how do you integrate daily carry with your GHB?

Situation: you have a EDC/work bag with the things you need during the day: some EDC items, tablet/notebook/journal, water bottle, etc. You have a more comprehensive get home bag (GHB) in your vehicle, ready to be carried on your back if necessary.

If you have to strike out on foot, how do you integrate your EDC/work bag with the more comprehensive GHB, with minimal fuss & wasted time?

- Use a small work bag that docks to the larger GHB kept in your car? Some travel backpacks have this feature.
- Plan to dump your work bag contents into the GHB?
- Use a work bag that is bigger than necessary day to day, and plan to use the extra room in it to carry GHB items that are in a duffel bag in your vehicle?

I'm just looking for some fresh ideas. It's challenging to have a daily bag that transitions well to a GHB situation. As much as anything, it's because there are a lot of small fiddly items that don't seem to pack well in a GHB. And an outsized daily bag makes you look like a hiker every day on the job & in the city.

I don't have a GHB (mostly because, I work from home 80% of the time!)

But I did have a somewhat similar setup to what you describe on a trip I recently made. I had my suitcase (carry on) that was full of clothes and things I would only be using in the hotel. And inside that suitcase, I had an EDC bag. The EDC bag contained things I use when outside of the hotel - on day excursions (examples: binoculars, water bottle). For the things that I might be using EITHER on a day trip OR in the hotel (examples: Tylenol, Android tablet, flashlight) - those things resided in the EDC bag.

There were a lot more individual items in my EDC bag than in my suitcase. But the EDC items were smaller in size, so they fit easily in the EDC bag. My suitcase was big enough to hold it's normal stuff (mostly clothes) and also had enough extra room for me to put in and take out the smaller EDC bag.

My suitcase was serving a similar purpose as your GHB. It contained items that would be needed at some point, but not as often as the EDC items. I left my suitcase in the hotel. You'd be leaving your GHB in your car. You EDC does not necessary have to fit inside your GHB as my EDC fit into my suitcase. Your EDC would be perfectly OK if it attached to the outside of your GHB, maybe using molle attachments.

You're not using your EDC -or- your GHB. You're using your EDC -or- your GHB/EDC together.

I simply do not have a GHB. My commute is half the distance of my short running loop, but I normally use mine bicycle.

My EDC bag is my 24-hour kit. Therefore, I don't need two bags.

Jeanette Isabelle

I don’t worry too much about it. My truck is a kit on wheels with lots of gear. The GHB is just part of it. For work my only EDC is pocket carry, other work items are only for work; I would leave them in the truck if I needed to strike out on foot. There’s no laptop/tablet to fret about, but my iPhone will stay in its pocket.

So the plan is to get back to the truck (normally a short walk), dump whatever work stuff I need to dump and then just listen to the radio to get a bit more SA, then make a decision to remain with the truck, get a room or start walking.

The decision is situational dependent. Did the “Big One” knock down a bridge or is it just bad traffic. If it’s just bad traffic (a common condition in SOCAL) I’ll hit a good brewery that’s on the way and have dinner without the beer (yeah, they serve dinner). If it’s a big EQ and bridges are a problem, then walking home may not be in the cards at all. Being stuck at work in this situation is not a bad thing. This is why the truck is a kit and I wait to get better information. Walking home is ~25 miles, but that first bridge being out is a show stopper. It would take one helluva EQ to take that bridge down so it being out would be an indicator of a very bad regional situation.

If/when I do start walking, leaving the truck at work is not a problem, it’s very secure.

Here are my basic EDC loadouts:

• On body: Stuff I have in pockets and the like. Most days this doesn't change much other than TSA-safe vs not-TSA-safe. I'll add to it for certain outdoor activities or CERT callouts.
• Laptop bag: This doesn't change much.
• Main emergency kit: Both my and my wife's car have one of these. It's in a pretty big bag and it's heavy, so if we're moving on foot over significant distance the plan would be to cache whatever doesn't seem to be needed, or distribute to others in our party to get the weight down to reasonable.
• Bail-out-bag: A small, firearm-centric bag for moving on foot up to 24 hours, kept in my car. The idea is if I need to leave my car RIGHT NOW to get to safety.
• Outdoors activity bag: A small bag focused on water and medical needs. I don't have this with me unless I know I'm going to be going on a day hike or the rural outdoor range I go to.

There are a lot of variables in play here. How far away is "home," for one thing. Makeup of your gear should adjust to the weather and seasonal conditions.

There is nothing inherently wrong with looking like a hiker when at work. When I was at work, I was often a hiker - one of the perks of being a park ranger.

Please define EDC. For me, it refers to those items invariably carried when you go out the door for nearly any event, and does not include job related or task specific items. For me, the EDC items, typically carried in one's pockets go along with what ever larger bag circumstances dictate. As I mentioned before, the distance to your objective is paramount here - big difference between a five mile and a sixty mile commute...

As a more direct answer to your question: If I'm leaving my car to strike out on foot, I have two basic scenarios in mind.

1) It's time to go RIGHT NOW. In that case I'm grabbing the bail-out-bag I built for that purpose, and then beat feet. No time for integration; if I didn't duplicate that function then I better not need it.

