Get home bag

um hey boys and girls guys and gals jeff here with the constance camper got a lot of really really good feedback on my last video on asking you to help me put together a good home bag so i've had these before i've had everyday carry bags i've had you know the whole car kit thing and so my last video i showed you what i carried in my vehicle and one of the things that i realized is you know that thing's about 30 plus pounds very heavy and i wanted to put something together that would just get me home but the assumption that i'm about 19 miles from work to my house if for some reason something were to happen rather natural disaster or my truck breaks down or there's some type of civil unrest where there's a turf you put in place and roads are shut down and you don't have access to get home by your normal means maybe the buses are shut down you never know so i wanted to put something together and you guys gave me a lot of really good feedback and so i'm going to share that with you here today we're going to go to the tabletop and hopefully this helps you put something together so the first thing you need to determine on when setting up a get home bag is what is your scenario now everyone's going to be different so i'm going to share with you my scenario and why this works so i live about 19 out or 19 miles from my house to work i work in the inner city i live kind of in suburbia so assuming that i'm not going to take the a to z route to my house because that would be a freeway assuming that that's not safe number one number two there may be some exposure to hostile activity i'm going to have to take back roads or routes home so one of the things that i want to make sure of is that i fit in that gray man category now a lot of people mistake gray man is you have to wear gray it's just a figure of speech however it does somewhat make sense because aside from black gray and black leathers and like rawhide tan leathers seem to be what i see the most of of men carrying either an office situation or in like a housing community that's typically what they're carrying going back and forth to work so i picked this bag because it's not too assuming it just kind of looks like a you know a type like a briefcase bag or at the very least it's probably more on the side of a a day height bag so i didn't want something with a bunch of molle webbing or anything camouflage i wanted something very very uh dummy down something very streamlined clean so this backpack here is the red wing 30. it is a kelty which i love i absolutely love kelty backpacks and they make excellent quality backpacks but it doesn't have to be a kelty it could be any backpack i would just if you're working in a city and you live in kind of suburbia usa uh i would steer away from camouflage greens desert tan those type of colors you don't want to stand out and you definitely don't want to look like oh hey look at this i've got gear in here so that's why i went with this because it's again it's uh it's pretty non-aggressive uh i do have the top area here marked with a velcro patch it's first aid uh i would probably take that off if i were in a situation where i had to use this so that's kind of the logistics of my situation 19 miles from work to home i'm going to assume it's going to take me about 20 to 21 miles because again i'm gonna have to go around so i want something that's small lightweight i don't want to make a you know a big silhouette a big imprint on the landscape very low profile and the nice thing is it's something i can use every day for work as well so that's the reason i went with this that's my mileage it has a nice thick back strap or backpack straps it also has a waist belt that i can tuck away which i have tucked away now and the nice thing about that is is when i if i i have to take this out i have to get water then that's gonna you know weigh down the pack even more and that allows me to put the waste strap on and transfer the weight from the shoulders to my hips which is really where i want it so the the purpose of this bag is to get me home it's not to go camping and you know roasting marshmallows and cooking food and so this is to get me home now my thought process behind this is obviously if i can get home in my vehicle that's how i'm going to go if i can't i have other options there's electric bikes you can rent you know you swipe your card i could ride a bike i could get home via an electric bike i could take the bus i have some cash in here if i needed to take the bus but let's assume all that stuff's shut down let's say there's a curfew uh there could be civil unrest there could be a protest and you're just not able to get out of your area to get to where you need to go in your vehicle and you need to leave it could be a natural disaster as well so i've put this together with all of your input and keeping in mind that i'm just using this to get home and it's also my everyday carry and i carry it this week and it's worked really well so on the outside of the pack i'll go over that first the first thing i have is a leatherman multi-tool and my preference of multi-tools is always going to be a leatherman and it's always going to be the wave well not always i do have the mutt with my shooting range gear and the leatherman mud is great especially if you have an ar there's a lot of good features on it this is the leatherman way there's a lot of great features on here and then i also have both the bit sets that go with the with the leatherman and keep in mind this has more purposes than just getting home this is stuff that i can use at work all the time so i have that on the front and a pouch and that's just strapped to the strap here as i turn the bag around on top i have my emergency this is trauma on up top now i will tell you with with trauma gear the most important thing you can do is get training there's a lot of fire departments there's a lot of uh third party places that very inexpensively will train you and teach you how to deal with trauma it's one thing to learn first aid your basic first aid trauma is a