In the last post I talked about the need for a Get Home Bag (GHB), how I am currently reassessing my own and assembling one for my wife, and listed some of the items that need to be included. This will be the first of a series of posts in which I will go over the different items I’m including in our bags and in turn, I’ll be giving a semi-review of some of the gear that we are using. To start things off, let’s talk about the bag itself.
I like to use a backpack. A well-built backpack can be comfortable to wear and evenly distributes the weight of the pack. For several years I have been using a 5.11 Tactical Rush 12 backpack. It is very well built and has numerous pockets to store gear without it all becoming a jumbled pile to dig through. I really do like this bag. It carries everything I like to have in a GHB with room to spare in case I need to add a few items or something as large as a balled-up fleece jacket. It is also not a massive pack that makes me look like a turtle. It is big enough to the serve its purposes as a GHB. The pack is certainly durable enough to withstand anything I could see myself putting it through.
The only down-side is that it is a tactical backpack and it looks like it. There is MOLLE webbing all over the outside of it and the first thing you think of when you see it is “tactical”. So, if you are going for the “Gray Man” (we’ll cover Gray Man in a future post) approach, this is not the bag you want to use. You likely won’t blend in with your surroundings. A tactical pack could make you stand out. In a survival situation, that is exactly what you DON’T want. For now, I’m going to keep trucking right along using my 5.11 Rush 12. I have my eyes on a couple of other packs that I’d like to try out but am not ready to spend the money on just yet.
My wife has chosen to use a sling pack. When slung over her shoulder the pack will rest on her opposite hip. It is a relatively small pack made by Vsim. Despite being small, the pack holds everything I think she would need to get home from her place of work, including a change of clothes and some old tennis shoes. I know fairly little about Vsim, but, the pack appears to be durable enough for anything she would but it through. It also has some MOLLE webbing on the exterior but the pack is small enough that I don’t think it will stand out too much. If her GHB were any larger than it is, I do not think that the sling style of the pack will be a burden, especially considering the relatively short distance from her workplace to our home.
In my humble opinion, it is difficult to choose the correct pack for your GHB until you have decided exactly what all gear you will need to pack into it. If your pack is too small it simply won’t work. If the pack is too large you could end up packing it full with a bunch of junk that will only slow you down or make things more difficult. Look at packs your prepper friends use. Try it out with an old pack you may already own, like a school back pack. Even if you are not going to use the backpack for your GHB, if you know all of your gear will fit into a certain sized backpack nicely, it is only a matter of finding a GHB pack with the desired outfitting and you can go from there. Take small steps and do your research. While we all want to get prepped as soon as possible, it will take time. Take the necessary time to find the right products and it will save you time and money.
As a follower of the grey man philosophy, I agree about packs not being ideal.
The sling bag Is a good idea which I have used while traveling through inner cities. Mine was deliberately ‘tatty’ and made from old denim.
It did attract attention though, from the police who told me to move on as they didn’t allow the homeless there.
So I guess it worked as they didn’t search me or the bag.
With all my foraging tools in it and my trusty lock knife inside my equally tatty body warmer.
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