Music

Welcome to the Philcraft Survival Podcast.

Today we're going to be talking about go bags, go bag considerations, what kind of bag you should carry, what you should carry in your bag, and a whole bunch of things on emergency preparedness and survival.

I appreciate you guys tuning in to iTunes and SoundCloud last episode we talked about every day carry and it evoked a lot of conversation and I was able to get a lot of good feedback from you guys.

So I appreciate tuning in and look forward to doing a lot more of these podcasts in the future that do in the realm of survival preparedness.

So when we talk about go bags, you know, go bags is something that I've utilized really my entire special operations career.

I mean, it's something that we utilized in every facet of kind of that operations, whether it's food and bullets, water, whatever it may be, the go bag is basically the last resort if something goes back.

What we like to do is we plan our go bags based off the operational environment that we're operating in and early on in my special operations career, you know, where we're doing operations, maybe a long range movement or maybe a long range operation, where the number one priority is bullets, food and water.

Well, if something happened on that vehicle and I had to unass for lack of better term, you know, evade from that vehicle because of something catastrophic happening, at least I would have a bag with things that would allow me to survive a period of time to get away to evade to await rescue.

Typically, like I said, those things were bullets, magazines preloaded with ammunition and some kind of food or water. Usually we use the mills ready to eat and we just put bottles of water inside the bags.

Another term that's often used in special operations that we talk about when we talk about specifically these bags is something called a speedball.

Now, a speedball, unlike a go bag, is pre-packed and designed to facilitate an operation and an ongoing operation and to allow it to continue for contingency purposes, but also for sustainment purposes.

So I might preload a speedball that has food, water, maybe some operational equipment, batteries, etc. And then as I'm conducting the operation, I already have it mapped out in a deliberate plan when I'm going to receive this.

Sometimes it's a contingency type thing where it's given to you in a quick reaction scenario where something goes wrong, but most of the time it's given to you in a sustainment process along the way.

Now, how is the go bag that we utilized or the speedball that we utilized and special operations and combat evolved into the go bag that I'm talking about today?

Well, you know, I've written a couple articles on the go bag for task and purpose for soldier systems. Really my mindset on go bags completely changed when I started doing contract work.

Because when I was in the military, we had a three-day assault pack, it was desert tan, and it had all the stuff that we needed, and it was over, right? There's no need for me to hide what was in this.

And to be honest, it wasn't really optimal or optimized. Mill ready to eat, for example, has three to five thousand calories.

Well, it's also pretty big. I mean, it's a large form factor. So when we looked at optimization, if we really wanted to optimize food, we would either break down the MRE or instead of water, which would be ballows of water, we would maybe look at doing something like iodine tablets because water was potentially readily available.

So, you know, when you have an overt go bag, it has its time and place. Well, when you're doing low viz or reduce signature operations where you can't have a big desert backpack on your vehicle or on your back, then you need to streamline that.

And when I started contracting in these foreign countries, you know, realizing that I had to be more covert, I started looking at different options for go bags.

You know, Philcraft, when we started up the company a year ago, I started off with what's called the minimalist survival kits.

...