A few posts back I covered EDC (Every Day Carry) gear. This is the gear you carry on your person, daily. Basically, it’s the first, and smallest, rung on the ladder of the mobile gear we keep on-hand in preparation for whatever may come. There are several steps after EDC. The next step up is your Get Home Bag (GHB).
Your Get Home Bag is meant for exactly the name by which it goes. It is meant to get you back home. We live in a mobile world. We are always on-the-go. We travel from home to our places of work, schools, etc. Every time we leave our home, it is our fullest intention to make it back home or to some other specific destination. Typically, we expect to get back home the same way we left, whether that be by the vehicles we own, bicycle, taxi, or whatever. For the most part, that’s exactly what happens. However, there are times that it doesn’t turn out the way we expect. Anything from natural disasters or civil unrest to a simple vehicle breakdown and no cell phone signal can force us from comfortably driving along in our air-conditioned vehicles to hoofing it one step at a time and sweating our way along. Your Get Home Bag (GHB) is there to help.
So, what needs to be in your GHB? There are lots of articles, forums, etc. where people will suggest that you carry everything including the kitchen sink in your GHB. In my humble opinion, that is ridiculous. Your GHB needs to include the necessary items to get you from where you are to where you need to be, nothing more and nothing less. Your bag must be light enough that it is not more of a hinderance than a help. For some items, you’ll need to take a look at how far you are expecting to have to travel on foot. Being on foot will certainly make the duration of your trip MUCH longer. That thirty-minute drive could be several hours of walking.
I am currently re-assessing my own GHB. I’m also putting one together for my wife. She is very new to prepping. She is very supportive of my prepping efforts and is also interested in learning for herself. A good first lesson to learn, too much stuff just gets in the way. I want to assemble her pack with the things she needs to complete her usual trip home. For the most part, her pack will have many of the same items as my own. However, our needs are quite different as she works only a few miles from home whereas I work anywhere from thirty to seventy miles from home. Her fifteen-minute drive to work would become a walk of roughly two hours and forty minutes, best case scenario. Another consideration, she is a female with a MUCH smaller build than my much larger build of a male. Keep in mind, we are not assembling Bug-Out-Bags (BOBs) which are meant to help you survive for several days through a disaster that forces you from your home, or an I’m Never Coming Home (INCH) bag which should be fairly self-explanatory.
What follows is a list of the basic items that I believe should be in any GHB. In following posts, I’ll go into more detail about particular items. Some items will be fairly generic and some will be specific items that I’ll give more of a review on certain brands and models.
- Bag/pack
- Change of cloths
- Change of footwear
- Rain Jacket/Poncho
- N95 mask
- Water container
- Snacks/energy bars
- Flashlight (torch)
- Headlamp
- Fire Starters
- Individual First Aid Kit
- Hygiene kit
- Knife
- Multi-tool
- Pen and paper
- Compass
- Paracord
- Signal mirror
- Knife sharpener
- Duct tape
- Self Defense Items
Your kit will probably include several items that you’d find in just about any GHB but there will be some items that are specific to you. Think of anything that you absolutely need to have every day but may not be able to carry on your person as a part of your EDC. Make sure these items are in your GHB.
