XReadiness Start with Go Bags? BBC Are You Ready. "Do you have a Go Bag?" There's More to Survival Than Lists
Go Bags? (UK specific)
This Leatherman is tiny.
This is what my set up looks like. Its extremely cosy, but it takes far more than just a hammock to achieve that.
The above is the bare minimum for me: Shelter, fire kit, Torches, thermometer /hygrometer, SDR radio, solar power Banks, knife, compass, personal media, and a scarf. Add to this these and its complete.
Can opener.
The 1st question I ask is where are you going with your Go Bag? At the moment in the UK, primary risks to life are severe weather (heat, cold, and wind) flooding and sea level rise. Wild fires are increasingly becoming a risk.
The location of your home will dictate your risks. Buildings and contents are at risk in certain conditions
This article is a response to this XReadiness
High risk homes:
Flooding and Sea Level Rise
Homes on low lying coastal land 1-2m above sea level at the moment.
Homes on river flood plains
Wildfires
Homes in woodlands with vegetation coming up close to the house.
Flooding and wildfire risks are often communicated via alerts to our phones. Advanced warning is a signal to leave your home, where you are planning to go will dictate what's in your Go Bag. My suggestion is to go to friends, a hotel or relatives. Your Go Bag only needs to contain clothes wash bag and towel and maybe take sleeping bags and camping mats. Ignoring evacuation orders puts rescue staff at risk.
Power Failures
If you have photovoltaic on your roof and you are selling power to the grid, when there is a power failure. You dont have power, even if you have a battery. If you don't know why, you should ask the company who sold it to you and installed it. You should ask them now.
A power failure for homes with gas or heatpump central heating means that they have no heating. This is because both gas boiler and heatpump heating system are electricity dependent. In severe cold weather no back up heating could be catastrophic for the house and its occupants.
The Solution to this problem is a woodstove & super insulation.
If the power fails, the freezer and fridge goes off. Start eating the contents of the freezer. Eat all the perishable foods 1st.
Now is the time to plan ahead for AMOC collapse. We could expect extremes of -40°C in winter to deadly wet bulb temperatures in summer. If you can't install a woilodstove in your house build a shed in the garden super insulate it and move in there for the winter, its ok, most people in the Global South live in 1 room houses.
Featuring apocalyptic Go Bags, but they are lacking in key components and they fail to suggest what to do with the bag or where to go. What is missing? Tarpaulin, sleep mat and sleeping bags, because, believe me, you will get tired.
If you are planning to head for a wilderness area or woodlands as an escape how many other people do you think has planned the same thing to the same location? Unless its your own land then you might be spending time with other people in the woods who you dont know. This can get pretty awful, especially if alcohol is involved. Never Bug-Out on a whim. Know where you are going and ensure no one else is going there too. Now is the time to plan, but is it the right thing to do?
The XReadiness Go Bag duplicates items like knife and multitool and fails to mention the UKs knife laws.
Fixed blade and lock knives are illegal. A knifes cutting edge must be under 3.5 inches. Machetes, zombie knives, sword sticks and concealed knives are all illegal along with flick knives and gravity knives.
A small multitool usually has an adequate knife on it. This one is 3.5cm long.
Compared with this knife which is illegal however I have a justification for ownership and it is never openly carried
Are you Ready on BBC Go Bags are discussed among experts. One of the presenters bought a hammock at the bushcraft show. This has got to be the least informative show on preparedness I have heard from people who claim to be professionals. The problem is that they have approached survival from an innexperienced, unpracticed theoretical perspective. The outdoor skills aspect of Prepping is the bit that requires a lot of skill and experience. I have been hammock camping for 15 years.and learning survival skills for 30 years.
Missing from XRreadiness is a tarpaulin for shelter. In fact a tarpaulin is a lot more useful than a hammock. Another seriously essential thing missing from XReadiness Go Bag is parachord. Parachord has multiple uses from spare laces to tieing up your tarpaulin.
Go Bags require skills.
A kit list for a skilled outdoor practitioner reduces in weight and gadgetry as skills increase.
Water purification, including English river water.
The rest is skills and knowledge, yes I do have some nylon chord. I also have a Balearic sling. Bluetooth earphones so I can listen to my radio without anyone else listening or disturbing anyone.
Food On The Move
XReadiness suggests food for a couple of days, but no suggestion as to what. Again this is where experience is essential. Both BBC show Are You Ready and XReadiness suggests your Go Bag contain some food. One of the BBC presenters says its mostly Kendal Mint Cake: this is pure sugar. In survival situations you need protein and cards ideally in hot meals.
This will be the only time I suggest a couple of MREs. Vegan self heating rations are an excellent way of keeping your morale up. I always have a spare, because you never know when you might have to feed someone else.
Be the kind stranger in a crisis, it goes a long way.
