Would would be a good test for a 72 hour/ BOB bag? Obviously using it to sustain yourself for 3 days would be on the list. What about other stuff like the amount of hiking each day.

Zombie Squad has Mock Bug Out Contests in Summer and in Winter. It's usually accomplished by a couple of hours hiking in, setting up camp. And staying 1-3 days. The MBO's are documented with pics and put on their forum for all to see, read, and suffer from intense envy.

Think through your most likely scenario for using it, in your environment and situation, and test it that way. What events would cause you to use it? Where would you go? How would you get there? Can you live out of it with no other support for 72 hours?

If the scenarios you envision require foot movement over a long distance, hike that distance. Do you carry enough water for 72 hours or do you need to purify it? If so, practice that as well.

We rarely discuss actually using emergency gear, but that is an important aspect of preparedness. An emergency is no time to be taking a gadget out of its wrapper and reading the manual. Get familiar with your stuff and with what it can and and can't do. Packs should be adjusted and known to be comfortable,shoes should be broken in, etc. This aligns with the notion that EXPERIENCE is really critical in dealing with problems.

Go out and use your gear, preferably in as realistic a situation as possible....

There are emergencies and then there are EMERGENCIES. We have a couple stoves and oil lamps that are only used during emergencies, short term power outages and the like. Inconvenient, but good short term practice for a real EMERGENCY.

As for testing a 72 hour or BOB, use that kit as intended. Are we talking a 72 hour kit and a BOB as two separate kits or are they one and the same? Assuming they are different kits, use one for 72 hours in a controlled test and with the BOB, go to your Bug-Out destination. If you do not have a Bug-Out destination, why are you bugging out?

My Bug-Out bag is a truck and it contains my 96 hour kit. If I can't drive, I'm likely not bugging out.

Russ,

Correct me if I am wrong, but do earthquakes not happen in socal? I can see several situations where you might have to leave your house and not be able to drive.

Respectfully,

Jerry

For a BOB for rural use, go car camping and day hiking with your setup. If there's a problem, you have the full compliment of gear in the car.

For urban use/shelter in place, turn off the utilities (except power to the refrigerator), and see how well you do. Take long walks with your gear (if viable) to simulate a non-motorized evacuation.

FWIW, I found a YouTube video where the presenter defined an emergency as:
1) Immediate or imminent threat of harm.
2) Limited resources
3) No exit/escape
4) Unplanned

You can rehearse the first three with safety measures close at hand. And, hopefully, by the time number 4 rolls around, you'll know what you're doing.

EDIT: Jerry, even after a big knockdown like Northridge, there are still roads open. You may need an alternate route (preplanned). And, if you have the option, staying put for a couple of hours till traffic clears the chokepoints, makes driving easier.

Jerry -- EQ's happen all the time, but unless you live in a high-rise, bugging out is a remote need. Even if the "big one" hits, why bug-out after the damage is done? Second, if I needed to bug out but couldn't take the truck, where am I going to go on foot that's outside the EQ zone? I've got LA to the north which is usually hit harder and the great desert southwest to the east. Mexico? Nowhere to go. So my plan is to bug-in and set-up camp out back.

Maybe later I'll get a small sail-boat that's capable of blue-water, but that's a dream for now.

BTW, the other issue here is wildfires. For those the drill is pack the truck at first sign the local area may be threatened. Then wait for it to commit to a direction. The wait can be a few days to a week. If needed, I drive out of the threatened area and get a hotel room or just hang out until there's an all clear. Haven't had to leave yet, but the truck always gets packed.

Exactly. It appears we have adopted the same general strategy: EQs-bug in. Wildfires-bug out.

My house is directly in a mapped fault zone and if it should move, the dwelling may well be damaged or destroyed. If that happens, I would set up camp in the yard and get busy with getting back to normal. I have distributed tools, camp gear, etc. in such a manner that critical items should be available somewhere.

For a fire, we have a checklist of critical items - financial records, family photos, computers and the like to be loaded in the vehicles. In response to active fires on the nearby hillside, we have loaded up twice (in twenty years of occupancy), so we have the drill down fairly well. The brush is flourishing, so I expect another fairly soon.

