Sometimes, regular life gives you a chance to practice prepper skills. We recently got an opportunity to practice a sudden vehicular “bug out” without an actual SHTF. Many things went well: a few things will be better next time.
It helps, for bug out practice, to have an actual sense of urgency. It also helps to have to live with your decisions for several days. That’s when you discover what you forgot.
The urgency for this practice was a phone call on a Tuesday evening that our pregnant daughter developed a complication and was going to have to deliver her baby three weeks early. She wanted us there, but lives a fourteen-hour drive away. If we were going to be there for the delivery, we had to pack and go as quickly as possible — just like bugging out.
What Went Well
Bug Out Bags
We both have BOBs, which was handy. Those were ready to throw in the car after a bit of swapping out a few summer bits (like bug spray) for
Roller Boards
That’s what the flight attendants call them. We have two — small enough to fit in airplane overhead compartments. Having wheels and multiple handles
Bathroom Bits
Since I do a fair amount of business travel, I always have my travel-set of bathroom items already collected in a one-quart plastic bag, per the TSA. It was super easy to just grab it from the usual travel bag and toss that in the roller board. A week’s worth of toiletries. Covered. Of course, being a guy, my toiletry “needs”
Preflight Check
The engine oil level was fine. I put a couple pounds of air in all four tires just to get them up to spec. The dear wife has been good about not letting her fuel tank go below half full. We had three quarters of a tank. That would get us well beyond the local (closed) gas stations and well out among the 24-hour stations on the interstates. After a five-minute checkup, the car was good to go.
Those are the things that went pretty well. There were a few areas that showed areas to work on.
Sleep Options
While we planned to stay in a (low-budget) hotel for the duration of our visit, we still brought our sleeping bags. These were almost needed. I made hotel reservations just before departing. It turned out that I was one day short, as our daughter needed to stay in the hospital one more day. By the time we found out, it was too late.
No Room At The Inn — We could not add a day to the hotel stay. There was a big rivalry football game that weekend, so there were no hotel rooms to be had in the entire area. The football game was a close parallel to what you might encounter if there had been some regional crisis that prompted our bug out. Lots of other people would be looking for housing too. Supply would run out. Then what do you do?
Our particular (non-SHTF) solution was that hospital rules allowed her husband to sleep in the hospital room on the couch (near mother and baby), so we could use the bed in their apartment.
The application to a bug-out is that it is good to be prepared to sleep in non-standard places. We had our sleeping bags, inflatable pads and inflatable pillows. We brought our options with us.
Multi-Legal Protection
While I have a couple of handguns and ammo in travel cases, ready to go, this trip required traveling through several Second-A-unfriendly states. If it had been a crisis bug out, I would not care about silly restrictions. For this trip, however, we packed his-n-hers pepper sprays. It’s good to know the laws of states you travel through. While pepper spray is generally legal for personal use, some states dictate how many ounces the canister may hold. Know your laws!
Paper Maps
In a world reliant on GPS, paper maps get dismissed. They were handy (and kept in the car door pocket) when a major crash of some kind closed the interstate at 2:00 a.m. between Waverly and Owego — the pitch-black hinterboonies of New York state. There was ONE detour sign at the end of the off-ramp. After that, nothing. We were on our own. The GPS was little help as it kept telling us to turn around when possible. It couldn’t know the highway was closed. Our paper maps aren’t super detailed, but enough let us see a roughly parallel route via a county highway. Yes, I know I could have messed with my GPS to get the same information but what if the GPS unit simply failed? They can. We would have had no clue which way to go in the middle of the night.
Room To Improve
Hygiene & Pill Problem
While I had my travel toiletries already organized per TSA specs, the dear wife did not. She does not do much air travel. It took her a while to decide what was important to take and what was only ‘nice.’ She would have benefited from having thought that out earlier and having travel-sized versions in a grab-and-go container. The other problem was the bevy of supplements she takes daily. She has only two daily prescription meds. The rest were various vitamins (C, D, B6, etc.), calcium supplements, krill oil, etc. etc. that she did not want to skip.
Under the duress of urgency, her solution was to take all of her pill bottles in a cardboard box — not a bug-out-friendly solution. It was cumbersome to carry (no handles) and too big to fit into anything that did have a handle. Getting everything you want to have into two bags with handles and/or straps, makes you much more mobile.
