Survival:Beyond the Bug-Out Bag

Essential Go Bag Tips 2.0

• Bill Bateman • Season 7 • Episode 3

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Is your go bag ready for anything? Join us this week as we dive into the world of emergency preparedness with Bill Bateman from Refuse to be a Victim Personal Protection Training. We highlight the vital need for a well-equipped "get-out-of-Dodge bag," and why it's more crucial than ever to be prepared for sudden evacuations and extreme weather. Bill shares how lifestyle changes and environmental hazards like forever chemicals and microplastics have changed the landscape of preparedness, and the significance of customizing your go bag based on your age, health, and physical abilities. Additionally, you'll learn why knowing your capabilities and local emergency plans can make all the difference in a crisis.

Bill provides invaluable tips on crafting an effective go bag that ensures you and your loved ones are self-sufficient for up to two weeks. From updated water filters and air filtration systems to reliable lighting solutions and multiple fire-starting methods, discover how to stay warm, visible, and safe in various emergency scenarios. We also discuss the concept of blending in as a "gray man" to avoid drawing attention during crises. Whether you're facing sudden evacuations or getting stranded in snow, this episode equips you with the knowledge and tools to be fully prepared for whatever comes your way. Don't miss out on this essential guide to emergency preparedness!

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Speaker 1:

Last week we took a look at how things were eight or nine years ago. Now we're doing survival beyond the bug-out bag 2.0. This week, the get-out-a-dodge bag or the original go-bag. Come on in, let's talk about this. Well, hi everybody, I'm Bill Bateman, part of the team here at Refuse to be a Victim Personal Protection Training. We are located in the Medford-White City area of Southern Oregon and you're always invited to come on by and visit us. We are at 6800 Kershaw Boulevard. Now I do want to tell tell you Foothill is undergoing some construction, so you may want to give us a call as to how to get there. We aren't going to send up smoke signals there's just too much of that going on but we'll help you get here either way.

Speaker 1:

Okay, last time we took an overview. I explained that we wanted to update and welcome new listeners. We're still going to try and have information that's of value for our regular listeners and reach the other 70% of people here in Oregon who have not yet begun prepping, getting ready for those knocks at the door in the middle of the night or those emergency phone calls. And, as we've stressed the last time, this is not just the major brush fire or the big earthquake Just last week we had in our area some alerts on the phone brush fire, freeway closed and evacuation notices listed, so this stuff can pop up really quick. It wasn't a major oh my gosh fire, but several folks did have to actually leave their homes. So let's look at the go bag in specific. Last time we talked about the generalization of the go bag, the get home bag, the bag for your car, the bag for your office, and how those things have all developed into new systems, ideally that you merge together. There's also a bag, the I'm never coming home bag, that's if you think you're going to have to get out and really make some changes. So all of these things have happened because of the changes in our lifestyle, the changes in our weather, the changes in a whole number of things.

Speaker 1:

Being prepared is now really a life-saving skill. It used to be able to. You know you could probably get by. Now not so much. You should have your own medical, you should have your own air filtration, you should have your own water and you should have your own food, as well as defensive and medical type capabilities. So let's look at specifically the go bag. The go bag is what happens when you get that knock at the door or your alert goes off and they say folks, you've got about five minutes to get out of Dodge.

Speaker 1:

If you don't know what to do, at that point, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot do a whole lot for you, because that's why I'm here to remind you. Let's start planning today. Stop listening, get the family together, start talking about this. Now, what's changed? A lot. I focused a lot on senior citizens. I am a senior myself. Just had my diamond birthday, if you folks know what that is. That's pretty scary. I never expected to get here, but okay, it's not too bad.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be talking about all levels of prepping, because for younger people, especially with young families, prepping is a whole different thing. It's different for all of us and we're going to be talking about the things that make it different Age, health, physical ability. If you're a young person, that long wasn't all that long ago I could throw on a 50 pound backpack and run all over the forest. Now not so much. If you're a young parent, are you prepared to do that? Don't think you can do it. Know you can do it, know what you're capable of doing. This is life-threatening or life-saving, depending upon how you want to look at it. You're in a serious situation. I think I can only counts if you're a cartoon train. Know what you can do.

Speaker 1:

The Go Bag is designed to get you out of your home in an emergency situation and give you that which you need to subsist until you can get additional shelter. You can get to a safe area. You may have to be out on your own. You may have to go to a group shelter. You may have to check into a motel five cities away. I have been in all those situations. Know what's available in your area. Check with your city and your county and look at their emergency plans. That way you know where you're going. So key step for a go bag, key step for prepping plan what's going to happen. Not the emergency, because you have no idea what's going to happen, but plan which way you can go, know which way is going to jam up. Know which way is not practical. Getting on the freeway in this area the last fire was a parking lot city streets, parking lots because everybody got off the freeway. So you need to be able to subsist and to exist for at least 72 hours. That was the old wisdom. The new wisdom is now. You need to be able to subsist or exist for up to two weeks. That's because it's taking much longer for help to get there. It's taking more time. There are more strains on the situation. Also, there's been some changes in the quote common wisdom.

