Preparedness - Bug Out / Evacuation / INCH / Go Bags

all right welcome to season five of inside my canoe head this is a Canadian podcast it's all about the integration of leading an incredible awesome life individual responsibility individual emergency preparedness and how do we navigate life's incredible wild disruptions that we see among us sit back grab a beverage and enjoy the episodes all right welcome back to Ottawa studios of inside my canoe head listen this week um so you want to go bag right so you want these one of these really cool bug out bags you want to look gucci you want it all in multi-cam you want all this cool stuff hanging off the outside of it well today we're going to talk about bags why they exist why there's so much hype and so much importance thrown at these bloody things they're useful this a lot of drawbacks with them so grab yourself your favorite beverage let's get at it so with the world in freaking turmoil it seems a lot of people are back to these ubiquitous much maligned much misunderstood really gucci cool bags that everybody seems to want to have in their house but nobody really understands or understands is the wrong word right because that frames like people just need to be educated no people have this stuff in their house and they don't have it for a defined purpose so the first thing we're going to talk about is what is the purpose of having a bag full of stuff in your house number one could be evacuation you might be living in a situation where you are exposed to a hazard that may require you to evacuate your residence or your place of work or wherever you might be on very short notice with an indetermined length of time for which you must be absent see how i very clearly define that so your evacuation bag has to have everything that you're going to need for that specific scenario your evacuation bag may be a standing thing if you live in an earthquake zone or the standing procedure if you live in a wild urban wildland urban interface where you have the high risk of wildfires and a poor evacuation route through country roads in the forest there could be a number of different reasons but if you face a real and present risk of evacuation you're likely to have some type of collection of things that you've put together into a bag for the purpose of evacuation right and so that bag serves a very distinct reason for being in your house and you've thought through the very distinct things that you've put into it and the thing about evacuation is is it does have that unknown time stamp to it you could just be gone um for an industrial leak because you live right next door to a chemical factory and you're back once the air clears in a couple hours maybe an afternoon in that case you probably don't need an evacuation bag you just need your wallet to go have some mickey d's the difference is though if you're expecting the possibility exists that you may not be able to return to your residence etc etc right so you've got an evacuation bag other people have this thing they call the bug out bag now bugging out is a terminology in preparedness literature that generally means that you are choosing to move to an alternate location other than your residence right so bugging in is where you're going to ride out the disruption whatever it may be from your primary residence with whatever you have inside your primary residence pretty simple that's the 95 solution for most people out there a bug out bag serves the purpose of evacuating to another location right so you don't bug out to the big back yonder you bug out to a secondary location which you have already chosen now you may have pre-position supplies there if you're like me that is a friend's house a couple hundred kilometers away so my bug out bag might be just the stuff i need for that expected journey and expected issues that may arise during that journey and then i get to my alternate secondary location where i'm quite happy and quite capable of carrying on and doing what i need to do right so that's a bug out bag we have something called a go bag now a go bag is designed by literature and again this is not academic literature this is body of work that exists out there in preparedness mind space in the preparedness space on social media is that your go bag is to deal with a very specific situation so a go bag would be a kit designed to deal with exactly i live on a certain property i have to clear a threat from the property i have a go bag with the necessary equipment to deal with a security threat my go bag is therefore equipped for that a lot of people refer to their car kit if they have a car kit as their go bag because if they have to jump from their car in whatever situation and move to transiting to a footborne as we used to say in the army my black cadillacs are going to take me home whatever it may be you grab the go bag out of the car and you carry on with your mission and your objective that's a go bag right then there's the ubiquitous and infamous inch bag the i'm not coming home bag this is the bag that you people have or some individuals have in their basement or in their house and that's the bag that you are going to grab and exit your residence you're going to fondly look over your shoulder as you leave knowing full well there is no situation that will ever see you returning to the space building or ground ever again right this is zombie invasion foreign country invasion um whatever you may think this is the theory that i'm leaving this physical piece of ground and i will never be back to this piece of ground so your inch bag is about life sustaining because you're taking absolutely everything you'll ever need with you or the tools to get the things that you will need in the future with you so you can see there's a whole bunch of different bags and they mean different things and hopefully you understand the message here is that know what you need at a bag for right everything that you do must be specific to a plan and we harp on this across our episodes on emergency preparedness right everything follows a plan you're executing a task and that task may be acquiring a certain good or service but you're doing that for a very very specific reason to fill a very specific hole that you have identified in your own emergency preparedness plan right this isn't just a random acquisition you're not going to buy a 511 rush 72 multi-cam bag for 300 because you saw a garan thumb or somebody like that with it thrown on their back and they want to look tactical as you run around the urban