Since I asked the question, I will go first.

For the past 10 years or so my wife and I have been going to Colorado for a weeks vacation in the summer. I usually do day hikes and shoot air rifles while my wife sits in the cabin or on the patio reading or watching movies. The first year or two, I didn't carry any gear except for a day pack with an extra jacket and hat and some water.

One day, I was about 3 hours from the car and the sole on my hiking shoes busted all the stitches back to the heal. I didn't have anyway to secure the sole to the boot. I had to raise my foot and let the sole flop forward before putting my foot down. I got pretty sore from the odd movement before I got back to the car. The second event happened later that year when our family went for only a 30 minute or so hike at a state park. My two or three year old daughter fell and scrapped her knee and I didn't have any way to patch it up. We were lucky to pass some Boy Scouts who were prepared and gave us a bandaid.

Those two events made me realize that I needed to do better than that. Once I started doing some internet searching, I found several sites that steered me in the right direction.

Now, I tend to take too much gear plus I make my girls who now hike with me each carry their own gear.

How did you guys get started?

David Enoch

I just always felt the need from 8 years old and since, to be able to grab my backpack and be ready to head out the back door when a threat appears.

It started to crystallize with the TV show MacGyver. I had a reputation for doing the same sort of things and being "prepared" more than most. Next thing you know I had a SAK and the rest is history.

When I was about 8 years old or so I can remember asking my grandfather what the little thing he carried on his keychain was. He explained that is was a pocketknife and proceeded to take it off the keychain and give me a quick little safety lesson with it. He then told me I could keep it so long as I don't tell my mother.

That moment, combined with the rest of my youth spent in scouting, pretty much solidified my interest in 'survival gear' and whatnot.

It also helped that my father was a diesel mechanic, so I grew up learning the value of good tools and equipment. He was the type of person that, if a tool didn't work the way it should, he would run it over with his D6 bulldozer and then go buy a better one.

Tornados in Alabama, Blizzards in Vermont and them riding out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans did it for me.

I was a boy scout, then an airborne infantryman. The Scouts taught me how to live in the woods, and to carry certain items at all times. Even back then I had a small kit made up.

The infantry taught me how to make do with what I had and still be comfortable, but again, to always have certain items handy. Many of my skills from the scouts led me to be a little more comfortable in the weeds than the other guy. Again, one item that stayed with me was a personal survival kit.

I could take nothing, cobble it into a something, and make do with anything. Still can.

I started after I became a gun owner about 5 years ago in my early thirties. Since then, I've been steadily transforming myself into being more self-sufficient for survival purposes. I read a lot about cases where I'm thinking, "But for the grace of God, there go I."

A little about my background, I was not a Boy Scout. My dad is an accountant and not a handyman. I did attend a top engineering school for undergrad and did well. However, school is mostly theory. After college, the Boy Scout inside me did not emerge until more than 10 years later in my early thirties.

I started carrying a small kit back in college when I became an EMT. I would have hated to be the guy with the know-how to help someone, but be unable to do so because I didn't have a bandage or pocket mask.

However, this fell by the wayside after graduating, and I worked for seven years in Manhattan, as oblivious and unprepared as the next guy.

Then one day some guys decided to drive airplanes into a building I happened to be in at the time. My world changed.

I realized that help would not always be on the way. I realized that I was vulnerable. I realized there was something I could do about it.

I now try to have gear to either shelter-in-place or make my way home in relative comfort, wherever I may be. It's still a work in progress, and I've spent money on many useful things, and many more that seemed useful at the time, but proved to be not so useful with use.

My most extravagant purchase was LASIK for my eyes. I lost my glasses while evacuating on 9/11/01 (actually, while diving under a car for cover) and I never wanted to experience having my most important sense degraded when I needed it most, ever again.

I also became an EMT again, and volunteering with my local squad has been incredibly rewarding.

started in Scouts, and was fortunate to be old enough to have two Scoutmasters that were WWII combat vets (Marine and Army/OSS)....I live on the west coast of Florida so hurricanes became a summer event...my first major storm was hurricane "Donna" in I think 1962, we had only a day or so warning with lots of street flooding and power/telephone outage...a couple of typhoons and earthquakes stationed in the Far East..I started practical shooting about the time I started teaching (1981).... I had used a "bug out" scenario in a variety of guises as critical thinking, problem-solution set skills with my students, and was introduced to the 72 hour "go bucket" by a fellow teacher, a member of LDS...I helped pilot a Health and Human Services Learning Comminity within the county, and we adopted "survival" as our over all topic for integrated lessons.....the 72 hour bucket exercise became a true lab in a series, along with a land navigation, home made MRE, and EMT presentation for Great American Teach In...articles by Jeff Randall in Tactical Knives got me to the EDC stage

I've had a "Be Prepared" attitude since Boy Scouts. However, I really got serious about an EDC survival kit after 9/11. That incident made me think about how important it is to have whistle, light, knife, first aid supplies, etc. with you ALL the time.