Speaker 1:

The idea of being a gray man has become very important and if you're not familiar with that, it's talked about in our previous podcast. If you're a new person, google gray man. There are some videos and I'll be sharing those again down the road. I don't want to do it again too soon. The idea is you will blend in.

Speaker 1:

So if you got your go bag, should it be a brand new bag from REI, looking great, looking like you're ready for a tactical exercise, or should it be a beat up old backpack? Looks like it just threw a few things in there? The idea is don't wear I eat death for breakfast t-shirts. Do not wear your tactical gear. Do not make it look like you're ready to go on a commando raid. This is regardless of what age you are. Now, with really old people, that's almost funny, although I will tell you, I know some really old people who you simply do not want to mess with. But if you're taking a backpack full of stuff. Don't make it look like a good target to steal. It should not have things hanging out of it. I got mine at the Army Navy store, which, by the way, locally here in the Medford area is an excellent resource. I recommend local businesses all the time and I always like going out to the Army Navy store. They got good people who know their products, so that's kind of cool.

Speaker 1:

The Bunk Out Bag is made for you to get out and to survive, to exist. Now, what that means to some of us is going to be different to the other. To me, if there's no room service, I'm camping. I want you to consider what you need to be happy Now again, if you're a younger family with little kids, or you've got the grandparents with you, or it's just you and the wife and the kids are with the grandparents for the weekend and now you've got to try and get together. You have to consider all of these issues. The bug out bag should have, regardless of your area, regardless of your planning, regardless of your physical condition, the things you cannot exist without Air, water, food and I'm going to add heat, warmth, whatever you want to call it and light. The final thing you need is a way to defend yourself. So let's look at air first. You can last about three minutes. We talked about this last time Air filters, masks. There's emergency filters. There's things that will handle a chemical spill. There are things that will just handle dust and debris. Your budget, sadly enough, will dictate what you can afford Now.

Speaker 1:

Over the last eight years I've gone from the official face mask of COVID to the actual face mask that will survive a tear gas attack. I did that after careful research and looking. It's not so much I'm worried about tear gas, but I'm worried about toxins and stuff in the air. Some of these tanks and holding things go Ammonia. Oh my gosh, you don't want any of that stuff in your lung. Also, fire, fire and smoke. The particles get in there. You're having a coughing fit. You're not going to walk any 20 miles a day if you can't breathe. Neither is the wife, neither are the kids. Think about air as we go. I'll continue to refer to previous episodes I'll do that next week where we talk about some different items to look at. I also have some good recommendations on things both to buy and not to buy. So these are past episodes. I welcome you to scroll back.

Speaker 1:

Air is critical. That's three minutes. I've gone two and didn't care for it. Let's look at water, next Water. We are mostly water. There are some of us who will say we're mostly hot air. Okay, I could live with that, but we're mostly water. You need to drink water regularly. Dehydration we talked about heat stroke, especially in this weather. Oh my gosh, to be caught without water in this type of temperature, in this type of area. If you gosh to be caught without water in this type of temperature, in this type of area.

Speaker 1:

If you're going to be doing a lot of walking and now you've got your breathing under control you can get breathable, healthy air. You're going to need water. You're going to need it on a regular basis and it's going to have to be clean so you're not giving yourself or your family intestinal diarrhea like a trip to south of the border or you're getting chemicals. The water in our creeks is not fit to drink. I give these seminars to the public and say, hey, we're going to have to have water, and the guy raises his hands. Well, you've got a beautiful creek out back. That's Bear Creek. It's wonderful. Bear Creek is wonderful. I like it. It's a wonderful area, but it's not good to drink. Neither is swimming pool water. That's another myth, and 98% of the time that water out of your toilet tank is not going to be very drinkable, if at all, especially depending upon what you use to keep your toilet clean Air and water.

Speaker 1:

There are a number of filtration things. There are a number of issues we have talked about with water For you new folks. Go back and review the issues For you. Veterans know that. For example, the Berkeley filter they have just stopped making the refills, the big black things that go inside the big Berkeleys to clear out your water. For a reverse osmosis filter, yeah, they've had to stop making those and there's a new company out. You're going to want to follow that. If you're looking at those little filter straws, well, those were okay then, but I think you're going to want to look at some more advanced filtration for water. There are cups that are now I would equate them like a French press coffee making unit in which you take the best water you can find, and that's very important. Start with the cleanest water available. Filter it a few times through a t-shirt, through charcoal granules, if you happen to have any, or at least through a t-shirt, and if you've got some backwoods skills, there's a lot of things you can do. These are type of things we, the newbies, should be working on right now. I can't give it to you here in 20 minutes, but I want you to be alerted to it.