Outdoor Skills & A Genuine Connection To Nature
Its been 20 years since the film into the Wild came out. The Author of the Original Book by mountaineer Jon Krakauser, who has on a number of occasions climbed Denali, talks about other people like Chris McCandles. People who sought the extreme and escape from the madness of industrial capitalism. People who looked to the writings of Henry David Thoreau. To want to return to nature is admirable to be able to do so takes more than manuals and notional connection to nature as taught by people who call themselves Shamans.
Chris McCandles is a lesson to anyone who thinks they can survive the wild in winter. Especially if you are reliant on a ton of gear and gadgets, doing it out of a book, or trying to do this on your own, or as Justin McAffee says:
"Christopher McCandless’s journey takes on a different cast. His error was not that he sought solitude, but that he sought it without structure, without lineage, without witnesses. He had very limited encounters with people who had some knowledge they shared… but it isn’t the same as having elders to consult, shared knowledge to inherit from a young age, and no agreed-upon moment of return.
The wilderness became not a site of transformation, but a proving ground he entered alone, armed only with books and conviction. The difference is not romantic versus practical. It is relational.
This is where the film’s tragedy deepens. Chris is not undone by his love of nature, nor by his refusal of conventional life. He is undone by a solitude that asks too much of one person. Unlike a rite of passage, his isolation does not prepare him for reintegration. There is no ceremony waiting on the other side, no community ready to receive what he has learned. When he finally understands that he wants to return to share his experience, to be with others, the framework that might have supported that return did not exist."
The book describes something missing from the film. The river was swollen & impassable. But farther upstream was an operational cable and basket bridge. McCandles Map was out of date the Bridge had been built after the map was published. Knowing this, I have a different take to McAffee. IMHO, McCandles was foolhardy, ill equipped and under skilled but he wasn't aware of that. The lack of cultural support around him, that was because industrial capitalism has its own Initiation Rites. McAffee is correct about the community and the culture of nurturing a deep connection to nature and survival skills. Survivalism is an initiation culture in the true sense, the initiation is the proving ground, the Elders are those who have the skills and the experience of a humbling by nature.
I suspect thet many people yearn for nature but barely realise it. Unfortunately they fall into the hands of individuals who will take hundreds of £££ to teach them online, a blend of new age woo and semi truths about the science of nature connection. They justify teaching online as a means to orienteering you to your local environment. But they miss the point, the science says nature connection, happens in nature. Nature connects to us through the limbic system mediated by brain chemistry. No one can connect you to nature its a personal relationship, the plants do the rest.
Now, in the midst of a global crisis people talk about preparedness, but barely grasp that the way to preparesness requires rapid learning of skills on a rapidly changing planet, in a chaotic climate.
Our brains are already hardwired to nature.this has been proven through psychiatric and psychological research. Nature interacts with the limbic system as soon as we come into contact with it. Learning survival skills in nature switches on our brain and opens our senses and awareness. This in turn relaxes us. Survival skills instill confidence and inquisitiveness. By guiding the inquisitiveness into exploring the non food properties of plants, we build alliances and friendships with the "more than human world" through this interaction. This attitude to survival and nature isn't Bushcraft or Prepping its Paleo Survival with some modern Tech.
Do NOT go into nature long term unless you are highly skilled and connected to nature and have a community of other highly skilled individuals around you in you community. Now is the time to learn.
Anxiety
Its medically proven that contact with nature is good for your mental health, reduces anxiety and depression. The climate crisis is terrifying I have children and I worry. But I also know that they are skilled. Skills instill a sense of confidence and give people resources to fall back on. Digging and gardening are proven non medication psychological interventions for Generalised Anxiety.
Do You Know Your Neighbours?
Do You Know Your Neighbours? Yes.
We had extremely untrustworthy racist neighbours who tbh were toxic. They have moved now, but in a serious disaster I wouldn't have trusted them. Do you know your community, that's not the same as knowing your neighbours. These are the people that share your Values.
In planning for climate and ecological collapse, its really only the people who don't deny climate change who are our community. Yet I hear some Green Pundits saying we should be having uncomfortable conversations with people who hate us? Why? To be inclusive? Why bother, they have been planning for collapse for a long time and they are at about the level of the XReadiness leaflet, but because they deny climate change, have no idea they are already living in the midst of collapse & ecological breakdown. Its important to remember that many survival groups who spend more time worrying about chemtrails are never going to be our friends. They may look more skilled than we are, but they are entirely gadget dependent and militaristic in their approach and entertain fantasies of being ICE agents, just for the opportunity for the cruelty. Modern Shamen who think they can tame the fascists are slipping deeper into delusion.
Collapse is polarising us. Most people are in denial about collapse because it hasn't affected them yet. But it is influencing their behaviour, reactions and thoughts around the future.
We are woefully under prepared, underskilled and vulnerable to every charlatan who comes along on social media promising connection from the comfort of your home and computer screen. Just sit under the tree like the Buddha.
Knowledge that will help You Survive
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