I agree that many situations call for “bugging in”. But my planning emphasizes preparing for emergencies away from home. I’ve spent much of my working life traveling, which has impacted my thinking. My family enjoys road trips and camping, which also has influenced my thinking.

I have, more-or-less, five layers here.

1) What’s on my person, pretty much all the time (some equipment left behind for the TSA and similar requirements).

2) What’s in my laptop bag, all the time (useful gear that’s TSA safe). I only had one building I ever went into that this bag was not welcome — their X-Ray tech had fits over me carrying a video cable for my laptop. Fortunately for me, I don’t go to that building any more.

3) I keep a bag in my car designed around urban-to-suburban areas if I should need to leave my car and move by foot without delay. It could stand to be lighter but I could easily walk quite a ways with it.

4) Each car as a large, heavy emergency kit bag. If I were going to move this bag more than a few hundred yards tops, I’d need to discard or cache some of its contents.

5) At home, the emergency bins are designed to be portable for any member of the household, to supplement the capabilities in the car-based emergency kit bag.


That was a long winded setup for this question: Does it make sense for you to break your car kit into two bags, like my (3) and (4)?