Speaker 1:

Scroll back, look at the water things we've got, and there have been some changes. The top water filters of five years ago are no longer Number one. This is because we're seeing what's called forever chemicals in our water. We're also seeing more microplastics. Yeah, that's exciting, all those plastic bags they've been nagging at you to do something with. Well, they're finally breaking down and getting actually in the microscopic level into the water supply. So that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Let's start thinking about that. You're going to need air filters, you're going to need water filtration in your go bag and you're going to need some food. Now it used to be a couple of granola bars, maybe some top ramen cup of noodles. Something like that was all you were going to need, because it was likely you would get to a shelter or you would get out of the area. Now I have found that having at least two weeks worth of food backup food is a good idea.

Speaker 1:

Now I use the dehydrated food. It's from Mountain House Products and what it is is a self-contained unit, a foil bag, in which you open it carefully, add a measured amount of water, which you heat, you stir it and you wait and you end up with chili or you end up with macaroni and cheese. It's not bad at all, I've eaten it. I actually, on one of my previous programs, cooked up a bag. I think I cooked one up for a class that I taught and we boiled some water in there over the portable fire starter. They loved that and heated it up and it was not too bad. We passed it out. Everybody had a spoon and tried it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, emergency food should be for emergency systems. You should have some sporks or utility items, a spoon, a knife, something you can use to eat this food with, and you're going to want to have a cup. So a little meal kit needs to be in this go bag. So you've got food, you've got water, you've got air filtration. You're going to need warmth and light.

Speaker 1:

Now, in fire season, I hesitate to even mention starting a fire. I think that is pretty irresponsible. Now, if you're downtown in a concrete area, that's a whole different thing. If you're out in the woods somewhere and you have not started a fire since your Cub Scout days. You've got work to do in advance. Also, there are other ways to heat things. There are little fire-in-a-can items going on Amazon for emergency heat, emergency fire that's important. Emergency heat, emergency fire that's important. And as we get into the colder weather, be careful with trying to use your camp stove or just a portable flame in a tent, because that's going to help carbon monoxide gather. You're going to get smoke. You're going to actually choke yourself out. So if you're new to this, you've got a lot of homework to do. You've got a lot of reading. If you're a veteran, let's take a look at some of the new fire systems.

Speaker 1:

Now. I firmly believe you should always be able to build a fire. You should have several fire starting ways available to you. Primarily, when I go up to Diamond Lake for Thanksgiving dinner, it's usually snowing and coming back down, the last time we went, there was black ice all the way. We had to stop and pull over a few times and had we gotten snow and they were predicting it, we would have been stuck on a mountain road that you couldn't drive on and I would have had to keep us warm in the car and perhaps heat things from our emergency food. Look at where you go, look at where you're traveling, look at what your normal day is and where you're going to be going in an emergency. That's part of planning. So having some emergency food, emergency utensils, even if it's just a cup and a spoon, is going to be really, really important.

Speaker 1:

Light I cannot tell you how important light is in an emergency. During the time we had the talent fire, the one here in the Ashland talent area, one of our neighbors was doing okay on everything, except they were sitting in the dark. Even during the day it was kind of dark and at night they were going nuts. They didn't have any lighting. And this is when something as simple as those emergency light sticks that you break can make the difference. Now, a rechargeable flashlight, a hand flashlight, candles maybe, kerosene lamps maybe, depends on the situation. If you're having earthquakes probably not Aftershocks can burn your own house down with candles and emergency stuff like that, but the simple idea of having one of those glow sticks that are available at most hardware stores. They come in colors there's white, there's green and there's red and there's even yellow. You determine what you need the white for which is to see better. The red to keep your night vision in an emergency situation. Yellow can be used to mark hazards, as can red and green marking safe areas.

Speaker 1:

This is if you happen to be out, and let's go back to my car trip. If I'm stuck in the woods alongside a road, starting to snow, I'm gonna want to mark what's safe. Well, there's quite a drop off over there, don't do that. So in my go bag, I've got food, I've got water, I've got air filters, I've got some light and some heat. Now, part of heat is being able to build a fire. Part of heat is being able to keep warm yourself and, especially if you're trapped in a car or stuck in a car, a don't die in the woods blanket. That's the official blanket of the refuse to be a victim podcast.

Speaker 1:

I've just made it. I've just made it. So it's something you can wrap yourself in and you are go inside of it. I got them. I chose those because they are much bigger physically and they are much thicker physically and they are much more flexible, which means you can actually wrap yourself up in it. I'm a fairly large person and I turn into a giant burrito. It's really colors, or you can get the type of camo look that, if you don't want to attract a lot of attention out in the woods, you can do that Building a fire, knowing how to do it safely, knowing how to heat food. Think about being a gray man, don't stand out.

