The Plan

Regardless of what you are running from or going to, a Plan and a List will help you get there with what you need to survive. It takes time to identify what is a necessity, what will make surviving easier and what is a convenience.

Don't forget the boot and shoe strings.  I just noticed that the strings on one of my boots was starting to fray, exposing the core.  Perhaps 550 cord could be used as shoe strings?  Either way, make sure you allocate other resources for shoe string or get a supply of them.

This is a HUGE topic and can be covered in a wide variety of ways. To help minimize wieght and mass of of the total BugOutKit, I find myself finding books, material and documentation I find interesting or potentially useful in an electronic format. By putting this library on multiple USB keys and CDs/DVDs, a thousand pounds of books and paper has been reduced to less than a half pound of memory sticks and a pound of optical disks.

There will be days when you will not be able to do much outside because of the weather or other limiting conditions. Be sure to pack a few sanity items, such as pleasure reading books, a few decks of cards and travel versions of games. If you are surviving alone, this will be important, but if you are trying to survive with kids, the games will be VERY important.

These small satellite dishes will be next to useless when WSHTF.  Adding a couple of these, a few spray cans of adhesive and aluminum foil to your kit will be a handy addition.These can be used to heat water, start fires, cook food, etc.  Start by cleaning the surface of the disk area, once it is dry, spray on the adhesive, and add the aluminum foil, shiny side 'up' in manageable strips, trying to avoid wrinkles and seams.  This may be difficult, given the shape of the dish.

Bandanas are a handy item to have in most any case or situation.  Use it a handkercheif when sneezing or coughing to help prevent the spread of a cold or flu. Use it as a pot holder.  Cleaning a kids face or tied around your neck to help prevent sunburns.  Having a variety of bandanas in different sizes and colors can be very handy for trail marking, camp identification, carrying basket, medical compress/bandage, etc.

The Fresnel lens functions like a regular magnifying glass, except it is flat instead of lens-shaped. It is named after its inventor, French physicist Augustin Jean Fresnel, who studied light and optics in the 1800s. Basically, if you were to slice a normal lens into a hundred or more concentric rings (like the rings of a tree), and mount each of those rings on a flat surface, then you would have a flat lens of equal power to the original lens.

Cotton balls (100% cotton only) mostly saturated with petroleum jelly. The cotton balls catch a spark quickly and make a small, hot fire you can add tinder and kindling to. You can prepare cotton balls with petroleum jelly and flatten them to store in a small bag in your wallet. The Cotton will catch fire quickly form most any fire starter or flint and steel sparker.  Like a candle, the petroleum will melt and burn slowly, but hot enough to add kindling and other materials to build a larger fire.