Get me home bag from Europe

Bad_alibi

Family member is currently working long term out of the country in mainland Europe & UK, mainly France, Belgium, Germany & Spain for up to two months at a time. In light of the current situation in Europe we were talking about survival and preparedness. What would people suggest for a get me home bag (him). Bare in mind he travels mainly by road (has own transport) across borders, only traveling by airport on his return journey home. Contents and items would have to be custom control and airport security friendly.

Look forward to hearing your suggestions.

CelticRambler

OK, I know this is the S&SS forum .... but what situation?

I travel from my hidey-hole in Central France to every corner of this country for work for up to three months at a time, and every adjacent country for weeks or months, just because. The only thing I've ever come close to needing as a "get me home" item is a 20l jerry can of diesel for when the "24/7" service stations refuse to accept my card.

I carry my passport because it's a legal requirement, but haven't needed it recently, except to get into Ireland.

Bad_alibi

Maybe the discussion got a little tin foil hat with the few Xmas sherries. Say a major terror attack. He luckily missed the terrorist attack at Brussels airport by a day he'd been there the morning before it.

CelticRambler

That's the bit I don't understand. I've been in France, Belgium and Germany before, during or after the six recent attacks (Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan etc, Nice, Eurostar, Brussels Airport, Berlin). If I hadn't had the internet, I wouldn't have known anything about anything at the time, so there wouldn't have been any question of trying to get home.

But if you're caught up in the chaos around, e.g. an airport closure (which isn't any worse than the a power-cut affecting every train out of Paris, the like of which I've encountered several times) then all you need is enough cash to be able to feed yourself and the patience to make new arrangements.

Of course we Schengen-area Europeans have it easy - if the worst comes to the worst, we can always walk over the Alps like the von Trapps.

Franco-Swiss border (that wonky line on the top of the rock!)

Stovepipe

Emergency money in a do-not-touch pouch, until you absolutely have to; water; dried snacks; Jocks-sox-tshirt (at least one of each, rolled up tight) in a dry pouch; photocopies of all important documents; phonenumbers of relatives; rollup windbreaker; hat or cap (some means of keeping head dry); gloves.

my3cents

I'd add a few things to Stovepipes common sense list. Nothing heavy but a few things I always like to have. I don't travel by plane so no idea if my fire kit would get though in hand luggage or not anyway I always have a small ziplock bag that includes matches, small gas lighter and a cheap ebay fire steel.

I'd also add to Stovepipes list a small head torch, a whistle, a compass (so you know which direction to walk to get to the Swiss Franco boarder) and a foil survival blanket. With regard to survival blankets I now use the foil survival bags. They are about twice the size of the blankets but have a few more uses, not as strong as a proper survival bag but still better than nothing.

Outer cloths I would keep to a neutral colour in case you find yourself in a situation you don't want to be picked out of a crowd so you'd also want to add up a tightly packed high viz vest in case you want to become very conspicuous. I'd also avoid any cloths that had a "tactical" look about them.

With regards water, I'd always have a foil strip of water purification tablets handy.

I can think of lots of other things but I can't stress how important it is for the user to know exactly what they are carrying and what use it may be to them. A big part of prepping is thinking through what you might need and why you might need it so I don't see too much value in making a bag up for someone else and just giving it too them unless they understand its purpose in some depth.

Smart phones cover a multitude of options now a days and can replace a lot of survival items you might otherwise carry, the downside is all your eggs are in one basket and you need to keep a phone charged. If your phone is taken off you then you can loose your SatNav, Compass, Altimeter, Camera, Radio (FM), Torch, any notes you have on it as well as your means of communication. So either you keep all your eggs in one basket and protect them or carry more individual items and even a backup mobile phone. If your life depends on a Smart Phone then you really need to carry some way of charging it. My choice would be to also have a compass, head torch, small radio and a small spare phone with credit on it. They have been discussed before here and you can get a mobile phone as a backup that isn't much bigger than a credit card.

So for the lazy a combination of the lists so far....

Emergency money in a do-not-touch pouch
water
dried snacks
Jocks-sox-tshirt (at least one of each, rolled up tight) in a dry pouch
photocopies of all important documents
phone numbers of relatives
rollup windbreaker
hat or cap (some means of keeping head dry);
gloves

matches, small gas lighter and a cheap ebay fire steel
foil survival blanket
water purification tablets
whistle
compass
head torch
small radio
spare topped up mobile phone (on a different network to your main phone)

Plus if you mobile phone is part of the survival plan a 12 volt lighter charger and a battery power pack.

