Can You Get To Your Emergency Gear When You Need It?

If Zombies come shuffling your way, you will need to grab your gear fast.  It's a lesson I was recently reminded of while packing for an upcoming cross town move.  In the process, my wife and I are consolidating our stuff and getting rid of things we don't need.  I recently came across a "bug out bag" filled with emergency gear like weather radios, flashlights, fire starters, a mini lantern, etc.  All of which was dutifully wrapped up from our last household move.  It hadn't been touched.  This got me to thinking about a few things:

None of my gear was doing me any good packed away in the back of a closet.  Emergency gear can't help you in an emergency if you don't have it readily accessible.  The very first thing I did was pick out the best of the flashlights (a Mini Maglite), put batteries in it, and move it to the center console of our car.  Now, if I have car trouble or an accident, I have a flashlight close at hand and ready to go.  If your emergency gear isn't available during an emergency, it is a waste of money.  The Zombie Apocalypse isn't going to start when you are ready.  It will start when the Zombies are ready and where they are ready.

 

Some of the gear was deteriorating due to age.  When you pack away your gear, you have to check on it from time to time because it may deteriorate over time.  In this case, I had a radio and a lantern that had fashionable rubberized surfaces.  Over time, these surfaces get tacky and messy.  I tossed these two items and will get better quality equipment in the future.  If I wanted to preserve them a good wipe down with isopropyl alcohol might have done the job.

Vintage Solid-State Transceivers - photo by Joe Haupt from USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Some of the gear would probably not help much in my urban environment.  I found two compasses in with my gear.  Compasses are cool and would enable me to stay on course over long distance land navigation.  However, as a city slicker, I could probably just rely on familiar roads and road signs.  Even in an emergency, long distance land navigation through heavily forested terrain is pretty unlikely.