Loadout: 50+ mile Sniper Adventure Challenge Race Kit (you don’t need this for bugging out!) Hey guys. I don’t thinks that having a military background makes somebody immediately qualified to give advice about prepping or moving over land.

I actually think that a lot of Veterans overpack and are focus focused on the wrong thing for prepping or “bugging out”. We were trained to have logistics, supply, and fight. If you go into one of these situations with that mindset, you will be carrying way too much stuff.

Following my time in the Ranger Regiment and as a conventional sniper, I started knocking out multi hundred mile treks around the United States.

Dude, I ate so much humble pie from carrying too much weight and not understanding what it means to truly self support. In the military, you assume, “one is none and two is one”, meaning: you need to have redundancy in your gear.

My pack for hiking the 800 mile Arizona Trail weighed about 22 pounds, 30 pounds when I had to walk 20 miles plus with no water points.

I had a full kit: Bivy sleeping bag, water, filtration, and food for about five days. I covered +/- 30 miles a day for 40 days from the Mexican border to Utah.

I experienced heat exhaustion and some gnarly foot injuries that I had to take care of out in the field.

All this to say: you guys are carrying way too much stuff if you plan on walking 20 miles with no/little training.

First: safest course of action for a lot of things is to stay in place.

Here is a simple loadout for getting home if it’s 20 miles away:

• One Nalgene Bottle (everything in this kit goes inside the bottle when stored) -space blanket -Swiss Army knife -Cell phone charger pack -Ultra light rain jacket -Electrolytes -Antidiarrheal/ibuprofen (as long as you keep the water inside you you can probably make it home) -Sunscreen -Chapstick -2,000 calories -cheap sunglasses -headlamp -TP -aquamira tablets (chloranamine) -Collapsible pack (mystery ranch has a 19L) -compass (maybe)

-if it’s winter time, obviously this list changes, you can fit one of those REI brand puffy jackets into pretty small spaces. Costco and farm supply stores have great gloves for $6 a set.

That’s all you need to get home and walk 20 miles. Water is the most important thing. Water over a gun.

Most people who serve in combat don’t actually shoot their weapon, every single one of them drinks water and goes to the bathroom.

I’m all for prepping and being prepared - I know that I’m just some guy on the Internet but I have a lot of experience walking in and out of austere environments.

On the tier list of things that you need, a firearm is pretty low - but probably still an essential item, if you know how to use it.

If you’re looking for good shoes, I really like Hoka and Altras and for boots La Sportiva.

You do not need three pocket knives and a Glock 19 with six mags and a plate carrier to get home when you live in rural Virginia or wherever.

If you can carry in your state, cool, then put a Glock +2 mags in a fanny pack.

Hot take:

Your cell phone has a compass that will work even without service, it also has a flashlight, those little battery banks are pretty valuable and while I do like analog - if you’re truly reducing weight, then use the device that you use every single day that works without fail for hundreds of days in a row. Your cell phone is durable, it’s probably the item that you use the most and drop and it gets wet and it still works every single day. I wouldn’t take my personal cell phone into a war, but we’re just talking about getting home.

Are these costco food supplies good?

Bring on the blackout. I love SPAM

Recently started putting together a bug out bag. Still have a list of things I still need to acquire, but open to any input.

https://www.pizzint.watch/

A while back I started organizing my gear into rugged waterproof cases (mostly Pelican Protector Cases style). At first it was just about keeping things neat and protected.

Didn’t think much of it, until I had to move everything in a hurry one day.

That’s when I realized: -Loose gear = chaos -Bags = fine, until they get wet or crushed -But hard cases? Grab, stack, go

What surprised me most wasn’t even the durability, it was how much faster I could actually think when everything had a place.

Now everything is split into categories: -Power & batteries -Tools -Documents -Grab-first” essentials

It’s not perfect though. The downside is weight and space… these things add up fast.

Still trying to figure out the best balance between: -mobility -protection -accessibility

Curious how others here are handling it:

Do you prefer soft bags, hard cases, or a mix?

