Practical preparedness: Building a get-away bag
I have never considered myself a “prepper.”
I don't have an underground bunker. I'm not preparing for the collapse of civilisation. And I certainly don't spend my evenings calculating how many tins of beans I need to survive the apocalypse.
But I do believe in being prepared.
There is a big difference.
Living in the countryside has gradually changed the way I think about emergencies. We have power cuts. We get severe storms. We live with the possibility of wildfires during our increasingly hot and dry summers. Read my post about "The summer we watched the mountain burn"
And sometimes an emergency doesn't mean staying comfortably at home with a well-stocked pantry.
Sometimes it means leaving.
Quickly.
That's why I've decided to put together something I've thought about for a while:
A get-away bag.
Now, to make one thing clear, I am not a prepping expert. I not saying that there is one way to do this, or that this is the "right" way. This is my personal way of doing it.
What exactly is a get-away bag?
You might have heard it called a go bag, grab bag, 72-hour bag or bug-out bag.
I prefer get-away bag.
Because I'm not planning to disappear into the forest and live off berries for six months.
The purpose of mine is much simpler.
If someone knocked on the door and said:
"You need to evacuate. You have ten minutes."
I want to be able to pick up one bag and leave.
That's it.
The bag should contain enough of the essentials to get us through the first day or two while we figure out what happens next.
Because ten minutes sounds like plenty of time until you're standing in your house trying to decide what you actually need.
Why I've started thinking about this
Preparedness can feel unnecessarily dramatic when everything is fine.
That's probably why it's so easy to postpone.
But emergencies rarely schedule appointments.
Wildfires are perhaps the most obvious concern where we live, but they're certainly not the only reason someone might suddenly need to leave home.
There could be a major storm, flooding, a local evacuation, a house fire or some other situation I haven't thought of.
The exact emergency isn't really the point.
The question I'm trying to answer is:
What would I need if I had to leave home right now?
And I'd much rather answer that question on a quiet Saturday morning than during an actual emergency.
What goes into my get-away bag?
I'm trying very hard not to turn this into a bag containing half the house.
The objective isn't to recreate our home in miniature.
It's to cover the basics.
My starting list looks something like this:
Copies of important documents and emergency contact information
Some cash in small denominations
Phone charging cables and a charged power bank
Flashlight/headlamp and spare batteries
Battery or emergency radio
Basic first-aid supplies
Essential toiletries
A change of underwear and socks
A warm layer and lightweight rain protection
Work gloves
Bottled water
Easy-to-eat food that doesn't require cooking
Any essential medication
Spare keys
Face masks
Small notebook and pen
Basic dog supplies
That last one is particularly important in our house.
Don't forget the dog
An emergency plan isn't much use if it only accounts for the humans.
If we leave, Klaus leaves.
So part of our preparedness needs to be about him too.
That means keeping his lead and harness somewhere immediately accessible and having a small supply of dog food ready to grab.
I'll also include a collapsible water bowl, waste bags and copies of important veterinary information.
A frightened dog during an evacuation could be difficult enough without simultaneously trying to remember where you put his vaccination records.
Having those things together removes one more problem.
Documents might be more important than another tin of food
When people think about emergency bags, it's tempting to concentrate on survival equipment.
Knives! Fire starters! Emergency blankets!
And some of those things certainly have their place.
But realistically, if we're evacuated from our home, we're much more likely to end up staying with friends, in a hotel or at an evacuation centre than building a shelter in the wilderness.
In that situation, documents, money, medication and communication become incredibly important.
Copies of identification, insurance information, property information, prescriptions and useful telephone numbers take up almost no space.
I also want digital copies stored somewhere secure that I can access even if my computer is sitting at home without electricity.
Cash still has a place
I almost never use cash anymore.
But emergencies are exactly when electronic systems can become unreliable.
No electricity can mean no card terminals. Mobile networks can become overloaded. ATMs might not work.
I'm not talking about keeping thousands of euros hidden in a backpack.
Just enough cash to buy fuel, food or other essentials if cards aren't working.
Small notes are much more useful than one €100 note that nobody wants to accept.
Water versus weight
This is something I hadn't really considered until I started planning the bag.
Water is heavy.
One litre equals roughly one kilogram.
Put six litres of water in a backpack and you've already added six kilos before adding anything else.
Since our most likely evacuation would be by car, I don't need to build the bag as though I'm trekking across the Pyrenees.
Instead, I'll keep a modest amount of drinking water with the bag and additional water that can quickly be put into the car.
That distinction, what needs to be in the bag and what simply needs to be ready to grab makes the whole system much more practical.
The car is part of the plan
For us, evacuation would almost certainly mean getting into the car.
So I've started thinking about preparedness in layers.
The bag contains the things we absolutely don't want to leave without.
Then there can be a second group of items that goes into the car if there is time: additional water, food, blankets, perhaps extra clothes and supplies for Klaus.
If I have thirty minutes, wonderful.
If I have five, I take the bag, the dog and the car keys.
That is the whole point.
A get-away bag shouldn't be packed and forgotten
This is probably the easiest mistake to make.
You put everything together, feel extremely organised, put the bag in a cupboard...
...and discover three years later that the power bank is flat, the food expired in 2027 and none of the clothes fit.
I'm planning to check mine twice a year.
Spring makes sense because it comes before our highest wildfire-risk period. Autumn gives me another opportunity to replace food, recharge batteries, check medications and change seasonal clothing.
It doesn't need to become a major project.
Ten minutes twice a year could make an enormous difference when you actually need it.
Preparedness should make you less worried, not more
This is probably the most important part for me.
I don't want to spend my life thinking about disasters.
Quite the opposite.
I want to prepare for reasonably foreseeable problems so I don't have to constantly worry about them.
It's the same reason I preserve food.
It's the same reason I keep a pantry.
It's the same reason having a radio, flashlights and backup power makes sense when you live somewhere that experiences power cuts.
You prepare while everything is calm.
Then you get on with your life.
Hopefully I'll never need it
That's the ideal outcome.
I hope this bag sits there for years being periodically unpacked, checked and repacked without ever being needed.
But if one summer evening we receive an evacuation warning and suddenly have ten minutes to leave our home, I don't want those ten minutes spent running from room to room trying to remember passports, chargers, dog food and medication.
I want to grab the bag.
Grab Klaus.
Get in the car.
And go.
That, to me, is practical preparedness.
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