The routine for fires around here is that the Red Cross sets up shelters which are sparsely utilized. Friends, relatives, and lodging establishments soak up the refugees, except for the large animal shelters which do get used.

IMHO, 72 hours is a pretty low, and highly optimistic standard. But if you have the basics for a 72 hour kit, you just need additional food and water to do well for much longer.

I want to thank everyone for their responses. It has given me a lot to think about.

Same here. I just did the first major revision on the evacuation checklist/procedure in about three years last week. The checklist is organized by priority, location, responsibility, and "functional group" which is who/whoem the item is for.

In addition to the usual stuff, there's lists of friends and family who could take us in, pet friendly hotels, previous evacuation sites that took pets, maps of alternate routes around chokepoints, etc. Stuff that may be needed during the evacuation, but you may not have time to look up. I'd like to say the list has had a trial run, but I'm the only one who seems to care that we're only a 1/4 mile from the brush. And, the last evacuation was before the kids and still took 2.5 hours to load up.

Normally fires here start well to the east and move to the west. A fire that popped locally would be small, still a threat, but not huge and with the proximity of local FD should be put down quickly. Fortunately the ravine I'm in is built up to the east so there will be a high priority on stopping it before it gets near.

Still, after seeing how a few of these fires move, I do not assume it can't get here. Once a fire is big enough it starts to develop its own weather system and anything can happen; nothing should be taken for granted. Embers can jump large distances and with the dry conditions present, things can turn very bad, very quickly.

The "pack early" thing is something some folks just don't get. When a fire threatens they need to (but often don't) get that critical step out of the way while stress levels are low. When time is short stress rises and things are forgotten.

After the truck is packed I'll walk through and see if anything that should have been on the list was missed. There's lots that could be on the list but there's limited room so priorities are set. What things are important that cannot be replaced?

One thing that definitely goes with is my digital video camera. It will have done the walk through with me documenting everything that was left -- inside and out.

After I've finished my walk-through and everything is packed I'll take a walk through the neighborhood. Once one of the neighbors was bugging out to a relative's home on the back-side of the fire, Since they needed to drive through the smoke, which was everywhere, I gave them a few N-95 masks. During the same fire one of the neighbors who had been fighting the fire showed up at home for a long break. At that point I knew at least near term we weren't threatened.

The truck stayed packed for a week.

I have no idea where the OP lives, but another way to test BOB gear is to join your local SAR outfit. My SAR bag contained everything I needed to cope with the local conditions for at least a couple of days. I adjusted the contents for local conditions. Sometimes you might have an hour or so to eat and pack your gear, but just as frequently you grabbed your bag and got underway, with barely enough time to lace up your boots. You would often be out overnight and sometimes longer. You quickly picked up on what was critical and what was superfluous. Best of all, emergency conditions became quite common and you developed ways to deal with the stress and strain.

You are right Hikermor, the only way to test is to use , and that is a good use for it.

Hmmm, dunno about that. A BOB is one set of gear with a purpose in mind -- get to a bug-out location, it may contain no food. A 72 hour kit is designed to survive for 3 days -- doesn't take much to do that, doesn't even require a backpack, but necessarily contains three days of food and water for however many people the kit is designed to support. A SAR kit is another animal altogether.

That said, going through the steps building a SAR kit would better educate the user on what is needed and what is not required in a BOB (the classic BOB based on a backpack, not a truck). Using the SAR kit would also give a person experience in what he needs to have and why. Education and experience combines to knowledge. The most important of all is to know what else you need to learn.

Hear! Hear! Get out there and use your gear. It's the only way to know your gear and trust that it will serve you as intended! The more familiar you are with it, the easier a time you should have if the S really does HTF.

I like to do bug in and bug out tests. start small and work your way up. Take a nice weekend and go out in he back yard with your gear and stay there all day. Cook out on the firepit, practice making fires, whittle some and sharpen the knives, etc.

Now do a bug out day trip, grab your gear and go to a local/state/national park/forest. Cook out however your allowed to there (some places you can only use a grill and can't make your own fire). Put the fishing poles in the water and just hang out for the day.

Do some short hikes with your gear. My wife laughed at someone on the 1 mile city park trail with a huge backpack until I told her thats how people practice for a long hike. You put on all of your gear and walk the short trails back and forth until your sure you can do the long trail.

Now start with overnight camping, car camp or rent a cabin. Do a hike in between, etc.

Using your gear, being active with it, hiking and living out of the bag, is good regardless of the contents. Walking long distances and across rough terrain is a good way to test a backpack with a realistic load. Actually using all of your gear in realistic conditions and determining what is durable, what is useful, and eliminating unnecessary items, is a fantastic test. If you are testing it on a SAR (not the actual rescue gear, though some may determine that they need some of that as well) is a good way to get out there and conduct a realistic test. SAR personnel need to live out of their bag while on an operation for multiple days.

For me, I am never out there without others for whom I am responsible. My BOB always has some basic rescue necessities, like rope and carabiners. Nothing serious, just the basics.

I also do not have just one BOB that remains packed at all times. I am out often living out of a backpack and traversing rough terrain (Just in the last year: Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Linville Gorge, several mountains over 10,000 ft) and I adjust my gear according to the situation. The number of people with me, the terrain and weather, the amount of time out. But these are great exercises for you and your gear. You gain a bit of new knowledge every time. I do always repack upon my return and my family all have a 72 hour BOB close at hand.

the bag we are developing, whether it be termed BOB or SAR, or whatever, needs to be elegant just the right items in the appropriate quantities - squarely in the goldilocks zone of just right. As Montanero says, it has to be adjusted for the environment and prevailing conditions - a continual process.

For me, the great thing about SAR was that, from time to time, one was called out to do unreasonable things quickly and effectively at random, unforeseen times. In that situation, you find out fairly soon what really works dependably and what is essential. In mt estimation, the main difference between SAR gear and BOB gear would be he specialized communication items and specialized medical items commonly found in SAR packs. We all agree that actual use of critical items is essential (and besides, it's fun!).

I have been experimenting with a BOB/GHB bag in my vehicle for the last two or three years. It's completely empty.....

I travel for work (25 years on the road) routinely thru several biomes and in all 4 seasons, and ending up at hotels several nights a week. Traveling from river and ravine country in SW Wisconsin to the boreal forests of the northern MN/Canada border and thru the northern boglands over to the plains and prairies of North Dakota often on secondary roads, no one bag would work. My personal travels aren't too much different, except I'm in my truck and I end up in the woods.

Rather than re-doing my bag for each biome, scenario, and activity, I carry it empty with a 20 gallon tote in my vehicle with everything I need for water, repairs, fire, first aid, shelter, cooking, and emergency food for any biome, any season, walking or driving (OK, I admit that not everything fits in the tote, but I'm working on it). I also carry season-appropriate extra clothing and extra hiking boots.

The advantages as I see them are that I don't have to choose in advance, I just pack what I need on the spot. I can easily access the supplies if I want to stop along the way somewhere, and I can quickly pack the bag if I have to walk in a remote area for any reason including recreational .

When I change vehicles for a backwoods trip, I just toss the tote and empty backpack into the truck with my regular camping/hunting gear. Everything gets handled and used on a regular basis, so no surprises. Not having to choose in advance between a small portable kit and a 'truck kit' has been the best of both worlds for me.

I like your method Byrd Hunter. If I traveled by vehicle more I would do the same thing. I must travel a great deal by commercial aircraft, so there are severe restrictions on what I can carry. Before trip, I have to ensure that the bags I am carrying are completely empty. I have had leftovers from an outing in a pocket of a bag, which subsequently were confiscated by TSA. My bad.

You seem to have your priorities straight. The regular use enhances your gear selection, proficiency of use, and your own skill.

We should form a club. I have donated to TSA the same way. My excuse was that I was in an exotic, far away land (Minnesota).

LOL! Some states are more culturally different than other countries!

Yah sure, you betcha!

"Alaska is a foreign counry significantly populated with Americans. Its languages extend to English. Its nature is its own."
-John McPhee, from his book "Coming into the Country"

I don't fly often, but I have to sometimes. I flew to Denver for work this month, and I was surprised to learn that my little orange mini-Bics were banned even in checked luggage. I felt unnerved traveling in Denver for a week without my kit. I did have a LED light, ferro rod, Wave, button compass, bandanna, and a few other items of no interest to the TSA in my checked luggage. I also brought my trusty Magellan Roadmate to help me find my way around.