2) There's at least two minutes. For this case, step one is to STOP: Stop, Think, Observe and Plan. Maybe I dump the nonessential contents of my laptop bag and fill it with essentials (because my laptop bag is the most comfortable backpack I've ever owned). I could probably do that in a minute or two. Maybe I'm not going too far, have people with me, or can make multiple trips, and then I can bring all of the ridiculous contingency gear I've filled the trunk of my car with.

This a very good point. If an item is important enough to EDC, then it’s important enough to be redundant or duplicated in kits. I don’t consider my cellphone to be EDC, I often leave home without it.

My experience with SAR might be relevant here. I found that I needed to have a bag ready to go, RIGHT AWAY. When the call came, the requested response time ran from 'immediate" to "we will meet tomorrow morning at 4 AM." Thus my SAR bag had everything I would need to respond effectively to a situation where I needed to function unassisted for at least 24 hours. If there was time, I could fine tune the contents and modify my load, but that was not always possible.

Your GHB bag is analagous to the SAR bag. It should have what you need and should be capable standing alone. When a problem occurs, you might or might not have enough time to fine tune the contents with material from the EDC bag. Obviously, you will need to tinker with the contents to account for seasonal variation, if nothing else. You simply can't forsee the amount of time you will have to fiddle with bag contents in a real life emergency. That is why they are called emergencies....

I'm curious about this bag. How is it "firearm-centric"? If I had to be on foot for 24 hours, I wouldn't want unnecessary weight. To me that means at most a handgun with a few magazines -- and that means a handgun you can afford to lose at checkpoints, rather than your $4,000 competition gun. So it's not much different from day to day CC.

I thought about the OP's question, and it seems to me that a lot will depend on the particular situation you are anticipating. I like the general tips from hikermor and chaos, but some people don't even need a GHB at all. Maybe if we have a better idea of the scenarios you have in mind...

Can't speak for chaosmagnet, but for me, you would have to define what "unnecessary weight" is for the situation that you're imagining you might end up in. In some situations a rifle might be considered unnecessary (localized tornado), but in others (large scale riots and civil unrest) I'd certainly appreciate having access to that heavier rifle and several large, loaded mags. Other times, a lower power rifle but better-than-a-handgun carbine might be what you want (e.g. Keltec Sub2k (folding), M1 carbine)

Also, some might be comfortable with a 6-shot .380 in their pocket for their normal daily routine, but feel better with a larger and higher capacity full-size handgun (and spare mags) in their car bag. IMHO, that handgun in your bag in the car will be next to useless much of the time. Additionally, it should be secured to prevent unauthorized access. IMHO, one needs to be carried on you (impossible to do this legally in some jurisdictions though). That limits size and weight, but gives you options to defend while making a run to your car for escape. Or if it's really bad, to access your larger gun(s) that are secured/stored in your car.

“Firearm-centric” to me means that the bag has specific features for concealed carry, and that there’s a duty-sized pistol in it. My threat model is where I’m bailing out of the car and fleeing on foot from some form of civil disorder. If I never do that, great.

In addition to the pistol and ammo are things that I think I will find helpful in that sort of situation, including cash, water, food, rain gear, Heatsheets blanket, knife, flashlight, a Doug Ritter PSP, communications (phone charger, charging cable, ham radio transceiver, antennas), sun protection, trauma gear, regular first aid kit, multitool, and a few other things.

Unfortunately I frequent several dangerous cities. I’ve had to draw my legally-carried pistol three times in as many years. I’m happy to report that I have in each case deterred my assailants without needing to shoot. After two of these events I decided I needed a kit that would help me get away if my car got boxed in again. My hope is that I never need it.

Good stuff everyone, I appreciate it.



Good point. ChaosMagnet voiced what I had in mind:





This is essentially the loadout of my GHB.

Over the last couple months I have taken up rucking as a form of exercise and I've turned it into 'life training'. I carry my GHB with water bottles added for more weight, now at 25 lbs. I have a 10 mile route with little traffic and lots of hills. I'm really liking it. I do the 10 mile walk once per week and do shorter 3-5 mile walks two or three times a week.

I'm thinking of doing a mega walk once per month, maybe 15+ miles. That takes a chunk of time though.

I have learned that once the pack gets to around 23 pounds, I need a pack with a frame and some weight transfer to the hips. I think a reasonably lightweight internal frame pack would be good, to which I can dock a very light, small daypack. The Osprey Daylite or Daylite Plus are good contenders.

Lordy! Remind me not to go where you go. I'm thinking I'd want more than a spare pistol in your case. A .338, an MP5, a few grenades, maybe a couple of pounds of C4...

There’s a reason I call myself chaosmagnet.

Approaching this issue seriously for a moment, I train rigorously with pistols and rifles (not so much with shotguns at present). I haven’t quite come to the point that I’m ready to put a compact AR-15 in my car — my optimism is that any target that needs a rifle is something I can run away from rather than confront. To be clear I will ALWAYS run rather than fight when that’s a viable option.

in case anyone is contemplating a compact rifle for your vehicle... a 7" AR 5.56 "pistol" with a LAW folding stock adapter will give you about a 25" OAL length with a standard flash hider, pistol buffer tube folded, which can be deployed very quickly... with 69SMK handloads, mine produced 2" groups at 100yd

"Over the last couple months I have taken up rucking as a form of exercise and I've turned it into 'life training'. "

Excellent decision on your part. If you get tired of the same course, try out different types of terrain and surfaces. Practice makes perfect.