Speaker 1:

What are the things you're going to have to have with you in this bag, in addition to the stuff we talked about? Do you have medication you have to take? What do you have for first aid? A simple cut or simple sprain can become a big deal in an emergency situation. What are you able to do? And again, this is not. Yeah, I think I can do that. What can you do when your wife or your son or your daughter or your husband looks at you and says, hey, I need some help? What can you do? What do you have with you? And this is why bug out bags get so incredibly huge? If you're bugging out on foot, you can carry what you can carry. If you're bugging out in the car, you got something in the car. Remember we talked about that last week. The bug out bag from your home is going to go with the bug out bag or the get home bag in your car and now you've got two stashes of supplies. That's the process. You're constantly building on what you can do, what do you know, what can you carry and what can you use.

Speaker 1:

Other things Getting information. I will go off on a tirade and a couple of issues about the lack of emergency information and the fact our local broadcasters have totally stepped away from their responsibilities. Shame on you. But I will say that WatchDuty is an app that you can get and it's put out by real people and you can get it on your phone and it tells you when fires happen and what the status is. Jackson County alerts and I'm going to include where to know your zone and the Jackson County alert site. This is very, very useful. It's a little unsettling late in the evening to have that alert thing go off, but it's really, really good to know, because I'd much rather have three or four hours notice than 15 minutes when somebody comes down on a sheriff's car with the red lights flashing saying you got to go.

Speaker 1:

One big thing that's very important is know your zone. When those alerts come in, they're going to say okay, everybody in zone 323 needs to get ready, needs to be on standby. Oh my gosh, this could be scary. What zone are you in? Gosh, this could be scary. What zone are you in? So this sounds complicated, but it's not, because once you get the prepping bug and once you and your family and I cannot stress this enough if it's just my wife and I my son lives in another city, my sister lives in another state. We have some friends, but excrement comes to the air conditioner, it's just the two of us. We're prepared.

Speaker 1:

What about a young family? What are you going to do for brothers and sisters? Do you have immediate family in the area? What's going to happen? This is important to talk about in advance, and once you start talking about it and you don't have to become nuts and hold weekly meetings and drills I do recommend holding family meetings on the topic, and that means including the kids Stuff that's going to go in your bug out bag, beyond meds, the first aid supplies, things like that. I recommend a deck of cards for boredom. I recommend you're going to want to have and this is regardless of the family a thumb drive containing all kinds of information you're going to need and you're also going to want it in a laminated piece of paper emergency numbers, people to call addresses, things you may need in an emergency, insurance policies, all of that stuff. Who's your agent? How do you reach that person? All of this stuff has to come with you. Sounds daunting, but it's not. The more you think about it, the more you start researching. The more you look at these ideas we've got for you, the more it's going to happen. And that's what you got to do. You got to baby step into it. Buying equipment we're going to talk about that next week.

Speaker 1:

Some people and I'm guilty of this myself I've been doing this a long time so I kind of look at it with one eyebrow. I go, oh, look at that. Just the idea of a pocket knife or having a blade in your go bag to cut food or to cut up a stick for kindling, or to skin a squirrel, make a cool hat. There's a lot of things. Some of us and I discovered this when I was working the thought of a person having a knife is almost as frightening as them having a firearm in a school zone To some people. I had quite the set to where I used to work because it was discovered he's got a pocket knife. Yeah, I have a holder I've been carrying for like 14 years. Deal with it. It turns out I was in the job that I opened up all the boxes and such, but we're going to talk next time about buying equipment.

Speaker 1:

You should have a good knife, but what makes a good knife for a new person? You should have a good knife, but what makes a good knife for a new person and what makes a good knife for somebody who's been using one for 20 or 30 years? If you're a newbie and you're feeling overwhelmed, there's a lot of things here. There are also you can reach out and talk to other people, I think. For the last three years I've been giving free workshops throughout the community and I've pretty well worn out that welcome mat. So I am available now to give workshops on this very topic and they are 90 minutes. They include a lot of links, they include some demos, they include looks at products and I will be charging for those now and, if you're interested, there's a link on the website at Refuse to be a Victim and you can always email me directly. My email address is where you log in and let's see final things to look at.

Speaker 1:

Classes coming up. It's now time. As the fall comes up, the days get shorter days, get cooler, don't forget we do still have classes available. We have a lot of options, from non-ballistic self-defense right up to tactical training. So do call, do stop by the website, see what we've got. There's new thoughts, there's new information coming out in all areas, be it prepping, be it firearms, be it personal safety, more important than ever now. Don't be the one standing there looking like a deer in the headlight, especially if you've got a family, especially if you've got people counting on you. Don't think no bug out bag without a plan is just a really long walk. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Subscribe, share, be safe, have a good one. The preceding was a presentation of Retired Guy Productions.

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