whole different story i'll give you one good example whenever someone shows a tourniquet they always show them putting it on the arm they turn the rod around secure it they write the date on it what if it's not on your arm what if it's on your neck right you're not going to put a tourniquet around your neck or someone else's neck so that's just an example of things you may not be thinking about so before putting this together uh get the training on how to use it so i've got a couple things in here one i have this is vet tape i love this stuff it's light it weighs absolutely nothing it doesn't stick to your skin but it sticks to itself really well it also holds up for long periods of time and it works well with sweat and and rain so i always keep that on hand i have a six inch israeli bandage i have a pair of medical shears this is one thing that's overlooked a lot of people will put the israeli bandage in there they'll do their tourniquet but then they forget about this and i'll tell you you don't want to cut someone's jeans open or your own jeans open with a pocket knife because you may end up not having enough bandages so a good pair of scissors i have a tourniquet now they give you this bag for a reason when you get a tourniquet a lot of times they'll send a bag with it and people are like what the heck's the bag for this bag is actually designed to prevent uv rays from degrading the the actual tourniquet itself now i have it inside the bag so i probably don't need it but should i decide that you know i want to stick it outside in a pouch and the uv rays are hitting it that that will help reduce that and then what i do is i actually keep a small mini marker one of those sharpies with the tourniquet as opposed to putting it in the bag i have another one in the bag but i i keep one with the tourniquet in the in the uv protected bag then i have some clot seal these are those powder packets if you ever watched uh saving private ryan when the guy marches up to the radio tower and he gets shot and he's uh they're asking how to fix them uh that's the stuff that the stuff they pour in the wound that's supposed to uh produce clots i also have uh and the one i had is very old so i'm replacing it i also have a chest seal but it hasn't come yet so that that's my trauma that's pretty much all i need there for uh trauma and then because i do use this as a work bag i have a pair of reading glasses if you need reading glasses to read things take a pair of reading glasses and that is it that's all i have up here i have plenty more room to put other stuff you're going to notice the common theme here is i do not have this thing over packed the next thing is water uh if you my i guess i envisioned that if there were you know let's say a curfew hostile situation and everyone's got to go home and you can't use your vehicle because they have the roads shut down or whatever is i imagine myself probably grabbing a couple bottles of water throwing in here but let's say i can't i'm carrying this this is a grail water filter these things are great because the container filter is all in one it's a hard case so you're not going to break it yes you could use a uh catadyne bag like like i use for camping i absolutely love it but it is it's a rubber material and you could puncture a hole in it if you're in a a disaster situation i want something a little harder to show but this is cool because it has a filter you just fill that up with water you take this and you push it down and it filters the water and then you just drink right out of the container which is which is really neat so push that down that filters your water yes it does take some pressure to do it and then put the lid on and you're good to go now as far as containing water other than this i also have a smashed up water bottle i'll show you inside that i can use to fill take this fill that up fill this up and then i could actually just carry the you know the water in this and have another bottle of water keep in mind i'm only planning on hiking maybe let's just call it 10 hours to be safe most people can walk two miles per hour uh let's just assume it's 10 hours so that that's plenty of water to get me home i believe that is it on the outside there's another water bottle thing here i will say one thing that i don't like about this pack is that these side water pow bottle holder pouches they i hates they kind of suck i mean that's about as far as i can get that in there but you do have these compression straps so i just fed the compression strap through this little handle and that'll hold it in place so that takes care of my water needs and then in this area here i have a mask i have this again this is something i use for work so i have a small mini bic lighter here i don't smoke but i do carry lighters and then in here i have a thumb drive i've got a dongle another marker a pen which also has a small light on the end of it a mini usb my iphone charger pair of earbuds i don't think there's anything back there and then a block to to charge my electrical devices with electronics and i just keep that in that maximum edition that's a maximum edition uh micro i also have a whistle because sometimes you know you're not really just traveling and getting home sometimes you just need help with something and if there is no disaster or you know zombie apocalypse and you just need to get someone's attention whistle whistle will help every single time so uh plastic whistle then i have a hanky in there i have two bobby pins and these are a little larger ones these aren't quite sail needle what i call seal needle or blanket pen size but they're big enough so if i blew out my the button on my jeans or something i could pin them together with that or if the strap comes off the backpack i have two of those to pen anything i need together i have a carpenter's pencil two ballpoint pens i have a small notepad to write on i have hand sanitizer and then my only source of light other than the light on my phone is uh i have a headlamp now the reason i don't carry like the the flashlights i have