If you have all your survival items (sans backpack) in a large box or storage container from HomeDepot, you have a lot of gear and life is great.

How much can you carry? One trip or multiple trips? Can you walk miles without a pack? How about with a pack and all the gear it carries? I’ve seen a few folks with lots of gear who can’t walk to the local shopping center. On one of my walks here I pass by two shopping centers and neighbors are like, “You walked there??” (Then again, one of the neighbors could run that route and cut my time in half, but he’s half my age...) Point of this being, get your mode of transport ready. If you have a BOB, be prepared to carry it the distance.

The BOB is for that one trip. You need to pare the gear in your large container down so that your final reduced gear list will fit in a backpack that you can actually carry — volume and weight. Are all the bases covered? Oh, yeah, that great FAK that would outfit a hospital ER won’t be included and those Mag-lites? Fuggetaboutit...

This is why my BOB is a truck. I have a GHB in the truck, but it’s for a one way trip home and I’ll leave a lot of gear in the truck. If you have a prepared bug-out location and you can store stuff there, your BOB can be a lot smaller than you think.

My bug-out location is a two day drive so if I don’t leave early, I don’t leave at all — bugging in.