Quite true. And that's mostly what I'm looking for. I have no illusion that I'm going to be walking off miles and miles into the wilderness to survive for years with nothing more than the BOB on my back. That might be a fun fantasy to think about, but it's not realistic. Pretty much the BOB would be to get from the house to the truck, drive a bit, then from the truck to a nearby camping spot, then back to the truck, etc. It wouldn't be for a cross-country march. If I have a 72 hour bag, well, that would just about get me the 30 miles from the north end of town to the south end (if hiking). And I'm not sure why I'd want to hike down to the south end of town in the first place.

I'm not in an area that has large scale disasters. No flooding, no hurricanes, no earthquakes, no volcanoes. The occassional small F1 tornado that might wipe out a block or two. But that's about it. I guess we could get nuked, but walking miles and miles through the radioactive fallout doesn't sound like a good idea.

So yeah, pretty much a car camping rig is what I think would be most useful. But I would want something that I could get from the house to a car, or from one car to another. So I don't want an ungainly 10 cubic foot 200lb kit (but that would be nice for a "BOB" that is permanently stored in the truck). Hence the backpack container for it all. "Portable enough" for short transfers, but not really a hiking rig.