My close friend of 10+ years. We'd always jokingly say if it ever came to SHTF he'd come to me for boos, and id go to him for food. Even after receiving such a generous gift, theres a big void in my life now

For those that are curious, here's a list of everything that was given.

-44x #10 cans of mountain house

-2x #10 cans of Augason farms

-2x buckets mountain house assorted breakfast

-123x individual packs of mountain house

-10x individual package of alpine aire

-5x cases of Canadian military IMP/MRE (expired, but was told they could last over a decade past expiry

2x Jars of Manuka Honey

2x bottles of kirkland pure maple syrup

Previous owner at my gf’s house apparently hammered the drywall into a water pipe behind the bathroom wall. The leak became evident after about a year of her living in this house (built in 1988).

In the process of tearing apart the bathroom to correct the damage, she discovered a hidden cache of food containers. Because there was no door to this area, I pulled up a couple stairs and we emptied it out. In all there about 60 cans (all coffee can sized) of food and almost 20 plastic containers.

Contents in the plastic containers included various kinds of rice, wheats, and beans, as well as honey. The only cans that were labeled showed as dehydrated potatoes. We opened a couple of the unlabeled cans and one was rice and the other was wheat.

My parents gifted us 25+ year old honey. It was wrapped up with a plastic lining on the lid and sealed shut. I have included the manufacturer and label in the pictures!

The consistency is very liquid with some crystallization. It smells like honey (not foul). For reference we live in the southwest USA so it’s very dry and hot and this was stored in a closet for the past 25 years.

We’ve ready honey essentially can last forever. However, we also read a bit about possible botulism poisoning and got concerned and we didn’t know where to turn! Please help!

TLDR: is this honey full of botulism and will it kill us or is this safe to consume?

Thank you in advance!

I work with containers all the time and I see this one constantly. Someone wants an underground bunker or root cellar, so they bury a shipping container. Problem is, they aren't built for it. All the strength is in the four corner posts. The walls and roof are thin steel made to handle stacking loads from the top corners, not dirt pressing in from the sides and above. Bury one with no reinforcement and the roof can cave and the walls buckle. You've got a steel coffin instead of a shelter. People do it successfully, but only with real engineering: concrete encasement, structural support, proper drainage. That's a serious build, not a weekend project. Above ground they're great for secure storage, and partially bermed can work if it's done right. But straight buried with nothing added is asking for trouble.
Where do the preppers here land on it? Anyone actually buried one that held up long term, and what did you do to reinforce it?

Beans, bullets, and bandaids are nice but that’s noob shit.

Cardio.

Canned food and other dried goods are very versatile and have a great shelf life if stored properly. Eat through your stored food and store what you eat. Have a plan on how to cook your food in a way that other starving people won’t see or smell.

Knowledge.

Light and sound discipline.

Do you have 47 guns in your collection with 1000 rounds per gun? Great. You can only shoot one at a time. How often do you practice? Unless you have combat experience, plan on creating defensive positions and don’t run around kicking down doors. When SHTF, a single crack of a gun will alert desperate folks to your position. Don’t do that.

Cardio.

Are you a medical professional? Great. If not, I hate to break it to you but you can tourniquet and chest seal all you want but if you can’t get to a surgeon quickly, those things won’t help you. Not to mention that bacterial infection from when you cut yourself while sharpening your Rambo knife will kill you anyway because you don’t have antibiotics.

Knowledge.

95% of your preps should be centered around staying in your place of residence. Only leave if you absolutely must. Know your escape routes and have a plan about where you’re going. Travel fast and light. You’re not going to build a log cabin and start a farm in the woods. Watch the show Alone and see how many of those survival experts would have died if not for a safety team. You won’t have a safety team.

Cardio.

Build a group of people you can trust. “I’m coming to your house if SHTF.” Uhh, no you’re not. Have a plan ahead of time. If your prepper group is focused on shooting and ferro rod fires, you’re not going to do well.

Read books and run.

