Get Yourself a Go Bag

It’s the go bag! You need a go bag. Whoever you are, with few exceptions (like if you live out of a go bag already), you should build a go bag. It’s the bag you grab if you have to go. Wildfire, hurricane, rightwing militia takeover, your piece of shit stalker ex-husband is in town, someone invites you on a weekend getaway? You get your go bag and head out, because it’s packed and ready to…. go. Because it’s a go bag.

The go bag, or the bugout bag, is one of the cornerstones of preparedness and one of the first things you might consider as you start looking into preparedness. But people tend to look at it wrong.

For most people, living in most places, with most skill sets, a go bag is not a backwoods survivalist backpack designed so that you can run out to the woods with a hatchet and eat squirrels that you kill with the aforementioned hatchet. A go bag is not likely a “hike across the mountains to freedom” bag either. For most people, in most disaster situations, a go bag is what you need if you are fleeing a medium-scale disaster that requires you to leave your house for awhile. This is the bag you want if you have to sleep in your car for a night or stay a week with family or friends in the next state over or evacuate to a relief center. “Camping” isn’t the way that most people need to handle most crises.

Of course, for most crises, it’s far better to remain home and shelter in place rather than try to escape, but evacuations do happen. And for a lot of people, a go bag is the start of a larger prepardness plan–you can use the bag even if you don’t go anywhere.

Why you should (or shouldn’t) listen to me

Everyone has different opinions on these matters and different biases they’re coming with. I spent roughly a decade living out of a backpack while hitchhiking, hopping trains, and squatting, followed by five or six years living in first a minivan and then a full sized van, followed by years living in an offgrid barn and then cabin. Now I live on-grid and rural. I have been constructing and distributing emergency kits for several years and spend a disconcerting amount of my free time studying individual and community preparedness. I am one of the hosts of the preparedness podcast Live Like the World is Dying.

(this isn’t where I live anymore but I know a thing or two about off-grid life, and also it’s overrated)

I do not have personal experience evacuating from a disaster zone. I have never found myself a refugee. I have experienced floods in rural areas but not urban areas and have no direct experience with wildfire.

I’m not trying here to write the be-all and end-all of go bag articles, as no such thing is actually possible. Don’t take my word for anything–do additional research, rely on your own experience and the experience of your friends. That’s half the fun.

The Absolute Basics

There is no single best packing list for a go bag. Every person’s needs and context will be different. My own thinking about go bags has altered time and time again, as I’ve shifted my thinking about size and weight and likely scenarios. Every couple of months, I take my bag out from the closet and pull everything out to reevaluate, and occasionally I add new things once I learn about new possibilities or remove things that don’t seem worth their weight. I promise you, it’s fun. It also reduces disaster anxiety. By making a go bag, you are making a plan. “If I have to evacuate, I will take this bag with me.” Now that your plan has been made, you can start to let go of your worry.

Don’t wait until you can afford everything you need, or know everything you might want to include. Start small and expand. You can also start by just adding a few things to whatever bag or purse  you carry around anyhow.

There are almost no univeralizable contents for a go bag. But if I were to pick the most important things you might want to consider, they would be:

• Your passport and print copies of any essential records such as your animals’ rabies vaccine record

• An encrypted USB stick with copies of your important documents such as driver’s license, passport, house and vehicle titles or rental agreements, insurance information, contact information for family and friends, vaccination records for your animals, and the like.

• Small amounts of emergency food such as protein bars (that you swap out every few months) or the flavorless “emergency ration” bars that last a long time but are awful.

• A travel hygiene kit with toothbrush, floss, toothpaste, moist toweletes, foam earplugs for sleeping in noisy environments, nail clippers, your daily-wear makeup, and anything else you might need.

• Any prescription or over the counter medications you rely on. Consider blister packs for any OTC medications so that police have less cause for suspicion if you are searched. 

