Basically, there have been a fair number of times it has paid off:

1) "Anyone have a knife?" has been a query that has started more than one for me...

2) A few years ago,guiding a group on San Miguel Island, someone asked for a Tylenol (or maybe it was Aleve). Sure - right here in FAK. Fifty years earlier, guiding trips through the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, standard equipment was an ammonia ampoule in our shirt pocket, handy for the invariable fainting victim (sometimes the patient was the foxy young lady in the group, but that was rare).

3) Living in Globe,AZ,and the town was paralyzed by about three inches of snow - plenty of food in the pantry and backup camping stoves if they had been needed.

4) More ominously - an occasion on a dark desert highway (cool wind in my hair) in Texas, not California,when I was oh, so glad I had my S&W Highway Patrolman handy. Didn't have to fire it,fortunately.

The list goes on and on. Several times I have been living three hours or more from the nearest supermarket and being prepped with the basics has just been an absolute no-brainer.