the clips you put on your hat the clips that you can put on your shoulder strap on your you know your shirt here's my theory on a headlamp i will always have my head i'm not always going to have a backpack i'm not always going to have a hat and who knows i might not always have a shirt uh and so a headlamp to me is the way to go because it's hands-free and i'm always gonna have my head and if i don't have my head it doesn't really matter anyways uh the last thing in this section here is a pair of sunglasses and these are just your cheapo variety one dollar safety glasses and i found that those work great and there's no reason spending lots of money on something like that to put in a bag uh and i wear them all time at work anyways so i absolutely love those like i said if you break them scratch them uh you're not going to cry so i'm doing the side compression straps this is a clamshell style backpack which i love because they're very easy to get in and out of this is what i call a pull open so once you unzip it you can uh strip the bag all the way open now what i have in here is the first thing is is this piece here and this is just a velcro pouch uh this actually came with one of those uh back seat organizers that you buy and has the velcro on it this has a the uh the fuzzy side that says the the uh the loop this has the the hook or whatever i always get it backwards anyways the male and the female uh then this just sticks right to that i like that because it would be very hard for someone to get in this bag and remove this without me knowing i'm going to hear it so in here i have the i guess what you would call the bits and bobbits of this this setup all right so in this pouch here the zippered area i was kind of torn on do i need a way to make a fire and because i'm a bush crafter and camper at heart i just i couldn't put it together without a small fire kit so i have a trioxine tablet i have some of those uh powdered instant fires those work really great i have some petroleum jelly and cotton balls and i think that's an old surefire tablet from way back when i went to the pathfinder class so i have that in there and then i have a ferro rod uh i have some toilet paper uh i'm not a big fan of these i think they're very gimmicky and quite honestly they're too expensive for what you get but i get them all the time as stocking stuffers so why not use them right so i have that in there i also have deodorant deodorant small thing toothpaste and toothbrush now the reason i have this is because again i use this for work this is now my edc and there's times when i have long days and i have a late meeting or a dinner and i want to freshen up i'm able to do that i have a hank of paracord in here it's about 25 foot and i have a compass i think this is one thing that people forget a lot in a get home bag is compass because you are under the assumption that your phone is going to work maybe it's not maybe the grid's down maybe the satellites are down again it's a natural disaster situation and you need to get home and you don't even know which way north is now i would hope that if you you know if you're in an area that you've lived there a long time you wouldn't know which way north is but sometimes you don't the other thing that this provides too is if i have an injury to my face or something that i can't see that gives me a mirror to look at it as well and a signaling device so uh take a a compass with you i am not a fan of the little button compasses i have seen those things point west and and a good compass pointing north the same direction so get get a good one i i'm not like i said i'm not a fan of the button compasses uh sunto makes good compasses uh i believe this is essento and just you know spend the extra money because this is the whole purpose of the bag is to get you home you've got to have good navigation i have a spoon all right i also have a can opener on my leatherman so if i happen across a can of beans or ravioli or if there's a small little dairy mart open i can run in there grab a can of food i have something to eat it with and i have a way to open the the can i have some dental picks again that's more office related and then i have a small booboo kit so in here i have advil i have anti-diarrheal prilosec aspirin chapstick sunscreen it's a small little tube of sunscreen you'd be shocked how much that little tube can save your your butt by just being able to put it on your nose and your your ears to keep the sun off of those uh there's very sensitive appendages and then it has some antiseptic in here i have a n95 mask and my medications because i do take medication so i have that in here as well and i also have a heavier tampon in here the reason i carry that is you can use that as a first aid method and if i'm with my wife or if i am with a female let's say it's at work and we're the only two left and we're trying to get home uh that happens trust me you you will be the hero of the day so the last thing is some food now again i'm not cooking i'm not camping i'm not setting up a fire i'm not you know i don't have my little jet boil i just that's not what i'm doing i'm trying to get home however i'm gonna need calories to produce the energy to get home so i have two uh pretty strongly packed calorie dense protein bars i have a kind nutter butter bar and then i have a five hour energy drink my thought behind that is i'm gonna nibble on these we walk in after about four or five hours i'm gonna get really tired i hit that five hour energy shot that's gonna give me enough to finish up the the rest of the way just keep in mind this is not a hike this is not a a fun hike this is not hey we're out at dolly sods and we're enjoying the scenery this is i gotta get home you're under duress your body's just going like this your endorphins are kicking in you're walking through neighborhoods you've probably never been through before and you're going to need some energy in order to finish out that hike and then i have some drink mix in there just to flavor up the water so that's all i have in this part of the