Been seeing a lot of folks talk about bugout bags where the context seems to be fleeing a Knock from secret police or something, and I want to gently suggest folks consider more likely reasons to bug out (wildfires, crumbling infrastructure leading to gas leaks, etc).
Make sure your bag can get you through scenarios where you are part of a mass evacuation, rather than you clandestinely leaving in the middle of the night to escape brownshirts.
I feel like thinking in this context will help folks prepare better and think beyond fleeing to the nearest border as their prime objective.
I don't like giving this regime more power than it actually has, so it is helpful to me to think about what I would do in specific scenarios. Planning for those gives me much more concrete action items, reduces my panic, and ends up preparing me better for unknown situations.
A lot of us have real fear of this regime rn, and escaping a Knock is a realistic concern.
But I feel like a lot of white, cishet, middle class folks are in oppression cosplay mode rn, and their brains aren't in a practical space for what the more likely impact to their lives is going to be.
If preparing for a Knock isn't also going to prepare you for facing sitting in traffic for 12 hours with no hotel plans because you need to evacuate a natural disaster on short notice, you should think a bit more about your risk factors and resiliency.
Vague prepping for "When shit hits the fan" means you are going to forget key items. Come up with some specific scenarios to run through and see how your kit would perform.
@thatdisasterauthor might have suggestions on this? (sorry about the tag if this is intrusive, ignore at your whim)
Always down for disaster advice related tags!
And yeah, I agree with @so-i-did-this-thing in a lot of ways. A natural disaster (or a man-made one) are A LOT more likely to present an immediate threat to most people right now. Especially because of this administration threatening to dismantle basically every disaster protection we've got from FEMA to NOAA. We are starting down the barrel of, at the very least, a wildfire season with an absolutely crippled wildland firefighting force. (And wildland firefighting resources respond to a lot of other non-fire disasters as well.)
Be prepared for a Knock, especially if you're in any sort of marginalized group, but also be aware that knock might be someone telling you to fucking run because there's a fire roaring towards you.
If it helps, at least in California, a lot of law enforcement agencies are now using what’s called a “hi-lo” siren tone to get people’s attention and indicate they are announcing evacuation orders. It is very distinct from a regular police siren, and will hopefully quell some of the panic of the cops showing up at your door during a natural disaster. (also most California agencies that I know of will absolutely not help ICE with their warrants. In fact they usually resent them stirring up trouble).
An example of the hi-lo tone:
Oh, fascinating! I'll have to look into that more.
As someone who lives in an area that is prone to tornadoes, ice storms, flooding, fires, AND hurricanes, bug-out bags are an excellent idea but ONLY if you prep appropriately and practice with them. The best piece of advice I have seen in terms of where to start is "decide what you want the bag to help you do and work out from there." This much is obvious: Leave the house quickly with everything I need. But... If so, how long do you plan on being gone? Under what circumstances? Natural Disaster? Fleeing political unrest? Are you driving? Walking? Where are you going? A hotel? A friend's?
And then, once you have your things together... PRACTICE. Practice using your fire starter. Practice walking with the pack on. How far can you reasonably go? Practice setting up the tarps or rain-fly. Play around with your multitool. Go through the first aid kid and actually look at the supplies. In short, nothing should still have the tags on it. Bug-out bags are excellent, but you've really got to put in more effort than a shopping list. Interrogate why you want the bag, and then practice with it.
If you function best with a concrete list to start from, there is an excellent set of suggestions here:
It’s the go bag!
Which can then of course be modified to whatever your personal needs may be. This list may seem daunting at first, but most of what's on here is probably something you already own and just by shifting where you store it in your house (ie. putting it in The Bag instead of the cabinet), you're making progress towards the go bag
Like everyone above has said, though, a shopping list will not get you very far, and you need to practice with these things and understand why you want them and how you would use them in the types of emergencies you are likely to encounter in your area
Margaret has great insights, and one of the packing points she brings up is your go bag will likely contain several other modular kits, like your everyday carry and your portable med kit. You just shift those kits to your go bag.
Thinking in chunks like this also helps make sure you're covered in various scenarios. As a trans person, I am going to make sure my HRT is already in a bag that I can move to my go bag.
And for a lot of us who have recently fled red states or otherwise moved for Life Reasons - make sure you have paper maps (honestly, everyone should have them) and whatever else you need to get around an area you are not familiar with!
So, more than a decade ago the CDC jumped on the zombie bandwagon (https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6023) because if it gets people thinking about being prepared for an emergency, then do that. We probably have some new ideas since the most recent actual pandemic, of course, but it's not a bad guide for thinking things through.