• A change of socks and underwear

• A packable rain jacket or poncho

• A puffy, packable warm top

• A heavy duty trash bag (you can put all your stuff into this to keep it dry)

• Cash

• A spare usb battery and charging cables (consider an octopus cable with mini, USB-C, and lightning charger on one cable so you have fewer things to keep track of)

• A mylar emergency blanket

• A full water bottle (consider a single-wall steel canteen so that water can be boiled in an emergency, but a preference for lighter weight might have you using a disposable plastic water bottle and that’s fine too)

• A butane lighter

• Emergency whistle

• A folding knife

• A rechargeable headlamp or flashlight

• A basic first aid kit for small wounds, including for example: bandaids, butterfly closures, packets of antibiotic ointment, alcohol prep pads

What Kind of Bag

The reason this comes after the discussion of the basics is that the kind of bag you should use at first is just any bag you have. Duffel bag, purse, laptop backpack, reusable grocery bag, what matters first and foremost is just having a bag at all.

The real answer of “what kind of bag should I use” is “what kind of bag do you have and like carrying?” You don’t need a super cool tactical 3-day assault pack in order to have a go bag. In fact, for most people, you probably don’t want that kind of bag–they’re heavy and they draw attention to themselves.

For most people, a go bag should be a small or medium sized backpack, ideally with an unobtrusive, unpadded waist belt and a sternum strap. If your resources are limited, use whatever bag you have available. If you’ve got the means, pick the size of your bag based on what you want to store in it.

A large purse can be a go bag, if that’s what you’re comfortable with. Some people use multiple bags, such as a small or medium sized backpack as their main bag and then a duffel bag as a second go bag if there is time and space in their vehicle. Rolling suitcases are often used, but I personally wouldn’t recommend them as the primary bag, only a secondary bag, as there are a lot of environments where carrying one is impractical.

For a long time, I used a tactical backpack as my go bag, because it’s fairly easy to find cheap and durable bags in that style. They tend to come in more muted colors and have a lot of attachment points on the outside. I currently use a regular laptop backpack, the kind one might bring as carry-on on a flight, because it is low-key, lighter weight, and since I carry my laptop around in it all the time, I’m likely to have it with me anyway. I do this in part because my truck is always packed for emergencies already, so I don’t need to carry quite as much in my go bag–in most situations, if I am leaving my house in a hurry, I am leaving in my truck.

Large backpacks, or backpacking backpacks, are useful for people who expect to be moving overland on foot and need to carry heavier loads. However, these large bags, with their padded straps, are less convenient to fit into trunks of cars and other small spaces. Still, if you need a lot in your go bag, these are probably the way to go.

Where to Store It

A go bag needs to be ready to go, that’s it’s whole purpose in life. Certain crises offer little time to prepare for evacuation, so go bags should generally be kept in accessible places. I keep my go bag in the front hall closet. Under the bed would make sense too, especially if you have roommates and communal space is at a premium. Some folks keep them in the garage near the car, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone in person who keeps their car in their garage. Some people must, right?

Some people keep their go bag in their car, but items stored in cars are generally more vulnerable to thieves than items stored in houses, and cars often experience wild temperature swings that are bad for any stored food, water, and medications. 

Contents

It’s impossible for one bag to hold everything you might possibly want or need, but expanding beyond the basics listed above can be fun and worthwhile. For awhile, when I lived alone in an off-grid cabin in the woods, my go bag focused on wilderness survival in case I needed to walk a long distance in the forest.

These days, because of how often I travel and how I work on a computer, I’ve incorporated my go bag into my laptop bag–backwoods survival gear is what I bring hiking, not what I would first need to bring if I had to leave my house because of encroaching wildfire. I still live rurally, though, and if I had to leave on foot I would need some backwoods survival gear. In that case, I would get the contents of my go bag into a backpacking pack and add to it.

Some things are so small and light they are worth adding to any bag. I keep a small “emergency kit” bag in any given backpack I carry, whether I’m hiking or just walking around town. I’ll go over that first. There will be some replication from the basics above.

Emergency Kit

An emergency kit holds a combination of hygeine, first aid, and survival items, all the smallest and lightest possible items for those three purposes. This is the list I use when I make these kits to distribute.

