Three cheers to J.M. for his recent excellent, award-winning article on Get Home Bags (GHBs). Finally, a GHB article with advice that’s sensible, logical, and doable for anyone wanting to put together a GHB. I know how long it takes to write an article for SurvivalBlog so I know it took J.M. months to put that all together so again, thanks for such a well-researched piece.
I’m stepping up to the plate on his request for some thoughts on other ways to put together an ultra-light GHB. To say the least, I was pretty disappointed with what I was finding in my research six months ago so decided to write an article which I thought was more realistic. After I got the article completed and the final proofreading done, it went straight into the “Do Not Publish” folder to join its many companions for reasons I won’t mention.
After J.M.’s closing comment asking for anyone else’s ultra-light version of GHBs, I pulled it out of the DNP folder, dusted it off and after a makeover and adding comments on J.M.’s article, I hope the reader can find some useful info here.
J.M.’s Qualifications
Part of what made J.M.’s article so realistic is that he’s a backpacker and understands the single-most important objective when packing a backpack is weight. His article is the only one I’ve seen that actually has everything weighed out to the ounce and he clearly understands that after you’ve said, “This item doesn’t weigh much,” for the 23rd time, they do weigh too much. He also shares my philosophy of using as few one-purpose items as possible and instead incorporating gear which is multi-purpose. Amen Brother.
We both believe that to make things more concrete and easier to plan to your GHB, having an actual location to get home from is a plus. Also, a plan on how to possibly get a bicycle wherever you’re at to carry your GHB instead of your back and hips is a plus.
Frustrations With Online GHB Lists
Here’s just the short list of recommend items I found in some of the online “walking-home” GHB lists which made me cringe: heavy metal tools: large survival knife, hatchet, fencing tool, mini shovel, and folding saw; MREs, gun cleaning kit, edible plant book, snares, nets, traps, mess kits large enough to cater an inaugural ball, collapsible canvas bucket, Where There Is No Doctor book, dental first aid kit, activated charcoal for treating poisoning, snake-bite kits, baby wipes for cleaning, clothespins, chalk, dice (for shooting craps while we sing Kumbaya around the evening fire?), zip ties, and so much ammo and firepower it makes the Alamo look like boys with BB guns. IMO, all dead weight and not practical enough to justify lugging along if you’re on foot. While the two-is-one-and-one-is-none philosophy is indispensible in all other aspects of everyday life, it doesn’t apply to GHB’s except for a few very critical things like a knife, butane lighter, and toilet paper.
Different Strokes For Different Folks
J.M.’s article covered a lot of different situations for a particular type of person who not only needs to be prepared for non-SHTF issues every day at work, but also prepared in the event she’d have to be walking home at some point. It’s my nature and almost a game for me to be such a minimalist, to see how little I can get by with, and to SUB (“Suck it up Buttercup!”) when necessary. That wouldn’t appeal to most people and the psychological stress it would cause would not be worth going as ultra-light as I choose to do. Having the necessary tools, even if not used, would give them peace of mind just knowing they’re available.
Another factor determining what to take along is whether or not you have anyone back home holding down the fort. If so, then you have fewer worries and if it takes a few days longer with your heavy pack, then so be it.
In my case, my urgency to get home overrides all other considerations. For that reason my article is much more narrow in its scope, strictly based on me being away from home at the very moment when the feces hit the fan and requiring me to hit the road five minutes ago. My most important priority isn’t comfort or variety, but to get the heck home as soon as humanly possible. So my list is very different, very ultra-light, and much easier and cheaper to put together. I hope you can still find some useful nuggets here as well as from J.M.’s list.
My Qualifications
First, unlike the armchair wannabes who compiled some of the GHB lists I looked at which would require a huge backpack the size of a streamer trunk, the ideas here are based on actual experience gathered over a lifetime so there’s nothing whimsical about why I’m putting each item into my GHB. Aside from being an ultra-minimalist with engineering, problem-solving, analytical, and MacGyvering skills, I have decades of backpacking experience since high school from recreation, two different jobs, and a year in my 40’s circumnavigating the globe with the smallest backpack I saw among all other travelers. But my biggest qualification is that I base decisions on probabilities, not possibilities.
If you get nothing else out of my comments, please learn to put more emphasis on probabilities and ignore most of the “possibilities,” not just with GHB’s but most other aspects of life as well.
