Getting started with go bags

We were on a rural highway in NH. My friend Christine and I were on our way to visit another friend in NH - a man whose home is so remote, the directions there quite literally include the directive to "turn off the paved road". Somewhere just north of Franconia Notch, the timing belt on my car decided it had enough of the White Mountains and we were stranded on a chilly night in the middle of October. There was no cell service.

I had just become a budding prepper and, in spite of Christine's withering gaze, I was beaming at the opportunity to try out my new go bag. "Wait here!" I said as I went into my trunk and started rifling through the 50 some pound bag of apocalyptic readiness. I grabbed a blanket and .... then realized that the animal traps, fire starters, water filtration system - really nothing besides the blanket - was going to be of any benefit to us. Dejected, I climbed back into the driver's seat. Christine had already produced a book and her portable book lamp. On my dashboard were three granola bars, a bag of chips, and a water bottle. She had pulled all of that from her purse. "There was a gas station about three miles back," she said taking the blanket. "If I don't see a cop in the next three hours, you're walking."

Go bags are among some of the biggest missed opportunities in the prepping world. While most people pack them with an eye toward evading zombies and living in the woods like John Rambo, the fact of the matter is that most emergency situations look like the night Christine and I spent on the side of the highway in rural NH. In this Meetup, we will discuss the strategies you can use to actually benefit from that bag o' crap you keep stashed in your trunk. You will learn how a go bag is really a sack of strategies, not just a pile of gear. You will also find out why the mothers of newborns and toddlers can out prep most military vets any day of the week.

This will be the first in a Fall/Winter series on sensible prepping. Stay tuned for future meetups on food storage, temperature regulation, water purification, bugging out, and some other stuff you had probably not even thought about.