Bug-out bags are the topic of a lot of conversations these days, even within the government. This increasing awareness is good because they’re not just a great idea; your bug-out bag could save your life. You never know when you will be faced with an emergency and have to evacuate your home. With a bug-out bag at the ready, you can leave with a moment’s notice, sure that you have everything you need to survive.

That doesn’t mean that a bug-out bag has everything you might want in it. We’re not talking about packing a suitcase for a weekend vacation, but rather preparing something that will be available for use in an emergency situation. For a bug-out bag to be effective, it needs to be focused on survival, nothing else.

The biggest problem is fitting everything into your bug-out bag. If you simply start listing all the items you might want to take in the case of an emergency, you’ll end up with a huge load. You’ve got to make sure that you have the most important things. Then, if you have room left over, you can think about extras.