CelticRambler

Jayzzzzz, that's a fierce load of stuff to be carrying around with you, every day, all summer long! :eek:

And then someone stomps on you in the mayhem and you lose the bag with all your gear in it.

This kind of preparation is all fine on paper, but pretty useless when the chaos breaks out. It's something that me and my eldest son have discussed at length over the last year, with more than a passing interest.

Here in France, every school is supposed to run three "terrorist intrusion" drills every year while the "state of emergency" continues.

They're a farce. :mad:

A calm, familiar teacher politely asks the children to huddle under their desks while the "threat" unfolds. However, so as to avoid causing any distress to the children, there's no shouting, no running around, no guns/bombs/screaming victims allowed.

I mention SonNo.1 because he's in the Irish reserves and remarked that even when you've practised with blanks, and you know that someone's going start showering you with mortar rounds, and you and your band of brothers are all psyched up, it doesn't stop the WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFF :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: paralysis experienced when the engineers blow the side off a mountain 200m from your trench. Not to mention trained solidiers legging it out of the barracks and forgetting their bug-out bag. As they say on the driving forums, you can be highly trained, but it's the other eejits you need to watch out for.

And then there's "security" jobsworths. I'm involved in a big festival here every summer, and in 2016 I was given the extra job of looking after all the "weapons" confiscated by site security. Now here in France, every Tom, Dick and Granny carries a knife, all the time, everywhere. Children get them as Christmas and birthday presents. But they're on the list of banned items, so I had a queue of disgruntled OAPs handing in their contraband for safe keeping ... along with the little pots of artisanal honey (glass pot, very dangerous), tent pegs (stab risk), cycle spanners (looks dangerous), anti-perspirant (aerosol flame thrower), etc, etc. So you can pack a bag with all the gear you like, but there's no guarantee you'll have it when and where you need it.

Now as it happens, although they confiscated all these things, SonNo.1 successfully carried a knife (a proper "that's a knife" knife :pac: ) through their scan several times a day because they annoyed him. Me too, but I got my own back in other ways. In other words, in such a situation, the motivated trouble-maker will have all the gear he needs to cause pandemonium, but as a law-abiding citizen, you'll have to improvise with whatever's close to hand.

my3cents

Lets close the thread because CelticRambler doesn't agree with bothering to prepare.

So there you go OP let that be a lesson to you, any form of preparation is a total waste of time and you really should expect to have any suggestion that you bother to prepare shot down when you post in the Survivialism & Self Sufficiency forum :rolleyes:

CelticRambler

The OP is asking on behalf of a family member who's working "away from home" and in the context of "the current situation in Europe" - which he hasn't actually explained. If that "current situation" is a Nice/Berlin/Brussels style attack, it's going to be limited to about one square kilometre, and outside of that zone, life goes on as normal, so all you need is the cash to get out of the area and back to wherever you've been staying.

More likely (as any of these scenarios are) is political and financial isolation, when you find you can't move yourself or your money across a national boundary. It doesn't matter what documents you've got, if the banks and the borders are shut, you need cash to tide you over until you get a handle on the situation. The OP's friend has his own transport, so the best bet would be to drive to the nearest unmonitored border point and make a run for it, in which case you could probably charge people for tagging along.

Actually, more likely than either of those situations would be for one of our aged nuclear reactors to blow up, but again, the OP's friend would have time to drive to safety.

I do bother to prepare because this is how I live! Hence the photo of the Franco-Swiss border, which I crossed on foot ... ) :P

(PS if you put a compass, a set of earphones, a spare mobile phone and a Kendall mint cake in your hand luggage, it shows up on the airport x-ray scanners as a potential bomb! Try to make sure you're the last one going through security ... :cool: )

Stovepipe

Its easier than you think to get caught out, if you run out of funds or your car breaks down or your bus/rail/aircraft connection breaks down. Irish people are spoiled to an extent by having very widespread ATM coverage so cash can be drawn from a lot of places but in Europe, ATMs are not as widespread as you might expect, bank access hours are very limited, shops are often closed after teatime Friday and won't open until 7 or 8 am Monday. If you are in a strange town or city, have no local contacts, don't know where to access a youth hostel or backpackers hostel/hotel/pensione/gite or even the equivalent of the Salvation Army, you could be faced with a night in a petrol station or a railway station (and they usually hunt people out of those). I recall wanting to call home from France one time and found to my dismay that the phones used call cards (which are gone here) and the nearest place that sold them had shut at 6 pm. I had coins but not a whole lot and the phone didn't take notes.By chance, an Irish trucker had a spare one and gave it to me and I was able to call and get sorted but it showed me how easy it was to get stuck.