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What she needs (and will soon have) is one of those pill organizers. She can put one of each day’s pills and/or vitamins in a cell and be ready to go. Given expiration dates, you wouldn’t want to pre-pack such a medicine organizer and put it on the shelf for months or years. But, if a bug out seemed imminent, she could pre-pack an organizer like this and be ready to grab-n-go. If you’ve got daily meds, vitamins or supplements, how will you pack them quickly for the road?
Trunk Water
I have sturdy 5 and 6-gallon water containers which are fine for bugging out in my truck. They are not, however, especially sedan-friendly. We took along a few water bottles which turned out to be just fine (as a non-crisis trip). What I want, now, is a five-liter container — something sturdy enough for a fully-packed trunk and yet small enough to not hog valuable trunk space. We can filter wild water with our Sawyer Minis but the collapsable water bags in our BOBs are not sturdy enough to pack in a full trunk.
Forgotten Heater
In the rush to leave, I forgot to bring my little 12v beverage heater. It would have been nice to reheat cold coffee while driving. If this had been an actual bug-out event, the little heater could have boiled water to reconstitute the freeze-dried meals in our bug out bags. Next time, the heater is going in the car. Even if we have to sleep in the car, we can still have a hot meal.
We did still have her Esbit mini-stove and fuel tabs, so if we were stopped someplace, we could still boil water. The 12v heater would be good while driving or someplace where even a little Esbit flame was inappropriate.
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Cash Out
Also forgotten in the urgency and rush to pack and go, was the envelope of $100 in mixed bills that I keep for such an event. We were able to do most things with a credit card, but what if we couldn’t?
I was on a business trip recently when my card was suspended (due to stolen numbers, fraudulent activity) while I was over a thousand miles from home. Cards can fail you. Fortunately, I regard my wallet like my gas tank and don’t let it get near empty before filling it up. I had just enough cash. Our Bug Out Bags also have a modest stash of cash. So, we had options. Still, that envelope was supposed to bug out with us. It stayed home. Doh!
Lessons Learned
Laundry Half-Full — When I went to pack my roller board, I took every scivvy and t-shirt I had in the drawer. It was almost laundry day. Imagine how much less convenient our bug out would have been if I had to take dirty clothes with me and hope to clean them while bugged out. Sock and underwear drawers should be regarded the same as gas tanks. Do laundry when the drawer is half empty.
Checklists! — I will be making up a checklist of things to remember for the next bug out. The time pressure and urgency of this test proved that during an actual emergency situation, our minds will be a-swirl with many other thoughts. We are likely to forget things we don’t deal with every day, like the envelope of emergency cash, or the little heater, etc.
BOB’s Your Friend — Just having the bug out bags packed and ready was super-handy. With roughing-it gear already covered, we could focus on the less-rough.
GPS can fail you — Twice, I had to get off of my planned route because of road closures. At night, they simply close an entire road for repair work. Know your route, at least in general terms. If you get off your route (in the total black of night) and a sign says “Syracuse 10 miles,” you should have at least a vague idea of if Syracuse is the right direction or the wrong direction. Learn to read paper maps too.
Stay Flexible — When it turned out that there was no room for us at the inn — any inn — we had to think outside the box for where we’d stay the next night. We knew no one in town except our daughter and her husband, so we had that, at least. But, what if during a bug out, we were someplace we knew no one and there was no room at the inn? What would we do then? The dear wife was quick to imagine options, like taking turns sleeping in the car. The gear in our BOBs gave us that backstop.
Conclusion
All in all, this exercise was valuable. It showed us what worked and went well. It also showed us some areas to improve. Next time will go better.
Have you done a realistic bug out practice? Not just walking around with your BOB, but actually leaving the house with your gear for a few days? How did it go?
Sounds like a great practice run without the fun of sleeping under the stars (which means with the bugs!). Good point about laundry. I consider doing it regularly as one of my preps. Because our washer is small (RV/cabin sized), I do a full load about 4 times a week. In our semi-remote location, we lose power regularly for hours to days at a time. Not having to worry about clean skivies and kitchen towels is important to us!
Rural,
Good point about laundry and power outages. While there are no-grid alternatives to doing laundry, it is nicer to NOT have to do that too, during an outage. There’s enough else to tend to.
Why not keep the pill organizer filled. Just don’t pack it away. Use it on a daily basis instead of using the bottles in a daily basis.
Hmm. I like that idea. Will run that past the dear wife (since they’re HER vitamins and all). That would keep everything fresh and make it grab-n-go. Thanks!