What Should Be In Your Survival Prepper Bug-out Bag?
One of the fundamental aspects of your overall survival preparation isn’t so much about stockpiling goods for your house; it is about being ready for a scenario where you are forced to leave it behind and instead seek refuge in a wilderness area or another destination.
It’s possible that you won’t be able to gather up supplies and transport them to another location. Instead, you may have to flee on your own. In the case of a catastrophe or other unforeseen event, being prepared to evacuate swiftly is crucial.
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A bug-out bag should be prepared for each member of your family. That means smaller children may need a little bag they can carry rather than the adult-sized one you will use.
Related – The Ultimate Bug-Out Bag Guide: Your Comprehensive Disaster Preparedness Companion
This bag should be packed with essential items that are crucial to your survival and safety. You don’t want to pack all of your favorite things, but instead, just the necessities needed to supply you with items that will keep you alive.
Start by getting a bug-out bag that is very durable and lightweight. The last thing you want is for your bug-out bag to break on you or not have enough room in it to allow you to pack everything you need.
Inside your bug-out bag, you’ll have any important documentation you need or identification, some cash, and other things that would be difficult to live without.
Packing Your Hydration and Nutrition Needs
When you are on the go in a survival situation, you don’t know when you’ll be able to find food or water. Water is going to be extremely heavy for you to carry. You should start by carrying enough to get you to another water source, along with some purification methods, such as tablets or drops that will allow you to drink from any natural water.
You must focus on your water needs during this time because you will likely be hiking in the elements, affecting your hydration levels. You may need more water on a daily basis than you are used to drinking at home.
Related – Survival Prepping 101 – Part 2: Water Purification & Storage
Many of the bug-out bags in today’s market have a built-in water bladder. This is great for allowing you to have a drink while you are hiking, but make sure that you pack all your belongings in Ziploc bags in case the bladder somehow breaks so that you don’t ruin your supplies.
Discreet: Sometimes, being prepared can be the very thing that gets you in trouble. Desperate times could cause people to take desperate measures. In those difficult moments, the last thing you want to do is to advertise to everyone around you that you are prepared. You want to be a Gray Man.
Unlike traditional backpacks that are often used for emergency kits and bug-out bags, the Stealth Tactical Bag was designed to keep you and your supply safe by allowing you to blend in and not draw attention.
This bag comes with food ration bars that require no extra water to rehydrate, no reheating, and were developed to be non-thirst-inducing.
This Stealth Tactical Bug-Out Bag has 53L in volume, a hydration bladder, MOLLE straps, 12 pockets, flint striker on chest straps, signal whistle, ultralight dome tent, removable shoulder straps, waterproof rain cover, and more!
Don’t forget to take some containers that you can use to fill up from a natural water source. It can be a canteen or some water bottle that is enough to allow you to get water for cooking, drinking, and hygienic needs.
Next, you want to have some lightweight, high-calorie food that you can pack in your bug-out bag. You don’t want anything that is perishable, not only because it will spoil soon but because it can attract unwanted wild animals.
Take things like energy bars, beef jerky, dehydrated fruits, and canned goods like meats and things you can warm up over a fire or eat directly out of the can if you don’t have a fire yet.
Survival Prepper Items That Keep You Safe
There will be many things in your journey of bugging out that could put your safety at risk. This can be something as simple yet powerful as the weather elements or something unexpected like an animal or human predator that puts you in danger.
For the weather elements, you will need the right clothing to protect you while walking or just sitting around a campsite. It’s best to use layers when you are packing bug-out clothes so that when you are feeling too hot, you can remove a layer, and when you are feeling too cold, you can add a layer.
This 72-hour bug-out bag was designed and hand-picked by survivalists, experts, and veterans. It is the most comprehensive and ULTIMATE emergency kit to prepare you for any emergency or disaster. Everything is stuffed in a heavy-duty tactical backpack.
This bag has 24 Packs of 125ML emergency drinking water and 2 packs of 3600 calorie emergency food bars, meeting the FEMA guideline for a minimum of 1000 calories/day/person and approved by USCG. In addition, the water purification tablets can treat up to 25 quarts of water.
Tools include a 3-in-1 hand-crank flashlight (radio and phone charger), emergency shelter, thermal blankets, poncho, goggles, gloves, CAT tourniquets, 200 Pieces of comprehensive medical supplies, a camping knife, compass, glow sticks, and many more. Enough in this survival prepper bug-out bag to keep you safe and prepared during the first critical 72 hours of any unpredictable emergency event.
