Relating a story from a few years ago, a major call out big event and I started to grab every thing and go...Very slowly.

I had the stuff; work clothes, ID, safety gear, ability to stay overnight...But not pre-packed. (Not even a checklist.)

Getting ready took forever. Lesson learned.

Is your bag packed? Or, at the very least, do you have a pre-printed check list?

My bags are packed, but I haven't reserved the u-Haul.


Your neighborhood was possibly being evacuated? Or you had a work thing?

Do you live in Maryland?


And now the song "Leaving On A Jet Plane" is ringing in my head.


"All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...."

Our BoB's are always packed and ready to grab and go. Any extra time allows for a few more nice things to be loaded.

For a CERT call-out I'm good as long as I get the word at home; my CERT gear is by the door and fully packed. For a work-related call-out I might have to pack my laptop up but otherwise I'm ready.

For a bug out, if all we can grab on the way out the door is one of our BOBs, we're in pretty good shape. Mine is in my car and hers is in her van, at all times.

If there's time to load the rest of the bug-out/bug-in gear, it's containerized in wife-portable chunks. She can load it into the van by herself if I'm not home. One exception would be guns, which are always locked up when not on someone's person. Another exception is cash; finances have not permitted me to put together a useful amount to stash in the BOBs. I'd like to have enough on hand so that if cash still works but ATMs and credit cards don't we'd still be able to buy gas, food and lodging.

If there's a few minutes more, we start loading comfort items and the like. There's a checklist based loosely on Blast's Binder.

I'm set up to shelter in place, but I don't have a BOB packed and ready to go to bug out. Honestly, I can't imagine a scenario where I'd be better off bugging out than staying in. In Colorado, we don't have hurricanes, floods (where I live), earthquakes, etc. We have the rare tornado, but they're the really small ones that do minimal damage to a small ares (where I live). Even big snowstorms are rare, and short lived. A nuclear blast in Denver might make me want to leave, but if that happened I'd probably be too crispy-crittered to travel very far anyway.

Its the middle of the night and your awakened by the smoke alarm and smell smoke. Its cold and snowing outside so you grab your bob which has warm clothes and keys to your car so you can get dressed and shelter.

We're packed and ready to go. In fact, this weekend's prep priority is to check and re-pack the family BOB, and add a few more things to the pantry and deep freeze.

I keep BoB's packed and ready in case of a HazMat incident on either I-10, I-49/Hwy 90, or a train derails.

I've lived here 9 years and there has been 1 HazMat incident at the rail yard in which we were just outside of the "Evacuation Area" which consisted of a 1 mile radius of the spill.

In my lifetime, I have evacuated from one HazMat incident in 1968 (lots of flames but no gas) and lived with having to have a gas mask on hand at all times through a sunken Chlorine Barge incident in the Lower Mississippi River in the early 60's (No, I don't actually remember that one). That's 3 total incidents thus far in my lifetime.

Since I am involved in the Maritime Petro-Chemical Transportation, I am well aware of what moves on our highways, railways, and rivers/canals.

I also have everything ready to go, in 30 min, I can have substantial amount of gear moved (for 4 weeks), In 1 hour I can have enough equipment for a extremely long duration move(over a year). All BOB's and equipment are staged. Less than 5 min, I only have a 3 day supply.

That's a point, but we have our coats hanging by the front door, along with sets of car keys, and it's only about a 50 foot walk to one of many neighbors (we're on a cul-de-sac). But in other housing situations, I can see your point.