pouch that's the bits and bobbits i do have a knife in here i decided to go a little heavier than what i wanted to but i said let's put a good knife in here so this is the mora garberg and the plastic sheath this is a bullet proof full tang knife by mora it's one of the more expensive ones but it's thick it's got a sharpened spine you can you strike the ferro rod with it and i mean i have absolutely just beat the crap out of this thing and it is it is heavy duty it's the real deal i have a toboggan to cover my head with and then i have a pair of work gloves and somewhere in here is that water bottle i study about so i love these cheapo plastic water bottles because you can smash them put the lid on it and throw it in there and forget about it it takes up very little space very light but that gives me another vessel to put water in so between that and the grail that should give me enough water to get home it's kind of stretching it but it will suffice it it will be enough then i have this i was kind of torn on this but one of the emails i received said get one of these and and now i get it i i understand why uh if you're by yourself and it's probably going to be dark because matt i mean just think about not every emergency happens at 8 a.m you get to work you have your coffee uh there's a hurricane and now you got to go home it could happen later to where the sun's going down it's amazing how much uh how how how much more you feel at ease listening to another human being especially like a weather channel or emergency channel so i did decide to put that in there it also has a light it's one of those crank up ones it does have a phone charger on it but they're not real good and i will tell you this that the solar part of these things take forever you can sit out and direct sunlight for eight hours and you might get maybe seven minutes of radio time but the crank part works really well gives me radius stations and also the emergency weather station so i have that in there now i'm going to go over clothing i am in a a business where i wear what is appropriate for the weather and what i mean by that is i'm not someone that has to wear a suit and tie to work in dress shoes so when i go to work i'm in construction so i'm dressing as if i'm going to be outside all day long anyways so i have the the uh the liberty of not having to put a bunch of clothes in here because i am wearing what i would normally wear outside at work anyways so it doesn't matter i'm also wearing a comfortable pair of shoes so i don't have to worry about that if you are not in that situation if you are someone that has to wear dress shoes and suit and tie what i would recommend is put a good pair of comfortable walking shoes in here put a good pair of hiking socks in here and then whatever other clothing you think you're going to need for this but when i leave the home in the winter i am geared up to stay outside for an hour or two anyways so without movement so it doesn't matter but i do have some clothing items in here i have a uh a boonie hat and inside of the the boonie hat and the reason i have the booney hat is i'm not always wearing a hat at work so this gives me some protection from my face my neck and my ears so i think that's a that's a must-have if you're if you're walking home so i've got a booty hat and then i have a frogtogs rain jacket and inside of that to keep the contents dry somewhat i have a pair of lightweight shorts with a liner in it and just a blue uh polo these are both uh synthetic they're like they're like nylon mix uh so they're they're moisture wicking and they dry really quickly do not put cotton in here so i carry those because a lot of times i do i mean 99 of the time at work i'm in jeans or or slacks and i'm not wearing shorts so my thought behind this is if it's a hundred degrees out and i'm walking home i do not want to be walking around in a three pound pair of soaked cotton jeans so i have those in there to put those on if i do need to change out because it's too high and that will round out everything in the pack i do have one other item here that is just a velcroed holster with an extra magazine and that houses this which is the uh m p shield nine millimeter and that goes in there nicely and i can strap that down uh that way i can take it off my waist especially if i have to weigh this down with some water and i got to put the waist strap on to transfer the load i don't think i'm going to want that up against my body with the with the firearm and again i'm kind of torn on that you're going to have to gauge your mileage may vary because i don't know what neighborhoods you're walking through what areas you're walking through you may say look you know what i'll carry the weight on my shoulders i want my protection up front so but either way what this allows me to do is that i can simply take this off and throw this in here now this is an outside the waistband holster that i can put through my belt the other thing that i put in here or would put in here if i wasn't wearing this is a felt a lot of people forget about that they put this thing together they have a knife on a sheath that requires a belt they put an extra magazine clip thing that requires a belt they have a holster that requires a belt and then they're in a polo and a pair of shorts and they have no way to wear that stuff this is a very inexpensive belt this is made by wolf tactical i think they're 20 some dollars on amazon they have small medium large this is a large i wear a 33 and a half for 30 34 inch waist this is the large and this works great because it just velcros together no buckle to be digging into your stomach and it's very comfortable so this is something that if i am wearing shorts or i'm wearing a shirt that i have tucked in and i'm wearing a belt like a nice leather belt this allows me to take this thing and throw this in the and the pack and then that that allows me to put all those things on my on my belt so the point of this again is to get home and i'm sure there's things you're gonna say oh you gotta have this you gotta