The Anti-Bug Out Bag (What to have at home when SHTF)

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.

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.

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.

A pump action shotgun is nice to have, but it has several drawbacks. First is cost. Second is ammunition. Although readily available, ammunition is expensive. It’s also bulky. The gun has significant recoil. Some family members may find it difficult to use because of the recoil. In the classic EOTWAWKI scenario, Mommy, a couple of children, and perhaps an aging grandfather all need water first, then shelter, food, and protection. A good hunter can bag perhaps 150 turkey sized animals with a case of 250 12 gauge shells.

In the same amount of space, you can store about 6,000 .22LR cartridges. These are effective on game animals from squirrels to whitetail deer. They work on four legged and two legged predators.

I’m not disparaging the need for a good shotgun, and a good centerfire rifle, merely adding a tool that will see more use by more of the people in the group, and will be easier to supply with ammunition.

Also essential in that list are good sidearms. If the S has truly HTF, we can assume that no one is going to care that you are openly carrying a full size handgun when you go about your business. A rifle wood be better, but it gets in the way while digging a ditch or planting crops.

A .45 automatic or a .357 Magnum will be a good choice. Again, they are usuable by most of the potential members of your group. The guns should be stainless steel. Rust will eventually be a problem if they are carried during inclement weather. You can replace ever part of a 1911, except the springs, with stainless steel parts. There are four springs in the pistol and they are cheap and easy to store. In addition to the springs, you should have a trigger, sear, hammer assembly, disconnector, safety, slide stop, plunger tube assembly, grips, grip screws, beavertail safety, bushing, and a barrel assembly.

The .357 Magnum is a better choice if the group is not familiar with firearms. The wheelgun is more forgiving of handling errors than an auto, expecially a single action model.

The Smith and Wesson 696 has 7 springs in it, not including the ones in the rear sight assembly. These can be purchased as apares. Now the probem is the parts themselves. They are case hardened, which offers no protection against rust. You can try to get an old one in good condition. The parts in the old guns were hard chromed to prevent rust. Or you can get a new one and have the parts, as well as your spares, sent out for the plating. One way or the other is essential if the gun is going to last for perhaps ten years of hard use. The rear sight can be bought as an assembly. It will eventually need to be replaced. The rear sight blade is the most likely thing to break, and it can also be purchased as a part. Your stock of spare parts for both guns would fit in a cigar box. Add several bottles of Break Free to your cleaning supplies and you’re all set.

We can make lists and share em but IMO the best way for a person to prepare for a self reliant event is to conduct the following family exercise ........::

WTSHTF Scenario arrives ya do NOT want to be out in public for a few days or week maybe even months. Best way I tell my neighbors to prepare for such is to get a note pad, a 4 day weekend and then go out back of the house and turn off gas, electric, phones, and water. Live in the home without leaving if possible or turning all the stuff back on for that entire weekend. Live it as just reading , buying and planning ain’t worth the effort unless you have personally tested it and found the pros and cons of each tool or material you have squirreled away for that rainy day !!

Do this during the coldest part of the year as well as a second exercise during the hottest part of the year. Make a list of what does and doesn’t work after you think you have made all the proper preparations by reading all these self reliance and survival threads. Have done the proper shopping and construction and modifications to your home and vehicles and then see what the results really are.

Is that emergency genset loud ? Is it subject to theft where ya have it running ? Do you have a dedicated shed for it with a muffler on the exhaust to keep it as quiet as possible. Are your resources secured in such a manner that cord wood and bulk fuel stored for emergencies will still be there when ya need it ? Do you rely on a large breed doggy that can eat a 55 gal drum of dry dog food in two weeks or a small alert barking alarm system that same 55 gallon drum will feed for a year ?

Is your homes insulation values and landscaping designs such that shade, large eaves and overhangs and small whole house fans will quickly cool your home in the evening and at the coolest part of the day and then when temps start to rise you can close up the home and stay cool till temps start to drop later in the evening ? We did that today when local temps were in the mid 90’s and it was cool and comfortable inside all day without AC on . Thermal heat sinks such as a large concrete covered porch when wet down in the evening will stay cooler all day and aid in the homes cooling . Properly positioned trees and shrubs will provide shade as well and contribute to the homes cooling. In regions where humidity is low we use foggers on our screened in back porch and that evaporation cools the air by 20 degrees easily..

Also we are designing a old style convection system for cooling where we can use stored propane to fire off a ring of burners in a small tall tower we have on side of the home. The convection of the heat from the smallest of burners will cause the hot air to rise out of the home and draw the cooler air on off the cool covered porches if the whole house fans won’t work for what ever reason.

In the winter a small glass door wood stove will easily heat up 1200sq ft of a home and more if as we stated the home is very well insulated. We did last winter which was pretty cold with 2.5 face cords of hickory.

I mentioned generators. We use ours for charging a battery bank system we made from 36 blue top optima marine batteries and use a trace inverter. If all power goes out we will only use this to keep our chest type freezers running. The freezers will run for a week without recharging the battery bank. Also consider the DC to AC power inverters for vehicles, the 5000W one is the smallest I would buy. You can idle the vehicle to power up any emergency needs if ya have not a generator in the home.

Security, a simple revolver and a shotgun go a long way for PDW’s in the home. .... as well the small barking dog(s) I mentioned above. Use lights only in rooms that have the windows blacked out. Not that you do not want to help your neighbors you do not want a band of driveby’s that want what ya have. Stay low profile during the event is at all possible. If you must go out on foot or bicycles go in threes if possible and stay 40 or 50 yards apart minimum and in sight of each member of the group so all can not be subjected to an attack and other two can come to each others aid if such were to occur.

Many many things to consider , more than can be written for the most part. Experience is key. ......just the way we do it here in poohville........:o)

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