Hygiene

• Folding toothbrush and travel toothpaste (or toothpaste tablets)

• Dental floss

• Compressed towel

• Tampons (2x regular, 2x super)

• Earplugs

• Lip balm

• Condoms (2x)

• Lube packets (2x)

• Nail clippers

• Hair ties

• Soap strips

• Credit-card-sized mirror

First Aid

• Emegenc-C packets (2x)

• Alcohol wipes

• Superglue

• Antibiotic ointment packets (2x)

• Nitrile gloves (1 pair)

• Bandaids (4x assorted)

• Wound closure (steri-strips or butterfly bandages)

• Irrigation syringe

• Tweezers

• Gauze roll

• Petroleum jelly packet

• Loperamide (Imodium) 2mg (x3)

• Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) 25mg (x2)

• Ibuprofen (Advil) 200mg (x4)

• Acetaminophen (Tylenol) 500mg (x4)

• Aspirin (325mg (x4)

• Potassium iodide 130mg (x2)

• Caffeine (pills, gum, or powdered drink mix)

• Add any personal medications

Survival

• KN95 mask

• Butane lighter

• Solid fuel tablet

• Tinder

• Sewing needles (3x leather, 6x regular, all assorted sizes, use the dental floss as thread)

• Safety pins

• Fishhooks (20x assorted sizes)

• Fishing line (30’)

• Water purification tablets

• Whistle

• Credit card sized fresnel lens

• P38 or P51 can opener

• Emergency blanket

• Credit-card-sized multitool

Additional Basics

I use the above list when I making specific emergency kits to distribute, but there are some other basics I recommend adding to more or less any go bag:

• Spork (long handled  metal spork makes it easier to eat out of cans and bags)

• Orienteering compass

• Parachute cord

• Rechargeable headlamp (ideally one with a locking function to keep it from turning on in your bag)

• Magnesium firestarter

• Travel-size hand sanitizer

• Baby powder or an anti-chafe stick

• Deodorant in case you’re forced into close proximity with others

• Sunscreen packet

• Leukotape

• Wet wipes

• Hand warmers

• Glowstick

• Small screwdriver set

• Upholstery thread

• Eight-way twin key or regular silcock key

• Portable water filter (such as Sawyer or Lifestraw)

• A multitool with pliers, knife, and saw

To Consider

That’s about it for the basics, and to be clear, there’s no specific reason you need all of those things. I just find them to be light and likely to be useful. There are a lot of other things to consider, depending on who you are and what your situation is.

For example, I carry a BittBoy, a tiny, lightweight gaming system full of old NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis games, because when the pandemic hit, I lived alone off-grid with scarcely any electricity, and it helped me manage my sanity. I also carry my Nintendo Switch with both downloaded games and a few physical cartridges, for the same reason–it uses far less electricity than my laptop does. I used to think about games and books and such as a way to relieve boredom, but I don’t anymore–they are stress relief, an essential part of maintaining productivity. When the lockdown of 2020 began, I lived alone in a cabin in the woods without much of the basics (I had no running water or shower nor electricity) and had to spend most of my waking hours working to build that infrastructure, but I wasn’t able to be productive more than 12 hours or so a day with any consistency and it wasn’t that I was bored the rest of the time, it was that I needed escapism to manage the stress.

Or bring a paperback–personally I’d recommend a favorite you can always return to. Like A Country of Ghosts or Escape From Incel Island, I hear the lady who writes those books is cool.

I carry a USB stick full of downloaded books, movies, TV shows, and music, for much the same reason.

Solar chargers are not as efficient as their advertising claims. They are fussier and lower-powered than you might hope. That said, they are often effective at keeping phones and flashlights charged, and I carry one personally.

You might want bluetooth headphones, or even a small speaker.

If you care for an animal, consider collapsible bowls for water and food as well as small quantities of food and any medications the pet requires.

For visibility, such as for walking on highways,  consider carrying a small red bicycle taillight or a hi-vis vest.

You can step up your repair kit with some duct tape and zip ties.

For some crises, locksmith tools are useful, such as lockpicks and/or a set of common shared keys. (Most trailers and RVs in the US use the same key. Most heavy equipment by a specific manufacturer uses the same key. Most handcuffs use the same key.) I don’t carry these because I am someone who is often presumed to be a criminal by law enforcement, and in most places, these tools are legal unless there is a presumption of criminal intent. Other people who have different interactions with law enforcement might find them useful to carry.

You can step up your first aid kid by adding a trauma kit, sometimes called an IFAK. This will include a tourniquet (CAT 7 recommended), trauma dresing, two vented chest seals, hemostatic gauze, compressed gauze, trauma shears, permanent markers (black and silver, for writing on different skin types), and nitrile gloves.

You can step up your hygiene game with a portable electrical toothbrush and/or a portable water flosser.

A poop kit can be as simple as a lightweight trowel and some toilet paper in a ziplock bag. It’s never a good idea to poop on the ground–you want to dig a hole and bury your poop, or poop into a plastic bag to throw away.

Consider including printed out directions to family and friends’ houses can be useful where there is no cell service, and/or a printed list of phone numbers and addresses.

A monocular or small binoculars can be useful for scouting road conditions.

A satellite communicator, such as the Garmin InReach, is not cheap but offers a way to text and download weather data where you have no cell service–as well as providing an SOS button that is can save your life while backpacking or hiking.

A small battery-powered (or handcrank/solar powered) radio receiver that can pick up AM/FM and the weather band (or, ideally shortwave as well) can be useful.

If you want to add camping equipment (useful in the woods and on rooftops alike), you are likely to need a bigger bag, but you can add:

• A sleeping bag or backpacking quilt (which is something halfway between a sleeping bag and a blanket)

• An inflatable sleeping pad (in urban environments you can just pick up cardboard from a dumpster, although this is less comfortable and less insulating)

• A shelter of some kind, such as a tarp and cordage, a camping hammock, a bivy sack, or a tent

• A bushcraft knife (a large, single edged, fixed-blade knife for processing wood)

• An expanded emergency fishing kit

• A backpacking stove and fuel

• A large metal cup to use as a pot and a bowl

• In bear country, carry bear spray

• A backpacking inflatable pillow, which is small and light enough that you might want to consider it anyhow.

• A folding saw or hatchet

If you are interested in carrying the means of self-defense, it is likely you will want to carry these on your person rather than in your bag and it is better if you carry them regularly to be familiar with them. Pepperspray is easy to recommend for nearly all people and nearly all situations. A tactical flashlight is also recommended–this is a small flashlight with a single button on and off on the rear that can be set to a blinding level of brightness. While they’re often styled as if you would physically strike people with them, their main self-defense purpose is to shine into an attacker’s eyes to disorient them. Pocket knives can be used as a deterrent but are less effective for actual self defense. Batons are only useful situationally and not always legal. Semi-automatic firearms are the most effective form of self- and community-defense in the modern era, but they come with rather complex legal, moral, and safety considerations that are too complex to get into herein. Some people keep spare ammunition in their go bags. Other people carry collapsible small game hunting rifles, but this only makes sense for people who have a specific reason to think that they will be in the wilderness.

Caring For Others

As with all preparedness, the goal here is not to become self-sufficient for its own sake, but so that you’re in a better position to be useful to those around you. Any escape plans you might develop should take others into consideration as well. Of course, this is easiest when it comes to one’s own family or household–each person ought to have and maintain their own go bag, although some people might be more capable of carrying weight than others and could consider carrying more. Animals might not have their own bags, and you would want to make sure their needs are met within your own bag. But neighbors matter as well.

If you have an elderly neighbor and are in a fire-prone area, checking in on them should be part of any evacuation plans. Unhoused neighbors are particularly vulnerable during most crises, and while most unhoused folks are quite self-reliant for the basics, they are less likely to have the means by which to evacuate an area. If you have a pickup truck or a van or another large vehicle, consider swinging by any encampment to offer rides out of the area if time allows.

This isn’t pure altruism. Whenever the veil of normalcy is lifted by crisis, we are once more exposed to the essential truth that has been with us as long as we’ve been a species–we rely on one another for safety. While people can indeed present a threat, especially in times of scarcity, the field of disaster studies shows that by and large, communities come together to care for each other in times of need. The primary exception to this are the people who represent the old order, whether governmental bureaucracy and law enforcement–who might be more committed to clinging ot the previous status quo than being of use–or the wealthy elite, who are terrified of losing their positions of privilege.

The rest of us know, or learn quickly, that caring for one another is how we can best stay alive.