kit!

6  Dave Canterbury   755 k subscribers

Dave is the current "grandfather" of this niche interest.  Ex-military; made "survival" TV programs with Cody Lundeen.  Has an interest in learning from historical pioneers etc.

 Bugout Bag? What’s Inside and Why?

7  "Evan's Backpacking Videos"  27 k subscribers

 No Tent, No Hammock: How and Why I Use a Tarp for Backpacking (360 k views)

8  Brooke Whipple  "Girl in the Woods"  458 k subscribers!

Brooke and husband Dave were on "Alone" season 4.  (Be sure to watch this to the end)!

 49 days in the Wilderness- The 10 items we took on Alone Season 4

9  Matt Shafter  “Camping Gear 2021 – 7lbs Full Comfort Ultralight w Budget Backpacking Essentials”  16 k subscribers

 Camping Gear 2021 – 7lbs Full Comfort Ultralight w Budget Backpacking Essentials