As I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post, I was con­cerned about mak­ing sure my girl­friend was pre­pared for an emer­gency, pri­mar­i­ly to get to my domi­cile in the event of an impend­ing or hap­pen­ing dis­as­trous sit­u­a­tion.  I hope to make sure she is safe as well as her dog, whom I have become very fond of, despite the fact that he lacks the obe­di­ence gene.  As we all know, get­ting pre­pared does­n’t hap­pen overnight.  So one of the first things I did, was put togeth­er a ‘get home bag’ for my girl.  List­ing the con­tents below, you might think that it is a cross between a Get Home Bag and a 72 hour bag.  There’s a rea­son for this.  First, with the weath­er events that have been becom­ing increas­ing­ly inter­est­ing (that’s my tech­ni­cal term) over the past cou­ple of years, I thought it pru­dent she have some­thing com­pre­hen­sive in the antic­i­pa­tion of it tak­ing longer than one day for her to get to my place.  As a mat­ter of tim­ing and dis­tance, using Google, I have mapped out four dif­fer­ent ways for her to get to me by vehi­cle, walk­ing, or bike.  In each case there are mul­ti­ple towns, bridges, and oth­er obsta­cles for her to get through before she gets to me safe­ly, assum­ing I can­not get to her first.

That said, this to some may look com­plete, and to some may look incom­plete.  Every­one will be right, and every­one will be wrong.  More impor­tant­ly than the gear, will be the edu­ca­tion on how to use the gear and how to start think­ing out­side the box so that she cab see the poten­tial sit­u­a­tion.  Addi­tion­al­ly, what you will not see here, is the instruc­tion­al man­u­al indi­cat­ing the con­tents of the pack as well as the basics on how to use the con­tents, and the four routes to my place in the event she has to walk or bike it to me over the course of a full day or a cou­ple of days.  So every­one knows based on the roads by way of foot or bike, it is 12.5 miles of streets to my place from hers.

So, here is what I put in the pack for her to throw in her car:

Light / Heat / Cook­ing / Water Purifi­ca­tion

• Emer­gency Sur­vival Can­dle, 36 Hr 
• Etón FR160R Microlink Self-Pow­ered AM/FM/NOAA Weath­er Radio with Flash­light, Solar Pow­er and Cell Phone Charg­er (I own one of these and it came in VERY handy dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy
• Dor­cy 41–2510 4 LED Cara­bi­neer Float­ing Water­proof Flash­light
• Cyalume Snap­Light Indus­tri­al Grade Chem­i­cal Light Sticks, Green, 6″ Long, 12 Hour Dura­tion
• Oli­camp Space Saver Cup 
• Nag­lene Bot­tle
• Aquami­ra Water Treat­ment Drops
• Esbit Hexa­m­ine Fuel Tablets
• Cot­ton Balls
• Carmex Lip Balm (for use on the cot­ton balls if need­ed to start a fire)
• Lighter
• Fire Steel
• Fold­able Can­teen Cup Stove (Esbit)
• Home­made Fire Sticks
• Home­made water­proof strike any­where match­es

Shel­ter / Warmth

• Tarp 8′ x 10′
• 55 Gal­lon Drum Lin­ers x 3
• Mylar Sleep­ing Bag
• Duct Tape
• All Weath­er Emer­gency Blan­ket

Hygiene

This was a Hygiene kit I put togeth­er from prod­ucts from a com­pa­ny at Cert-Kits.com.  I have made these kits for my Bug Out Vehi­cle, my every day dri­ver, my Girl­friend, and one for my hik­ing pack as well.  It con­tain prod­ucts that I will also try to point to in Amazon.com so you can find them eas­i­ly:

• Bathing Wipes
  • There are 8 wipes in a pack­age and I have test­ed these camp­ing.  They give me a top­i­cal clean, wip­ing away the sweat They can be used ini­tial­ly from the pack­age, are strong, and can be used with soapy water to give your­self a sponge bath again lat­er.  I took a lik­ing to them because they are con­tained in a plas­tic reseal­able con­tain­er to keep them moist, and are light in the pack.
• Tooth­brush and Tooth­paste
• Liq­uid soap and com­pressed tow­els
• Bug Repel­lant (You may think that this does not go to hygiene, and it is a gray area, how­ev­er, I am drop­ping it in here).
• SPF 30 wipes to pre­vent sun burn if nec­es­sary
• N95 Mask(s) in the event there is a air /debris sit­u­a­tion
• NOTE:  I did not add any fem­i­nine hygiene product(s) to this kit, as I am going to leave that to my girl­friend and her per­son­al pref­er­ence…
• Roll of bath tis­sue

First Aid

I pur­chased this Adven­ture Med­ical Kits Adven­ture First Aid 2.0, and I ALWAYS add to them with addi­tion­al gear.  It looked like a pret­ty good hik­ers first aid kit, and the pouch was large enough I could aug­ment it with more first aid gear.  I always add a triple antibi­ot­ic, super glue, lighter, nee­dle, thread, etc. to every first aid kit I pur­chase or build so that if you need to think out­side the box in a pinch.  I once used duct tape and bath tis­sue (toi­let paper) to stop the bleed­ing of a friends foot when he sliced it open.

Food

For food I tried to go sim­ple and some vari­ety.  Because my girl­friend is half a veg­e­tar­i­an (she eats fish but not meat or chick­en), I want­ed sim­ple for her so she did­n’t have to think about what to eat.  In an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion even think­ing about what you might want to eat expends men­tal ener­gy you real­ly should not be expend­ing.  There is enough food here for almost four days.  More than enough to take the trek on foot to my place for even me.  Although, if I were expend­ing the calo­ries, I might eat all the food if it took me three whole days to get to my home, albeit it should not.  So this is what I packed her:

• Two (2) Cole­man rehy­drate and eat meals I picked up at Wal­mart 
• Main­stay Emer­gency Food Rations — 3600 Calo­rie Bars
• Some can­dy in an Altoid tin
• Gum.  I find gum helps pass the time when I am hik­ing or walk­ing any dis­tance.  Maybe it is just me.
• Three (3) pow­dered Gatorade pack­ets.  These pack­ets will make a 32oz. con­tain­er of Gatorade to replen­ish the sys­tem with salt and potas­si­um.
• One pound (pre-dehy­drat­ed) of dehy­drat­ed assort­ed veg­eta­bles, shrink wrapped with a food saver and O2 absorber.
  • I fig­ure this should last about a year pri­or to replace­ment.
• NOTE:  I will be adding some instant Star­bucks VIA cof­fee as well as some tea short­ly.  I have not done this yet.

Oth­er Gear

• 50′ of Para­cord I took off a 1000’ roll I have at home.  I think every­one should have a 1000’ roll of Para­cord.  Just my phi­los­o­phy.
• Cut­ting:
  • Mora like Knife (I had a few of them float­ing around)
  • Ger­ber Paraframe
  • Swiss Army type knife
  • Knife Sharp­en­er

Edu­ca­tion

With all this gear, will come an edu­ca­tion on how to use it, and when is the appro­pri­ate time to use it.  Right now the GHB is sit­ting on her bed­room floor.  Not a good place for it, but I do not want her putting it in the car or hump­ing it to her office pri­or to learn­ing how and why some and/or much of the gear in the bag should be used.  Whether she knows it or not her edu­ca­tion starts this week­end.  First lessons will be water and fire.  More on that post les­son…

What else would you put in the get home bag of your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er?