My Assumptions When Deciding What to Pack
- The only scenario I can imagine necessitating using a GHB for me personally would be a CME or EMP if they’re as bad as many assume and similar to the book One Second After. In those situations, since I’m already aware of what they are and how serious they might be, I’ll recognize the symptoms. While everyone else is still scratching their heads and pounding their cellphones on the dashboard, I’ll have my GHB in hand and headed home before most people even start looking out their windows to see what happened. In any type of slo-mo meltdown such as described in the first chapters in Patriots, I can’t imagine myself watching and doing nothing as the world falls apart around me. I’d have left long before that point since I’d have no business to clean up first as the guys in the book did.
- Cell phones and networks will be toast.
- My most likely get-home-from location is 35 miles away which I visit one to three times per month. The other is 105 miles away where I go two or three times a year. The first will only require walking shoes and less than two days to get home, the second will take 5-7 days if I have to walk the entire way.
- The trouble with many online GHB articles is that the writer assumes without question they’ll be orienteering their way home using a compass and topo maps, carrying a 120 lb. backpack, using stealth tactics to avoid detection, shooting it out with hordes of bad guys, and putting their edible plants book to use while waiting for their snares and figure-4 deadfalls to bag some protein. It sounds like the Jeremiah Johnson version of Diehard with some Postman tossed in.
- It seems to me that if an EMP/CME strikes tomorrow, it’s going to take a minimum of three days before people get past the wondering stage and begin to figure out they’re not in Kansas anymore. Three more days to get past the denial stage, and a good week before it finally sinks in that the government isn’t coming to the rescue. All during that first week, people are going to continue to be the decent folks they are right now and even the bad guys aren’t going to catch on and start rampaging that soon. So the idea of having to shoot our way past roving madmen to get home during that first week, well I just don’t buy it. As time goes on and the masses finally figure out the government isn’t coming to help, neither is the Walmart truck, and the bank and social security checks are no more, then yes, the world is going to get really ugly and if you don’t belong to a well-organized group of some kind, you’ll have a tough row to hoe. Lone dogs won’t make it so we better have a Plan B.
- These opinions are based on my living in a very rural area where everybody is friendly and down-homey, in a red state, and not in a Big Blue City where the roadblocks and riot squads will be out once the mayor and city council figure out they have another wonderful opportunity to take control of the proles. Heaven help them.
- Another thing many GHB authors miss is that we’re not going to be the only ones walking to get back home. Most of the time we’ll have complete strangers (new friends) as walking companions, not only because that’s what normal people do but because we’ll bit companionship for mutual protection and to help get through the trial. Oftentimes during crises people rise to the occasion and if they see strangers passing by, rather than shooting warning shots, it’s more likely they’ll let you sleep in their backyard, barn, or even their couch (been there, done that.)
J.M. and I both agree we should hope for this kind of help but not plan on it while packing our self-reliance GHB’s for a week-long journey.
My Priorities in a GHB Event
Get Home ASAP! My single-most important objective if I’m carrying a GHB on my back is to get home ASAP. The longer I dilly-dally around the higher the probability that my neighbors back home will think I’m not coming back and start taking advantage of my property and preps. That’s a sensible thing for them to do if I’m not coming back so I need to get home before they get to that point. The probability also increases that I’ll run into trouble from other people if I’m walking home during week two or three after the SHTF.
Foot Care – My feet are my most important asset, not the stuff in my GHB. Even experienced hikers will need moleskin and antibacterial cream if they haven’t been on the trail in a while. Put moleskin on as soon as you feel the slightest irritation, don’t wait until it develops into something bigger. Before antibiotics were invented, Calvin Coolidge’s young son died from an infected toe blister seven days after playing tennis in shoes without socks.
Backpack Weight – The heavier my GHB is, the more miles per day it’s subtracting from my progress of getting home. I can do 20+ miles/day with 25 lbs. on my back and exponentially fewer with 50.
Calories – I put more emphasis on total daily calories than J.M.’s friend based on my backpacking experience and knowing that if I don’t have enough calories today, I won’t have the discipline to resist digging into tomorrow’s rations. To make up for the amount of food I’ll be carrying, and due to my minimalist nature anyway, I put much less emphasis on equipment preferring to live by my built-in SUB mentality.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 2.)