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Have you heard of a Bug out bag (BOB)? If you have read even a few articles on urban survival then you have heard of this mysterious thing. Loosely defined, it is a bag packed with supplies and equipment for a few days to a week. It is intended to be something handy to grab, if you have to get out of where you are quickly. The thousands of items that could possibly be packed in a BOB are often a source of great debate among people building, packing, and storing their own bag.

But what about the times when you won’t need to evacuate your residence, home, business, or other location? Then you will need what I humorously term an Anti-Bug Out Bag (ABOB.) If, like me, you work from home or are not traveling out of town, you are rarely more than a few miles from where you spend most of your time, your home. It is often overlooked that you will more than likely be at your home, or close to it, should something happen. Some events like bad weather you may even have a few days notice of the threat.

So let’s start with the big picture of maintaining your gear.

When planning your Anti-Bug Out Bag (ABOB), you are only limited by your storage space and budget. However, for the average person, a big closet, basement corner, or wall of the garage should do fine. After deciding the location, it is time to identify the contents. I will not even begin to list individual items, but will attempt to address the logical process of determining what is most important for you.

The very first consideration of any item is: how many uses does it have? One? Two? Each and every item should be able to serve at least three uses. And yes, I do realize there are a few items that may be very specific, but those rare items will be obvious if you try to find other uses as you evaluate each piece of gear.

An example would be a basic tool kit. Instead of a regular hammer, what about a dry wall hammer with a hammer head and hatchet back. This type of hammer also has a nail-pulling notch under the blade of the hatchet. This adds an extra purpose and increases its value and usefulness. Another great example is types of rope. We all know the value of heavy rope, para-cord, twine, and even bungee cords. But you can add 1″ tube webbing to your supply and it can serve many more needs. Straps for packs, slings for tools and weapons, and even belts for your clothes. The heavier type designed for rock climbing and mountaineering is fairly inexpensive and is strong enough to pull a car out of a ditch. Try that with nylon rope from Wal-Mart!

The important part is to add the items that will help you in as many ways as possible to reduce waste and increase efficiency in your work.

The next major consideration is quality and durability.

With today’s wasteful use of resources we have all become conditioned to throwing things away and replacing them when they break again. This has the bad effect of putting a lot of junk equipment to be on the market. I do caution you against just using price as an indicator of quality. We all have things we paid almost nothing for that will outlast the most expensive piece of equipment.

The fact that many of these items simply are not made to withstand daily use in a rugged environment will be a disaster when you need them to work the most. Make sure you get the best you can afford. Learn to take care of them, and be able to repair them if needed.

For an example of this, take the spade shovel in my garage. I saw it on sale at a bargain store for under $10 dollars. It has a solid wood handle, with strong rivets to hold it all together. I have had it for almost seven years and put some hard use on in my landscaping days. I had another one that was bought as extra equipment for one of my crews at a name-brand hardware store for over $30. Within a month the cheap aluminum rivets twisted out and the handle came out. After repairing it with large stainless steel bolts, a weld came apart on the handle assembly. This shovel just couldn’t take the abuse we were putting on it. But the less expensive one thrived on the rough use. So evaluate each piece in your ABOB based on quality and craftsmanship.

After filtering your selected items throughout the first two steps it is on to the third. How many of these do I need? Everything has it’s limit of usefulness. And everything can wear out and break no matter how good the quality. So you must determine how many of each item you need. Do you need two pry bars? Probably not, because other items can be used if needed. Do you need two pick axes? If you plan on doing a lot of farming with no tractor, then you might. How about an extra sewing kit to repair clothes and packs? Most assuredly.
So determining the items life span in a survival environment is critical to deciding how many to have as back up.

Of course I haven’t discussed weapons yet, but this is one of the most crucial things to evaluate with the above rules. My preference has always been the 12-gauge shotgun. And as a hunter and outdoorsman I own enough guns to make my wife roll her eyes every time I open the safe. But when I applied this to my own supply, I realized that in a survival situation I need to look for which ones would I be most reliable. The autoloaders? Great on the dove fields but can be prone to jamming on occasion.

I choose the pump shotgun as reliable and simple. But I had to add another because I wanted two of them in case one is damaged, I always have a backup. It is the same model so that there are spare parts. Also I decided to go one more step and add a single-shot 12-gauge break action. So now I feel I will have one that works.

This also includes ammo. How many of each caliber you need is your choice, but I would be thinking in the thousands, not the hundreds. So whether you are looking at just one extra box or dozens, you have to decide before you need them, because after you realize you needed them, it will just be too late.

These three rules are designed as guidelines to help you prepare your supplies. If you apply each one to every selection you make you will most likely have an edge if and when it is time to use your ABOB. The most important part of any item is knowing how to use it. So as you add equipment, take the time to learn to use it. Just that simple step can help you increase your odds of survival in difficult times.