Knowledge is important; skills are important; fitness is important; but let’s not pretend that stuff doesn’t help you prepare for emergencies too. That makes travel more challenging, because it’s not just dead people who can’t take it all with them. What are some of the special problems of traveling, and how can we deal with them? Salty and I talk about it in this podcast:
Travel in your car
This is the simplest prepping situation for travel. In fact, we keep our cars prepped all the time anyway. Each vehicle has a Get Home Bag including a good first aid kit, a bit of food and water, and limited tools such as those needed to purify water and make fire … and some cash. Tool kits, spare tires, and a jumper pack lives in each car too; as do some warm clothes and boots in winter. Hey, strandings happen around here.
Travel and TSA
Now it gets trickier. I’m packing for a hiking trip, but can’t carry bear spray or even a pocketknife. Hmm. What can be done?
I don’t know about you good people, but I don’t push my luck with TSA. I want to bore them and be shooed away as quickly as possible. No scissors; so I always travel with fingernail clippers. Why? One major use of the scissors in my first aid kit is to cut tape. Fingernail clippers can often get that done my making the first nick that lets even the tough tapes rip cleanly.
I do carry my filtering water bottle. TSA doesn’t care so long as it’s empty when I pass them; then I can fill it from fountains (and not pay $5 for a bottle of water, not being a big fan of the Travel Gouge).
Travel first aid
We avoid checked baggage if at all possible. I’m sure you get why. That means packing very light. I slim the first aid kit down, removing most of the comfort items (such as anti-itch creams, most over-the-counter meds, and band-aids).
The items for serious problems stay. A compression bandage for serious hemorrhage travels with me, as does a SAM splint and bandaging to hold it in place. (Click the highlights for reasons why, and how to use them.)
Protection from common risks stay too. My little one quart ziplock bag has some DEET, some antibiotic ointment, and some alcohol gel (airplanes are great for disease transmission). Clothes meant to hike in get sprayed with permethrin before we go.
Travel among thieves
What prepper hasn’t heard “Two is one?” Travel is a high risk time to get ripped off, and the losses can be a greater problem than usual. We duplicate mission critical items and carry them separately as far as is feasible.
I can’t get on my airplane to come home without a solid ID. Because of that, my driver’s license will be in my wallet in my bag, while my passport card will be in a pocket. Plenty of cash will be in both places; with more squirreled away in the carry-on. If I had any critical meds, they’d be similarly split. That’s already saved us on one vacation, when some silly git (Spice whistles innocently) forgot a pill bottle.
My credit card companies know where I’m traveling, and I’ve written down which two cards I’m carrying and removed all others from my wallet. The numbers of the cards and the contact info for the card companies is coming with me, in a second storage site. The numbers aren’t written clear though. I have a simple mathematical transformation I apply before I write them down. It’s simple enough I’ll remember it, but I’d be surprised if anyone finding the paper had the patience to figure out the system to hack the cards.
If you need prescription vision correction, don’t forget to bring spares of that, too!
Prepared to travel by foot
My trip is planned to involve a lot of hiking, but these ideas apply even if you don’t Want to hike but it’s your bug-out plan.
Shoes. Good walking shoes. Also, shoes that are fine for normal walking on the flat may be too small in the mountains (going downhill mashes toes into the toe box) or if you have to walk much. My shoe size went up when I started doing more hiking.
Socks that reduce friction and thus blisters are one of the best clothing buys I ever made. (Ok, Salty ever made For me; he’s the better shopper.) Dry socks are invaluable in cold weather too, so my hiking pack has spare wool socks in a ziplock bag.
All of this makes it sound like a lot, doesn’t it? Still, off I go tomorrow with a backpack I can carry in one hand and a bag that fits under the seat in front of me. If I get Really motivated, I’ll try my experiment of hiking for a full day on one of those ‘full day emergency ration bars’ and let you know how it went. Happy Travels!
One thing that you could add to this, if you are traveling outside the country make sure to find out if what you intend to carry meets the legal requirements of where you are going.
For example, while in Paris last fall my wife and I were going to visit the sights. At each of the major attractions there were security screeners with wands looking for weapons (gun/knife). While going through security at the Eiffel Tower, they took my Pioneer SAK. It was our first day in the city and I didn’t know the security protocols. I should have left the SAK in the hotel room but I didn’t know this would be a major problem. I found out later that all I had to do was look online.
Good point, zoocop. I have to do that when going to different states even, as I habitually carry pepper spray. In Florida, I need my concealed carry permit … for the pepper spray.
the link for the show notes is broken, any chance of it being updated ?
Sorry about that, this is the show notes article… I had a typo!