Preparing for Hard Times: Get Home Bag

At the storage unit sorting things

I am going on a trip this week. I am not panicking or freaking, but details must be tended to immediately. On top of that, I have to rework my get home gear. I will be traveling with trusted family to a large gathering of in laws that I do not know. If anything happens on the way there, over the halfway point, I will travel toward the gathering, less than halfway and it is country roads going home.
Any disaster occurring while traveling in a car starts with staying with that vehicle for as long as possible in order to cover as many miles as possible. After a vehicle is rendered useless from lack of fuel or function, it is up to the person, gear and their desire to make it, to get all the way home.

What I will need will now depend on getting home over a long distance. This is a different set of gear than just making it through eight to ten miles of city streets and sprawling suburbs if something happened while I was at work. I have a couple of routes planned that will take me off the asphalt and get me home and my get home bag is equipped for that trip.

Reconsidering and updating a get home bag might make you want to make up several bags, one for local workaday use and one to take along on vacations or other long trips. I am pretty sure that is the way I am going. I really do not want to undo all the work and planning I have done to create a bag that suits my everyday needs.

My get home bag for a local trip is two days of food and water, water filter bottle, a change of shoes, several pairs of socks and a change of clothes (very drab but still city clothes)and a first aid kit. That's pretty much all I need besides some protection and a desire to get home, to cover ten miles or so.

For this longer trip, I have added a few things I might want to also add to the short term bag,like; water purifier tablets, toilet paper, a poncho liner, small (4'x6') brown tarp, legal weapons to carry at this time without a permit( knife, small crossbow, and taser) batteries, a radio scanner, solar phone/mp3/battery charger. led flashlight, compass, gear repair kit,wire saw, multi hatchet tool and multi tool.

As you see in this photo, I laid out three forms of shelter. There is a hammock, a tube tent and an emergency mylar blanket. There are water tabs and purified water pouches. There is a baby booboo first aid kit and serious cut and gash bandaging. There are full day energy/calorie bars and two Mountain House meals for four as well as snacks. There are waterproof matches, a lighter and a magnesium fire starter. There is a compass as well as a well fitted survival knife that has a compass on the hilt, a wire saw and fishing line inside the handle, too. There are several items that are duplicated by another's presence. If one is lost, another takes it's place. If one is bartered, nothing is lost. I don't feel any of these items are frivolous.

I have a camp coffee pot included in the photo. It is light weight and very handy when boiling water for any reason, but in the get home bag, it is filled with all the small items and anything that may be crushed by the weight of something else. Also, note: there is a Mylar food storage bag in the backpack seen at the lower left corner of photo. Even with small similar items encased in zipper bags, I hate wet clothes, wet food, wet-wet. That Mylar bag can keep my feet warm, hold fresh killed meat away from contents of the bag, or many other uses, but it's purpose is to keep my good stuff dry.

I have learned a lot by laying things out and examining and reexamining their worth and weight. this bag is packed in balance so it doesn't work against the frame when you walk. It weighs, with frame, a bit under 17 pounds. What's in your get home bag?
Here are some from the net: