Keep dipping into your BOB? Well don’t.

Do you go camping? Enjoy a little time with nature, or a lot of time with nature? I’m going to assume so.

Do you have a Bug Out Bag (BOB) a Get Home Bag (GHB) or any kind of survival kit? Once again I’m going to assume so.

Like most prepper/survivalist/vigilant civilian’s we have survival gear, camping gear, and things like that. Odds are most of us have. So here’s a wonderful trick that will cost you a chunk of money, but could possibly save your life. A bad memory! I kid you not. Think about it this way, when was the last time you went camping and thought “Oh I’m out of small camping gas cylinders. I’ll just use the one from my BOB and replace it later”? It’s a very common thing for many people. There’s nothing wrong with that. Except if you forget to replace it later. Then when you need the item, it’s not there.What about a knife or toilet paper?

Have you ever dug into your survival gear because you needed an item? The thing is, if you’re anything like me, you never replace it. You do plan on replacing it, and you tell yourself that this time you definitely will, but inevitably you don’t. This is usually the case for most people when they go camping. They need to pick up a camping axe, so borrow the one from their BOB. It’s so easily done. The temptation to borrow items for a camping trip is one reason why I always empty out my camping gear BEFORE I go out. That way I can see what I need to pick up and replace. A good trick is doing the same when you get back from camping. Double checking! While airing your tent and sleeping gear, make a list of all of the items used during your trip. This list is your next shopping order. A great way to stop the borrow from BOB temptation.

Sorry, I digress.

A bad memory could save your life because, once you have put together a kit, you need to forget the items ever existed. Don’t forget the kit altogether. Just remember that once you have put something into the bag, for the purposes of everyday life, that item never existed. That torch that you love, buy 2 of them, because when one goes into a kit, it’s gone for good as far as you need to know. Sleeping gear, cooking gear, anything and everything that goes into your survival kit has to be forgotten about. This is the easiest way to stop yourself digging into it when you get tempted.

Gone to the shops. Just purchased a new cooking stove for your GHB. Get home. Put it into your survival bag…and it’s gone. Suddenly 2 weeks later the only camping stove you own (the one in the BOB no longer exists) breaks. So the only working camping stove that you own is in your BOB, right? WRONG!!! You have zero working camping stoves available to you. You need to go online or to your local store and pick up a new stove before you go camping, because you do not have one. But what about that new stove in the WSK (Wilderness Survival Kit)? Nope! There is not one. That bag is a black-hole that eats items. Once an item goes it, it doesn’t come out. Forget about them. They’re gone.

This is the only sure fire way to make sure that when you need your survival gear, that it’s all there, as expected, ready to go.

Yes every year you should replenish any and all perishables that need swapping out, and do regular maintenance to check items are in working order and not time-damaged. But apart from that one check every year or every 6 months (which ever you prefer, I’m lazy and check every couple of years…bad habit I know), so apart from testing, the items in your survival kits do not exist.

This will be a more expensive way to gear up. That is one major downside and yes it sucks. However, the upside hugely outweighs the downside. The upside is that when something goes wrong and you need to pull out your survival kit to save a live, help a rescue effort, get out of Dodge, or simply because things are going bad and you need to gear up, you know that your bad memory has left every item that you put into your bag still there.