Kichote

Stovepipe wrote: »

Its easier than you think to get caught out, if you run out of funds or your car breaks down or your bus/rail/aircraft connection breaks down. Irish people are spoiled to an extent by having very widespread ATM coverage so cash can be drawn from a lot of places but in Europe, ATMs are not as widespread as you might expect, bank access hours are very limited, shops are often closed after teatime Friday and won't open until 7 or 8 am Monday. If you are in a strange town or city, have no local contacts, don't know where to access a youth hostel or backpackers hostel/hotel/pensione/gite or even the equivalent of the Salvation Army, you could be faced with a night in a petrol station or a railway station (and they usually hunt people out of those). I recall wanting to call home from France one time and found to my dismay that the phones used call cards (which are gone here) and the nearest place that sold them had shut at 6 pm. I had coins but not a whole lot and the phone didn't take notes.By chance, an Irish trucker had a spare one and gave it to me and I was able to call and get sorted but it showed me how easy it was to get stuck.

Mainland Europe is not a nice place to get stuck now with all the recent terrorist and immigrant goings on. I wouldn't like to have to go around knocking on doors.

my3cents

Getting back to the OP's specific question, is there anywhere this travelling relative can call a base in Europe where they can leave stuff? It would be great just to carry the very basics on a plane and then pick up a decent sized and stocked bug out bag in Europe and then drop it off again before leaving.

Bad_alibi

No there's no base. Could be in a place for a month or it could be 6 month and then move somewhere else.

my3cents

Bad_alibi wrote: »

No there's no base. Could be in a place for a month or it could be 6 month and then move somewhere else.

One thing I do which would help is to have one main jacket that I would grab in a survival situation. That jacket is waterproof, a bit large so I can get loads of warm cloths underneath and has lots of large pockets which I keep filled with useful basic BOB items.

Most of what has already been listed will fit into a jacket with the right sized pockets and you can get more into really big pockets with pocket organisers because they stop all the stuff slumping down to the bottom of large pockets.

With a jacket that has a hood that stores in the collar you can often store an item or two in the collar. Just remember whats there so you a pair of socks doesn't fall out when the hood is pulled out when it rains.

Water is the tricky one to carry so just carry a couple of roll up water bottles (pound shop stuff) and a few water purification tablets.

I also have a habit of putting a few useful items in the pockets of every jacket I have so I know at the very least I have a hat and gloves with me when I go out. I suffer from ear ache really badly without a hat when its windy, even in summer, so for my a woolly hat is essential.

Feisar

I used to work in Belgium and The Netherlands, one weekend I happened to be there on my own and went to an ATM to get a few bob to go a bit of a shop. he ATM swallowed my card. Luckily I always keep a bit of cash for emergencies so I was OK. Sure I could have survived on pasta for the weekend however having a bit of cash was great.

I'd say the usual bug out bag effort in the boot of the car along with boots and general outdoor clothing would be the way to go. He might not need to load up and head for the hills but having water and food on hand would be useful. A sleeping bag and or blanket if stuck in the car coupled with water and energy bars would make a crappy situation much better.

my3cents

Feisar wrote: »

I used to work in Belgium and The Netherlands, one weekend I happened to be there on my own and went to an ATM to get a few bob to go a bit of a shop. he ATM swallowed my card. Luckily I always keep a bit of cash for emergencies so I was OK. Sure I could have survived on pasta for the weekend however having a bit of cash was great.

I'd say the usual bug out bag effort in the boot of the car along with boots and general outdoor clothing would be the way to go. He might not need to load up and head for the hills but having water and food on hand would be useful. A sleeping bag and or blanket if stuck in the car coupled with water and energy bars would make a crappy situation much better.

Thats what some people don't get. Its not just about heading to the hills and surviving its about making life as easy as you can for yourself even if things don't work out as you had planned.

Feisar

my3cents wrote: »

Thats what some people don't get. Its not just about heading to the hills and surviving its about making life as easy as you can for yourself even if things don't work out as you had planned.

Yea, it's the thing most people don't get when it comes to prepping. It's about the day to day bits and bobs that make life easier.