Oh, yeah Hikermor, when they found out I was from Minnesota, they let me help fly the plane and served me fresh lutefisk in the captains chair. . BTW, a perfect 3-point landing!

'Fresh lutefisk'. There's an oxymoron for you.

Butane lighters are okay in the main cabin on your person or in carry-on luggage. They're banned in checked luggage. "Torch" style lighters are banned completely on aircraft.

Re: testing the BOB

I once saw a You Tube video about a bug-out trial. The guy filming the video has gone out with a few friends backpacking for 3 days to test their BOBs. Interesting thing was that his friends didn't want to be filmed. I understand the negative baggage with prepping and such, but I was wondering why they didn't just pretend they were hiking !!!

The question simmered into another question : Is there any difference in the bacpack or gear if you were bugging out or "just hiking" ??

I can certainly see the differnce between hikers and people testing there BOB's.

The longer you are a hiker, the less people seems to carry. ('what can I do without')
The longer you people are building a bob, the bob seems to get bigger. ('what else could be usefull')

As a outdoorsman I find the many bob bags contents on forums and youtube to be rather heavy, bulky and have weird priorities.

I think a plan of just walking to a safe destination with a BOB a bit unpractical. Don't see a lot of scenario's when thats a good idea and you just don't make enough ground fast enough.

Tjin makes a good point; the purpose of a BOB (bag) is to be useful in bugging out on foot. If you can't cover ground quickly carrying all the gear you need and "might" find useful, you have a largish survival kit in backpack form, not a BOB.

The concept of a BOB (my primary intent is to bug in) that I prefer, is that it be no heavier than what you'd use as a GHB. I have lots of supplies at home, no need to carry more, so I carry just what I need for a walk home and possibly an overnight along the way. That's it.

As I envision it, a lightweight BOB allows you to move from point A (where you're bugging out from) to point B (a well stocked destination). No need to carry extraneous gear, just carry what you need. You may need to be able to move like an ultra-light hiker.

All that said, when I do need to bug out, (as I've said many times) I use a truck.

The best way to test a BOB is, of course, to use it. Since you presumably have a destination, follow your projected path and become familiar with it. Many internet BOBs are clearly proposed by inexperienced folks who are indulging their fantasies. They need to get out more often.

To achieve admission to the inner circle of BOBdom, join a wilderness SAR group and keep a pack ready to go at all times. Experience will hone your gear selection, which will be tweaked in accordance with the seasons and the weather.

You will also have the experience (and gratification) of helping others, something that will come in handy during an emergency.

I live near what Bill Hay would call Interstitial Wilderness. You always see the same folk there, usually exercising on mountain bikes, trail runs or walking the dog.

Most folk in the neighborhood never venture in and it's surrounded by suburbia. Very rarely I'll see someone with a backpack, but these are great places to test your ability to carry and use whatever kit you choose to carry. If in SOCAL, be very careful with the fire part of your kit, it's tinder dry here. Beware the snakes, that's where they hang-out. There was one guy who ran there with his dog until the coyotes tried to take the dog. Now the dog won't go in.

Still you can go from suburbia to dirt trail and back to suburbia and never lose your cell signal.

There is a river bottom near town which is undeveloped - five steps off the pavement and you are in a different world. But I wouldn't call it wilderness. Wilderness needs acreage. The whole point being that you can't go home and take a nice hot shower after a few hours outdoors.. That is the situation where you find out what works,and what doesn't.

True, it isn't real wilderness, the interstitial adjective makes it something else. For real wilderness you need square mileage (as in thousands of acres), but it's close, convenient and offers similar terrain, flora and fauna.

My getting home trip would be a mix of road and off-road; for many, bugging out would probably be similar. Just don't go into your house when you get home, take the gate and set up camp in the back yard. No raiding the refrigerator; taking water from your garden hose to simulate water found on the way may be appropriate if you have a method of filtering/purifying (you gotta get the chlorine out somehow LOL).

Me? I'm bugging in, so when I get back I'm good to go on the shower and A/C