You also need protection from the elements when you are sleeping. Having a shelter, such as a tent or tarp, that you can get under and protect yourself and your belongings from the rain and wind will be important.
Related – The Ultimate Guide to Survival Lessons – Cleanliness, Defense, First Aid. Lessons #8-10
If you are in a cold weather climate, or it dips into cold temperatures at night, you want to have a sleeping bag that is labeled as being able to help you withstand certain degrees.
You also need other kinds of protection that will eliminate or deter any threats that may want to harm you or your loved ones. There are both lethal and non-lethal self-defense measures that you can pack in your bug-out bag.
These include things like pepper spray, firearms, or even knives that can be used for many different purposes in addition to self-defense. Whatever you decide to pack in your bug-out bag, you must practice using it and know exactly what you’re doing so that you don’t do more harm than good in a survival situation where you may panic.
Gadgets and Tools That Will Come in Useful
After your food, water, and safety considerations, you want to pack tools and gadgets to make your bug-out journey easier. For example, you may want to have a multi-tool with different items that can come in handy for various purposes.
Or, you may want to have some collapsible solar lights that you can attach to a MOLLE system on the outside of your bug-out bag so that they charge during the day while you are hiking and operational at night when you are around the campground.
Read this – 10 Things Old-Time Preppers Did That You Don’t
You’ll also want some devices or items to help you start a fire. Don’t simply pack a lighter that will run out of fluid or matches that may get wet and become useless.
Instead, pack some flint and steel or a fire-starting device of your choice, and most importantly, learn how to use it before a survival event occurs so that you are not struggling in a last-minute situation.
You also want to have some navigation items on hand. This can include physical maps that you use to find landmarks and water sources and an old-fashioned compass that will help you navigate when GPS systems are down.
To keep your smartphones operational, you may want to include communication gadgets, including two-way radios or solar chargers. Ensure you have an all-weather radio, preferably a hand crank option, to hear any national alerts or important information you may need.
Medical Supplies You Should Have on Hand
While you may not think anything will happen to you, even something as simple as a scrape on a branch can become more serious during a survival event.
This is because you won’t have access to the same hygienic measures that you would in your home. You can’t simply go wash your wound off and put a Band-Aid on it unless you have those items packed in your bug-out bag.
Plus, you and your loved ones will be in a physically stressful environment, possibly having to continue hiking even when someone is injured or not feeling well. So, having a first aid kit that can alleviate pain and cover wounds is very important.
You can start by purchasing a compact first aid kit that can fit easily in a bug-out bag (This is a great kit! It fits well in my BOB). You want to ensure that everyone in your family has their own kit in case someone gets separated from the group or one person’s supplies get ruined.
Read this – How to Build a Gunshot Wound Kit
Then, add the readymade kit you purchased to it so that you have everything you personally need, such as individual medications your family takes or more items you think you may need that are not included.
You may also want to include a booklet like this Tiny Survival Guide I have that will tell you what procedures to go through when and if someone is hurt in a survival or bug-out situation. Or get the Pocket Guide to Emergency First Aid to help with something like knowing how to set a splint for someone, which you may not know off the top of your head.
One of the best things you can do to prepare using your bug-out bag is to take it on a weekend campout and pretend as if you are in a survival situation so that you can see if there’s anything you may have forgotten to pack.
Some people have one bug-out bag for their home, another in their office, and one in their car to prevent them from getting caught in a situation where they don’t have the supplies needed in a sudden event.
Read Next – Survival Prepping 101 Series Part 5: Prepare for a 72-Hour Emergency
I’m the daughter of 2 original survivalists who moved from the north to sunny Florida. My mother, along with her parents, bought 30 mostly uncleared acres in 1938. The first home was made of pecky-cypress and built by a house-raising. My mother raised 10,000 chickens.
My divorced mother met and married my father in 1948. From pine trees on our property, he hand-built a log cabin. He also built a tarpaper-lined 65’x45′ pool with duck pond overflow. We had an artesian well for our water and powering our hand-built waterwheel for the pool. He built a substantial cantilevered roof workshop with a car pit in the massive cement floor.
Since my early teens, I have read a ton of books about survival, prepping, the bomb, an apocalypse, homestead living, and SHTF situations. As an adult, I continue to read sci-fi, survival prepping, and science. I practice a prepper lifestyle albeit a bit modified, read a lot, buy a lot, pack/store a lot of anything survival related.
Read my About Me post for more details on our self-sufficient living. I lived there until I went to college in 1968.
My SurvivalPrepperSupply.com blog strives to educate individuals on coping with natural and human-caused disasters using article posts about preparing for emergencies.