have that this i i think is very well thought out i've gone over the scenario several different times several different ways and so i feel this is a very viable way to put this pack together now i left this out for the very end you're trying to get home you have to walk normally you don't walk home i know i don't walk 19 miles home you have a compass and you know where the interstate is you know you're not going to take it because you're not sure what the atmosphere is going to be like there how do you know which roads to take home i think this is the most important part this has a plastic panel inside here i have a trash bag compactors bag i'm not going to show you this whole thing but this has the a copy of the driver's license of both my sons and my wife and their phone numbers i think this is important because if for some reason there's a natural disaster something happens to you you're found by search and rescue and they don't know who you are let's say you lost your wallet it got stolen you dropped it whatever they have no idea who you are i wouldn't put this somewhere where anyone can get access to it but if you put it back here these guys are trained hey let's dig through this whole pack they'll cut the thing open with these scissors just just to get information so i keep that in there and and that is a wax seal bag so it doesn't no water gets to it all right and the whole purpose of this is to get home and this is one thing i don't see a lot of maps how are you going to get home if you're off grid your phone's not working and you're in a neighborhood you have no idea where the street goes so i have a map of ohio and these are pretty cool these are on amazon it's laminated i could not find one for columbus laminated but and then here's one of columbus this is probably the most important thing in this bag along with the protection part of it because this is going to allow me to know exactly where i want to cut through where i want to walk through it also shows you like park areas along the way and one thing you could do if you if you really want to be super diligent is maybe walk that path once uh i might actually attempt that this year uh and and i'll make some notes of some key points of interest like maybe a water fountain at a a community park or there's a gas station that's open 24 hours and mark that along with with the map but i think that's important that's very very important a lot of people forget that in a get home bag the other part of this is what am i carrying on me so uh again i'm typically carrying the m p shield i i carry that appendix style with a with a nice heavy belt i have my wallet which you know has all the stuff a guy would have in his wallet i have a pocket knife that is the buck vantage and i just i love that knife just works really well so i have that and i have a hanky now this one in my pocket i cut in half because for some reason the full ones kind of feel like a softball in the back of my pocket but uh it's it's a hanky cut in half and it's just something i i mean if you start carrying a hanky it's like a pocket knife you'll go a whole day without it you're like i can't believe i didn't bring my hanky so that's it hopefully you guys are happy i will say that probably 40 of this was all information that you guys gave us i'll give you one more really cool tip that my good friend kenny uh text me when i did this the the previous video get one of those folding bikes i thought that was a brilliant idea because if you're in your vehicle and it breaks down or what have you dude you can go three times the distance on a bicycle and you can't walking and they're not that expensive you get those ones that just break open and you just ride it home i thought that was a an ingenious idea a really really smart way of of getting home there is one thing that is not in here that i just uh realized or it's in here just i forgot to share it it's very important uh one was i've got some gorilla tape and i can't believe this it's this silcot key if you don't know what a silcock key is look it up but basically what this does this allows you to open any commercial water faucet so you know in your house you have a hose bed with a handle on commercial buildings they don't want people having access to those so they they recess a basically a stud and they're typically one of these four sizes and you can't get in there even with your leatherman you're not going to get in there and turn that on because the whole the the gap between the hole and the actual nut that you put this on is really small so you can't get tweezers i mean you can't get anything in there other than this key and this will allow you to open that up and get clean drinking water well hopefully that was informative hopefully it wasn't too much but i took all your guys and gals advice the emails and and and ideas that you gave me uh some of them i did come up on my own uh i just thought hey this is this makes sense to to use uh like i said it i also use it at work now it's my edc bag which uh which is great because it serves two purposes now the total weight on that backpack with everything in there except the water is 13 and a half pounds if i add my laptop it takes it up to 16. so if i keep my laptop in there assuming i don't want to just ditch that uh i'm still under 20 pounds even when i add water to it so it's a very reasonable weight it's a very comfortable weight i know i can carry that weight in that pack very easily and get home safe that's the bottom line is you're not out to to fight the insurgents you're not out there to be a navy seal you're not out there to camp out and bushcraft you are trying to get home to your family to make sure they're safe and you're safe and everyone gets out of this thing unscathed uh physically emotionally financially this is jeff with the constance camper camping out

Channel: Common Sense Camper

Views: 2,481

Rating: 4.9120879 out of 5

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Id: qVGu7cSogBg

Length: 38min 25sec (2305 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021