Survival Bag Inventory.

The other day I inventoried my truck's survival bag (aka Get Home Bag, G.H.B). First off, to describe my bag I would have to say that I favor redundancy. A common phrase in this community seems to be along the lines of  "one is none, two is one". This concept should ring true in any aspect of your equipment. This is not a Bug Out Bag (B.O.B), and should not take priority over it. Your B.O.B should be totally separate, but able to be supplemented by your G.H.B. The concept behind the bag is to allow you to reach your Home Base with minimal items. As I do not work, nor travel far from my home my bag is very simple, however you should tailor yours toward whatever situation you are in. I actually tried to live out of this on a recent camping/beer drinking "soirée". I'll detail my experience at the end. For now here's the contents:


50 Ft x Para-Cord
4x Grocery bag
2x Water Bottles
2x Fire Tins
2x Survival knives
2x Large plastic bags
2x Flash Lights (second is on the whistle tool)
1x MRE
1x Hand cloth
1x Multi-Tool
1x Small Swiss Army knife
1x Multi whistle tool
1x Magnesium starter
1x First Aid kit
1x Space Blanket
1x Knife-Fork-Spoon 


The bag is an old Military Helmet Bag. It's a pretty standard run-of-the-mill bag, I generally have a backpack, but transferred all my gear to this to save space. Some of the items I forgot to add to the picture are an Old Military Poncho, and a Canteen w/ Canteen Cup, and plastic Grocery Bags.

The larger water bottle houses the Multi-function Whistle,  Multi-Tool, Magnesium Starter, Small Swiss Army knife, Hand Cloth, and Space Blanket. I bought this as a kit on-the-cheap just to have the items. The smaller water bottle contains two large trash bags.

The Fire Tin contents include some Charcloth,  Jute detwined for easy kindling, and a Credit Card Magnifier or a Folding Pocket Magnifier (my cover broke). These items fit snuggly into the Altoids tin which I tend to carry in a pocket for my Every Day Carry (EDC). I have several of these located through out my vehicles as I'm from a colder environment and feel that fire is an essential tool for survival, but I digress. Some of these tins also contain a Swedish Firesteel and a ziploc bag this is to keep variety and accommodate my needs for the situation.

The entire kit is actually very inexpensive, most of the items I acquired were either free, given as gifts, or on sale/clearance. I posted a similar inventory on a popular survival forum and was lashed with comments about the "quality" of the items. As I said above this is not meant to be a 100 day reliable pack, it should get you home to your B.O.B. I understand that these Internet survivalists have nothing better to do than theory-craft about the kits that they build, hence one of the reasons I took this kit with me on an excursion. I do suggest testing yourself/equipment. Should anything happen TEOTWAWKI/Natural Disaster you should know your, and the equipment you posses limits.

I will start off by saying that this was in no way a survival trip or test of my skills. We drove vehicles to a lake with a preexisting camping spot set up a tent, drank beer and fished. We ate store bought food (the fish were just not biting), and drank bottled water. That being said, the times that I did use the kit I was very appeased with it's practicability. I can offer a piece of first hand information about one of the items that I will probably replace, the space blanket was extremely loud. Had I not had a long day of fishing and beer drinking I feel this would have hindered my sleep. However all of the other items I used met their functions, or exceeded my expectations. I do have some building/repacking to do, but am mostly pleased.

As always feel free to comment/critique my post.

Enjoy,

Eric@TCS