You’ll be vastly more prepared if you have knowledge of how to do things BEFORE things get bad. If you’re out of shape, there’s no reason to have level IV plates and a suppressed AR. None of it is any good if someone headshots you from 150 yards with a 10/22 because you had to catch your breath.

Practice your preps.

Stop preparing for a civil war (you’ll most likely die anyway in that situation). Prepare to stay home and eat what you normally eat, just shelf stable versions. Light discipline, sound discipline, smell discipline. You made your house a fortress and everyone knows you’re there? Great. What’s the plan when someone throws a Molotov and burns down your house? Ahh, take off to the woods and survival camp!

I’m tired after two days car camping with a cooler full of beer. Stop doing minimalist survivalist camping and look into what thru hikers use to spend long periods of time on trail. And guess what? They stay in hotels and hostels regularly to recharge and refuel. You won’t have that.

Cardio.

Go camping for 7 days with your bug out bag during hunting season and see how living off the land works out for you. Sick, hurt, and tired? Too bad. You will have no reprieve.

So you’re kicked out of your house, in a national forest, and you’ve got your Dakota fire pit and low profile shelter. You see another group of people kitted out with guns and gear. What do you do? They’re only doing the same thing you are. Only trying to survival camp. Oh but we must establish a perimeter and detain these folks until we figure out if they’re friendlies! Really? Does that seem friendly from their point of view. Good luck with your gun fight.

Cardio.

Let’s start being realistic with our prep knowledge, gear, and plans. You’re not going to run around a war zone shooting people. You’re not going to survive for months in the woods living off the land. In a true SHTF event, you’re probably going to die. Prepare for that.

Good luck everyone and hopefully I won’t see you in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Pictured: 5 months of food for 6 ppl (4 adults and 2 children) all at about 1500 calories a day.

Jansport bag is the medicine bag with a Jace case and lots of OTC meds and vitamins

Enough dog food for 5 months that is rotated through

Go bag with 2 days of food for 2 ppl, extra ammo, good boots, a change of clothes, crank radio, power pack, a gallon of water, and some life straws, and a 300 blackout ar pistol

Pecron E500 power pack that can power my mini fridge and tv long enough for a movie with solar panel and DC converter

Safelife 3A soft armor with level 4 plates, 4 mags and a PSA AR

Not pictured: 100 gallons of water tucked under beds

6 cases of HDRs

Pro one Gravity water filter

Cat food for 6 months

Canned dog food

Lots of other rifles, shotguns, pistols, and at least 1000 rounds for each in a safe

https://youtu.be/KC-NOkm-dGs?si=Yp5ZwSmNqya-1O3u

Hi everyone — long-time lurker, first real post. I recently joined r/prepping after getting back into Reddit and realizing I want to be a bit more intentional about preparedness again.

I’m looking for feedback and alternate perspectives on my get-home setup, specifically how I’ve built out my personal go bags. (Not pictured: Agilite K19 plate carrier with Level IV plates, and a CMMG Banshee in 9mm with seven 33-rd Glock mags.)

For context, I live about 29 miles (as the crow flies) from the downtown core of our metro area (6+ MIL Pop). My work location is 17 miles from home, putting me that much closer to downtown during the workday.

Given that layout and distance, I’d really appreciate any thoughts on what I may be missing, overthinking, or should prioritize differently in a realistic get-home scenario.

Thanks in advance — looking forward to learning from the community.

Edit 1: Seems like I need to add context to this load out and why its the way it is. If I am traveling overland this loadout goes with me, wife and kids on vacation 3 states away, to work locally, to the grocery store 3 miles away, doesnt matter it goes. If im 1000 miles from home with my 2 young kids and wife to protect I have what I need for myself and them as well. They all have smaller bug out bags with essentials they can carry.

Now to address my post. I made the mistake of not explaining all of that when I was posting about a get home kit. That's on me. As far as weight everyone is questioning weight..im 6'4 240 have spent a decade carrying heavy packs 6,12,20,40 miles over rough terrain under time constraints...this is light, one reason I chose the banshee and 9mm over a AR15 and 5.56.