With so much focus on bugging in and out situations, I feel that not plenty is being said about those crucial moments when disaster strikes and you’re away from home. When you’re away from your preps, your bug out bag and your stockpile, things will be that much tougher. In what follows I want to give you some common sense tips that go beyond assembling a get-home bag list.
It’s hard to anticipate what you’ll be doing when it hits, the distance from home and where your spouse and children will be and many a lot of details. The more you think regarding these possible situations, the answer your mind will come up with… so let’s see if I can challenge you on an intellectual level.
Don’t Leave Your EDC Kit at Home
Ever walked away from home and decided you don’t really need to carry your EDC items just this once? You’ve had them with you so many times and nothing happened that you just get this feeling of “well, it’s not like anything’s gonna happen today”.
Well what if something does happen? If you’re out there and you get a telephone from your wife asking you to come home ASAP, having a knife, a flashlight or an extra cell-phone battery may make a world of difference.
Explore Your City
What does this have to do with getting home in an emergency? Depending on the kind of disaster that will affect you, you probably won’t be able to get home using the route. As we do our daily chores or go to work, we always take the shortest route possible, right?
Only issue is, that may not be the safest one in a disaster. A bridge might have collapsed, there may be checkpoints on the main arteries, riots or a protests could block parts of the town. The more you know your town, the quicker it’ll be for you find alternate routes without the need for a GPS or someone guiding you over the phone.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have printed maps of your town. On the contrary, you should improve those maps by marking shortcuts and keeping copies inside your car and your get home bag.
Prepare For Mini Get-Home Scenarios
Scenarios aren’t just related to Doomsday. You may very well be forced to rush home to handle personal emergencies. Here’s some things most preppers never think about:
- the transportation system could be halted for whatever reason, forcing you to go back home on foot
- your car could be broken into
- your cell phone battery could die
- there could be a heavy and prolonged rain or even a hail storm
- you could get a flat tire
- you could get sick as you’re driving home
- your get home bag could be stolen or you might be separated from it for whatever reason
- …and many more.
How would you prep for each of them? It’s not that hard. You’ll add an extra cell-phone battery or cell-phone charger inside your GHB, you may learn how to repair your flat tire, you could add a few basic otc meds inside your EDC and get-home bag etc.
Ask Yourself: Is It Safe To Get Home?
People talking regarding get home situations see themselves coming home in record time when it finally happens. The only problem is, their home could be compromised, which means they won’t be able to bug in, they won’t have access to their bug out bags or any of their preps.
You have to prep for each possible situation, including bugging out without a B.O.B and losing our stockpile and guns. This is why having a fully-packed vehicle and one or several bug out locations is very important.
Keep this in mind: the more time you spend away from home, the more likely it’s you won’t be there when disaster strikes.
Is It Safe To Go Inside Your Home?
If your wife called you because there’s a thief in the house, you probably don’t want to barge in there like Chuck Norris. You don’t know this status and, even though things look quiet on the outside, on the inside, things could be bad. Real bad.
Think about how you’d approach a home invasion that happens when you’re not at home. Would you call the police? Would you call your prepper friends? In case you have to do this alone, do you know other ways to get inside?
What ELSE Could Affect You In a Get Home Scenario?
A devastating earthquake just hit. You expect people to be crying in the street, perhaps some of them trying to get their relatives from under the rubble. There’s panic everywhere and you need to get home quickly because your wife’s not answering the phone.
Do you think it’s that easy? Any variety of things could get it wrong and they have nothing to do with collapsed buildings or blocked roads. as an example:
- you find out your kid’s also trapped under the rubble at school so now you have two family members that need your help
- you pass a downed building and there are people trapped inside asking you to help them
- you come home to find that 3 thugs are looting your home
- the earthquake also caused a gas leakage which lead to a house fire
- when you reach your wife, you realize she’s injured, you may need to get her to a hospital
- …and on and on.
When disaster strikes, if anything can get it wrong, it most likely will. Tragedies come in threes and it’s easy to lose your mind when chaos unleashes. There’s only way to prepare now for the myriad of outcomes and that is to ask yourself questions today. The more questions you ask, the more issues and holes you’ll uncover in your survival plans.