space right i mean come on seriously if you're using a bag in an urban space uh the gray bearded green beret which is another fabulous resource to look at uh his bag that he talks about all the time on his podcast and his youtube channel is just your ubiquitous you know it's just your basic average backpack that would not look any different from any other joe the gray man theory right if i'm transiting through a urban area in an emergency situation with my really cool bag on my back i don't want to look like i'm transiting with a really cool bag on my back with an intent and purpose because i'll attract a lot of attention remember we talked about situational awareness in the last episode right that's your understanding the pattern of life you look for things that step outside what is considered the normal pattern of life criminals do that people looking for opportunity in general residents will see if you stick out if it's not normal to be dressed in multi-cam and carrying a rush 72 on your back with a bang stick in your hand you might actually stand out right and then your whole idea of slipping through an urban environment just exploded in your face so what is the very specific purpose that you have defined your need for a bag to carry equipment to do something you understand what i'm saying this is how you get to the answer the question do i need some form of pre-packed ready to go short notice bag in my house and as we say a lot of time on this podcast and we'll continue to repeat this this is about your preparedness plan so when you think about it the first thing that we always say this is from army training and you'll understand it ground dictates everything that means your geography your mode of transport and the weather are all going to dictate before you even think about what the bag is and what you're going to put in it you have to contextualize and put that frame around everything you're thinking about for this bag what time of year am i in what geography do i have to transit what do i have to get over above across through swimming whatever it may be and then what's the mode of transportation everybody says i'm going to jump in my car and go somewhere yeah well so are a hundred thousand other people so what in realistic what's your mode of transportation if your vehicle is not available if it's a bike then your bag may have to consider other items like maybe a spare tire a spare inner tube uh patch kit you see what i mean about how the ground and the environment around you dictates what goes into your kit not you reading a pdf off some website or listen to some whack nut job podcasters telling you to pack all this crap away think about where you're going to go how you're going to get there and all of the environment that you're going to have to transit through and experience until you get to your destination right then you got to think about how long am i going to be at that destination is this a short term is it a long term is it an unknown length of term is it a medium term these are things that you have to answer before you even consider what you're going to throw in there because all of this informs your decision as to what to put in there if you're transiting from one side of the city to another to hang out in a friend's apartment who has a generator while the you know the long power outage do you really need your axe and saw just think about that do you really need your axe and saw if you're going to go stay at somebody's apartment that's across the other side of the same city logically no if you think you're never coming back to your home and you might actually have to start a fire somewhere okay um but the realistic is is when you do that and you make that theoretical assessment of that you'll get a picture then you just simply fill it with your animalistic requirements right there are six animalistic requirements that we use here on this podcast as an explanation for one of the four quadrants of your blanket of preparedness and that is shelter food water health safety and security and each one of those have to be thought in the context of what the purpose of the bag is so if it's literally walking a four-hour walk from your house to somebody else's on the other side where you have a place to stay you probably don't need a tent but you might want to bring a sleeping bag right just so you're not bothering up your friend for all his blankets and sheets or whatever it may be right um your food i mean if you're if there's food at the other end maybe you just need food for the transit if you're thinking about an evacuation kit against a significant threat to your house you're not only gonna have to think about food short term you're gonna have to know how to cook that or prepare that food if it needs to be prepared then you're gonna have to think about how am i going to acquire food at the new location and do i need any tools and equipment to make that happen all of that goes into your thinking right your health first aid kit is always great because you'll have to fit your boo-boos and things like that to take care of fight infection which is the number one thing next to blood loss uh in a true emergency situation um but i mean then you think about security i mean depending on where you live in the world in what country you're in there are very distinct and very specific regulations about the use of firearms and any other offensive weapon uh in in any circumstances whatsoever so if your evacuation protocol or the bug out bag or anything involves any type of weapon system make sure that you are 100% knowledgeable of the law ignorance is never an excuse and if you're walking around with a firearm in a place where people don't normally walk around with firearms um you're dumb you're just dumb because you're going to attract a level of attention that is far beyond and if it's just you sitting in the fizzy the last thing you want to be is stuck in the basement of a police station somewhere explaining them all the things that are in your bug out bag while you're trying to get out of town because you thought it'd be really cool to grab your sks and throw on your multi-cam and march through downtown ottawa right i mean wonder why everybody was getting upset i couldn't imagine it and the last most important part of this episode on bug out bags and various other bags is practice right if you actually have a bag created in your house for an intent and purpose that makes sense it's logical you've equipped it in accordance with the ground to dictate the weather and your animalistic requirements it's part of your family's preparedness plan you should actually practice now you don't have to practice doing a mass evacuation of your house etc though it is pretty good to practice your communications plan to how you get a hold of everybody and what is your plan when you can't get a hold of everybody but i'm more concerned about whether what you've packed in that kit is realistic and will meet the standard and so what i often tell people is i'm an outdoorsman i just came back for a week-long moose hunt yes the moose are safe we didn't get one um i do a lot of backcountry camping aka inside my canoe head aka all over my youtube channel is my trips to northern Saskatchewan and other canoe and outdoor trips so as a practical example i have a bug out bag that is in my house it is equipped for a four day three night walking trip which is how long i figure it will take me to walk to my alternate location that i have to if i need to evacuate this house this i have put all of my material in that bug out bag it exists for a very specific purpose to get from here to a very specific destination over a primary and an alternate route which i know and i have in paper maps and i have literally memorized how to get there i practice with it so no i don't actually walk through city streets carrying all this stuff and looking like a goof i go out on a similar size trail and i will go on a backpacking trip so i'm looking at 150 kilometer walk over four days and three nights so i will do a four day three night backpacking trip usually over like a 75 kilometer trip and then i'll just turn about and come back the same route but what i'm doing is in the weather that i intend that is likely to experience now i'll take my equipment out and i'll go do it right i'll just go walk for 150 kilometers and trial the equipment out and it's really fascinating when you do it because you realize that there are a lot of things you're probably carrying that you don't need and there are some very key things that you do need and number one um that i found out the last time that i did this was uh fire starter and i know it sounds weird i have a little bit of fire starter but yeah i mean i can start a fire and pouring rain in the board of forest i don't have a problem with that but what i was missing was the effort right i can start a fire and pouring buckets of rain in the middle of a forest because i've practiced this for years but that that creates finding standing deadwood chopping it up and carving the dry wood out from the center of the log because the outside of the log is so that is a lot of effort to get a fire started you can do it a lot easier if you have significant amount or reasonable amount of good quality tinder i had some but i didn't realize because the last time that i did this it was pouring rain the whole time so everything was wet i was wet my gear was wet um to the extent possible that i could keep it dry the tent and sleep bag and stuff were dry but i was wet right so it took a long time to light these fires and actually one night i ended up just eating a cold meal because i was so damn tired and i wanted to get to bed the point is is that whatever your kit is whatever you've put in the equipment whatever plan you set for you need to practice it some people say i want to practice an evacuation no i don't exact because you won't be practicing an evacuation if you're attempting to leave an area across a standard normal roadway and nobody else is evacuating you won't be experiencing all of the things that are involved in an evacuation what you will be doing is go on a vacation to the next town over to a hotel and bring the bag that's all you brought and then just try to live with what you decided to bring uh to go stay in a hotel you don't have a great time in the town you don't do whatever but bring that bag and realize hey hey no no no that was that life straw is really really cool but uh i don't i'm a bit tired of filling the sink full of water and drinking it through the life straw i think i need a better water purification and you won't actually understand that until you actually utilize the equipment right and don't get me wrong i love my life straw i have it it's a great thing for on the move quick move low profile type of events but if you're evacuating to a fixed location and your water purification is a life straw and i mean the actual straw itself that'll get old really freaking quickly right try to suck the water out to make it potable and then stick it and then spit it out so that you can use it to mix up with food you know what happens there that's gross gross gross so hopefully today's little chat about bags and the ubiquitous nature and the controversial nature of them exist and i hope you will take the time to think about why you have one in your house what you put it in there what plan it's for think about the ground the weather all these things that really do influence why you have the bag what you need to put into the bag that you remember here in canada or wherever you may be in this incredible world seasons change my bag for july does not look the same as my bag for february whether it's plus 30 or minus 30 a 60 degree centigrade or well over 100 degree fahrenheit change in temperature requires different equipment and if you don't update that it could be a really poor surprise for you at a really unfortunate time so make sure that you practice with it that you understand while it's there and then just don't get influenced by all this crap on the back on the thing you know what a 511 rush 72 multi-cam bag for 300 is really really cool but you know what your kid's backpack with a garbage bag in it is just as waterproof and it's just not as cool but it's just the purpose see this is not about going out spending a whole leap ton of money on a bunch of stuff you don't need it's about having something for a very specific and intended purpose so thank you very much for taking the time listening to us here at inside my canoe head drop us a line at jeff at preparedness labs.ca uh we recently crossed 5,000 downloads for this podcast we're in 41 countries thank you very much to kazakhstan for adding to the list i appreciate everything everybody does the suggestions etc keep them coming drop over to our website www.insidemycanoohead.ca sign up for the newsletter which hasn't gone out in a couple of weeks because i'm busy writing a dissertation blah blah blah don't worry i'll get back at it um take care stay safe and enjoy the changing season