Your Bug Out Bag is Critical for Disaster Preparedness
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No one expects a disaster to strike when it does. If as humans we knew when a disaster going to happen, we probably wouldn’t call them disasters. We might call them “inconveniences.” If we knew a disaster was going to happen before it did, the disaster would not be nearly as catastrophic, because we would be prepared.
Unfortunately, natural disasters, emergencies, and man-made atrocities exist in our world. There are real risks, both natural and manmade. Even though disaster preparedness can save lives, fundamental disaster preparedness is rarely taught and is almost never thought-out and planned by the average person.
This is unfortunately the case. This means that when disaster strikes, most people aren’t prepared; they don’t know what to do, where to go, how to survive, or where to get food or basic supplies. Because of this, there is a great deal of suffering, suffering which could have been avoided by basic preparation.
Disaster preparedness is immensely important, and we believe that buying or building your own bug-out bag is the absolute best way to take the first step towards disaster preparedness. Building a bug out bag is a simple, easy, and fun way to educate yourself and your family and to prepare for a disaster. In creating a bug out bag, you may avoid the consequences of lack of preparation.
We Should All Have a Bug Out Bag Ready to Go
A bug out bag is disaster preparedness in a nutshell. Aside from organizing an emergency meet-up location for your family members, building a bug-out bag is the single most beneficial thing you can do to prepare yourself to survive in a disaster. It won’t be easy, but it will be like playing a video game on intermediate instead of hard.
Your bug out bag will contain the bare essentials for survival: food and water, shelter, fundamental hygiene, protection, navigation, and the other core survival item. By having a bug out bag ready to go, you will increase your chances of survival in a disaster scenario.
Consider This Basic Disaster Scenario
Let’s say there is a natural disaster. God forbid, but let’s assume there is. Your home is in the direct path of a wildfire or a hurricane. It will most likely arrive and devastate your home within hours – possibly an hour or less. In these types of natural disasters, you won’t always have a sufficient warning. Without a true warning, you won’t have the opportunity to compile your essential items for escape and survival, even survival for a few days. In a severe disaster, roads may be untravelable, communications down, the internet off-line, stores and food supplies closed, looted, or inaccessible, and other degradation of our basic infrastructure.
Putting Thought Into Building Your Bug Out Bag
Let’s say you compile your essentials for survival and evacuation all in one central pace – a bag you can quickly grab at a moment’s notice – before the disaster scenario described above. If you are prepared, you would be able to flee the disaster area immediately (before it gets worse) and survive the aftermath. If you’ve planned ahead, you will be able to provide for and protect your family, without worrying how to survive.
When you take the first steps to build your bug out bag, you should really consider what you would most likely need to use it for before you build your bag. It may seem like a lot of work. A major disaster is unlikely to happen, right?
While this is true, being prepared can quite literally be a matter of life and death. Since the stakes are possibly so high, it’s worth it to take twenty or thirty minutes minutes to configure, purchase, and compile your bug-out bag. It is well worth the investment.
The most important thing about disaster planning is being proactive. You need to be mentally proactive about disaster preparedness and take your future well-being into consideration, in order to reduce the risk to you and your family.
We’ve done most of the work for you. We’ve spent many hours researching essential bug out bag contents, along with reading and reviewing the most popular survival gear. We’ve done this to identify important items of the absolute best value. In doing so, we’ve compiled them into a simple, straightforward list for you.
Other Survival Considerations
Most disaster experts and preppers recommend that your bug-out bag be capable of sustaining yourself for 72 hours after a disaster. In fact, this is the core principle behind a bug out bag. In a truly catastrophic disaster – a SHTF EOTWAWKI situation – a comprehensive survival kit is almost certainly better. In a doomsday scenario, there is an increased need for long-term survival.
Though we support comprehensive survival preparation, most natural disasters come, and then they go. These emergencies are typically confronted by governments and non-profit disaster relief organizations as soon as the danger has cleared. These relief organizations almost always reach and rescue disaster victims within 72 hours.
There’s one important point we only lightly touched upon: when building a bug out bag, you should also consider your family.
How many people would be evacuating with you in an emergency? Don’t find yourself short-handed – or rather, short on drinkable water. You should plan according to the size of your immediate family and include additional supplies in your B.O.B. – or help them build their own.
Additionally, some parts of the world are more prone to certain types of natural disasters. If you’re in an geographical area prone to natural disasters, you should definitely consider keeping a bug out bag handy. (Note: you should also include disaster and temperature-specific survival gear in your BOB if your area is prone to a particular type of natural disaster.) We encourage you to learn more about regional and disaster-specific disaster planning and bug-out bag contents if you live in or near a region more prone to natural disasters.
You can use our essential bug out bag list to get started. Keep in mind your family size and the types of natural disasters your area is more likely to face. Plan your bug-out bag accordingly. Soon you will be able to view our region-specific disaster risk map and our disaster-specific (region-based) bug-out bag extension lists. This resource will provide short lists of additional bug out bag items helpful based on your geographical region and that region’s natural disaster propensity.