Once one has selected an appropriate E&E bag, the next challenge is selecting and organizing the E&E kit to carry in it. The challenge lies in efficiency of selection and overall compactness. An E&E bag will fail as an every-day bag if it is too full of gear to be used to carry your other daily needs. A Bug Out Bag left in one’s car or home should be filled to capacity with gear, but one’s every-day-carry E&E bag has to earn it’s keep daily.
I’ve studied the E&E bag contents of many preparedness believers and hardcore survivialists, and most seem to be a strange amalgamation of tactical odds and ends without much organization, as if a lot of guys think that all they need to survive any life threatening emergency is a few feet of paracord and a shemagh. An E&E bag is a get-to-safety bag. Escape and evade danger until sanctuary can be reached. To give it a real context, what would I would I want and need to have on hand if I were ground zero at a 9/11-type event?
Analyzing the problem this way allowed me to break the E&E kit down to a few elemental components:
- Medical
- Clothing
- Tools (& Admin)
Medical (organized into a single kit)
- EMT Shears
- iodine tabs
- Rx
- wound wash/wipes
- antibacterial gel
- 1″ duct tape (instead of medical tape)
- exam gloves
- band-aids
- QuikClot bandages, sponges, gauze
- butterfly stitches
- CPR mask
- tourniquets
- tweezers
- N95 particle masks
Clothing (compressed in a dry bag)
- beanie
- neck gaiter
- gloves
- spare socks
- viscose towel
- dust googles
- windshirt
- mylar blanket/sleeping bag
Tools & Admin
- multitool
- flashlight
- window punch/life hammer
- backup gun
- extra magazines or speed clips
- contacts book
- pen
- cash
- portable digital scanner
Once broken down it is pretty simple. A good first aid kit. A couple of tools. Some clothes. The digital scanner is an expensive option, but in a national level emergency it may be the only way to know what is happening. A backup gun and additional ammunition adds more weight, but depending on one’s circumstances it might be worth the weight and bulk to supplement these to the primary CCW that is kept on one’s person. This isn’t necessarily an exhaustive list, and it favors my own urban settings. Someone in more rural conditions might include more wilderness survival elements — but again this isn’t a Bug Out Bag nor a bag intended to supply one’s long-term needs. It is about escaping from a unexpected dangerous situation and getting to safety.
