Rob Painless
Active Member
A subject that has always been of some concern to me is how to travel and still be prepared for SHTF type events. The 'event' could be anything from getting stranded on the road (whether it's our vehicle breaking down or stuck in a traffic jam due to road closure) all the way to a catastrophic EMP type occurrence. Think about it. How terrible would it be to get half way to our destination on a 1000 mile trip and find ourselves 'dead-in-the-water' and left to our own devices to get somewhere, be it back home or on to our destination. Arguably, the biggest problem is space consideration limiting us to just what we can take in the way of preps. I'm lucky. I have a pick-up with an 8 ft. bed, so I can take some stuff. But still, it always seems horribly inadequate and I find myself having to be careful not to take too much! Anyway, here is a basic list of what we usually have, more or less, when on a long distance trip with our 3 daughters. (In this case, 1700 miles, one way, to my wife's parents in south Florida)........................
Water....2 - 3 gallons, plus whatever milk, juice, etc. is in our ice chest.
Emergency Food....... 6 gal. bucket with a variety of rice, beans, oats, soup mixes, some canned stuff (but not much due to weight & space), crackers, 5 lb. can of Peter Pan peanut butter, small bottle of olive oil, etc. OR an Augason Farms 30 day food bucket. Note: Whichever bucket we have, it is for emergency only. For normal eats we have a food box for regular eats.
Travel Food....Snacks for the road, of course, plus a food box with whatever we may want to eat on the road. We make sandwiches at roadside parks more than we eat at cafes and such.
Shelter....Usually we have a large tarp that covers our stuff in the back of the truck, plus we often have a small tent as well.
Cooking....A small, collapsible device that's kind of like a rocket stove...not sure how to describe it, really. A couple of camp cookware type pots & utensils. (Pretty proud of the fact that we COMPLETELY FORGOT to put the cookware in on this trip! Surely we could have found a couple of tin cans or something that would work.)
Defensive....We are.....armed to the teeth. At least compared to most people. What we have on any given trip varies, but we generally have: Pistols... My .45 Colt Commander for my primary carry with my .357 mag S&W as back-up. My wife's .380 Bersa with her 9 mm as her back-up. Long guns....My wife's short barrel 12 ga. pump, my .308 PTR 91 with scope, my or my wife's .223 Savage bolt action with scope, one or two of my girls' .22 bolt action rifles (Crickets, small & easy for them to carry), plenty of ammo for all. Plus a variety of knives, hatchets, hammers, etc...stuff we pretty much always have no matter where we are.
A way to carry everything.....We always have a few backpacks of various types PLUS we have a 2-wheeled game cart, disassembled an slid under my cross-bed tool box. This will make it much easier to carry the heavy stuff like food and extra ammo.
We also always have my & my wife's get-home bags which have the usual assortment of survival gear, first-aid kits, water purifiers/filters (we have the First Need pump filters. I have used them for years & years backpacking & camping and have always liked them much better than anything anyone else has ever had for me to try out, although a friend of mine recently got a Sawyer filter that seems pretty good. Have not gotten to use it yet so, we'll see.) and various other necessities.
Lighting....we carry a variety of solar powered flashlights & lanterns in addition to our better flashlights.
And, yeah. We carry a few rolls of toilet paper.
Wow. That seems like a LOT! And I'm sure I've left some stuff out. It actually is not as much as it seems, and I'm sure if we ever found ourselves in a mess...it would seem like nothing. But you have to draw the line somewhere. There's only so much room. And no matter how much I take or leave beuind, I always feel a mix of being horribly UNprepared and crazy paranoid survivalist dad.
There ya go. Now... I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else does.
Water....2 - 3 gallons, plus whatever milk, juice, etc. is in our ice chest.
Emergency Food....... 6 gal. bucket with a variety of rice, beans, oats, soup mixes, some canned stuff (but not much due to weight & space), crackers, 5 lb. can of Peter Pan peanut butter, small bottle of olive oil, etc. OR an Augason Farms 30 day food bucket. Note: Whichever bucket we have, it is for emergency only. For normal eats we have a food box for regular eats.
Travel Food....Snacks for the road, of course, plus a food box with whatever we may want to eat on the road. We make sandwiches at roadside parks more than we eat at cafes and such.
Shelter....Usually we have a large tarp that covers our stuff in the back of the truck, plus we often have a small tent as well.
Cooking....A small, collapsible device that's kind of like a rocket stove...not sure how to describe it, really. A couple of camp cookware type pots & utensils. (Pretty proud of the fact that we COMPLETELY FORGOT to put the cookware in on this trip! Surely we could have found a couple of tin cans or something that would work.)
Defensive....We are.....armed to the teeth. At least compared to most people. What we have on any given trip varies, but we generally have: Pistols... My .45 Colt Commander for my primary carry with my .357 mag S&W as back-up. My wife's .380 Bersa with her 9 mm as her back-up. Long guns....My wife's short barrel 12 ga. pump, my .308 PTR 91 with scope, my or my wife's .223 Savage bolt action with scope, one or two of my girls' .22 bolt action rifles (Crickets, small & easy for them to carry), plenty of ammo for all. Plus a variety of knives, hatchets, hammers, etc...stuff we pretty much always have no matter where we are.
A way to carry everything.....We always have a few backpacks of various types PLUS we have a 2-wheeled game cart, disassembled an slid under my cross-bed tool box. This will make it much easier to carry the heavy stuff like food and extra ammo.
We also always have my & my wife's get-home bags which have the usual assortment of survival gear, first-aid kits, water purifiers/filters (we have the First Need pump filters. I have used them for years & years backpacking & camping and have always liked them much better than anything anyone else has ever had for me to try out, although a friend of mine recently got a Sawyer filter that seems pretty good. Have not gotten to use it yet so, we'll see.) and various other necessities.
Lighting....we carry a variety of solar powered flashlights & lanterns in addition to our better flashlights.
And, yeah. We carry a few rolls of toilet paper.
Wow. That seems like a LOT! And I'm sure I've left some stuff out. It actually is not as much as it seems, and I'm sure if we ever found ourselves in a mess...it would seem like nothing. But you have to draw the line somewhere. There's only so much room. And no matter how much I take or leave beuind, I always feel a mix of being horribly UNprepared and crazy paranoid survivalist dad.
There ya go. Now... I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else does.