Inside was a thick substance, portioned into squares like a graham cracker, that smelled strongly of apples. No food? I searched again, pawing through everything twice more before realizing that the food was, in fact, tucked in with the water packets: a single dense rectangle marked MAYDAY Emergency Rations / Non-Thirst Provoking. The smaller pockets contained a mishmash of items, including a first aid kit, goggles, off-brand N95 mask, leather gloves, fire-starters, glow sticks, a spiral-bound book of survival instructions, a foil emergency blanket, and a folded piece of plastic, about the size of a gas station poncho, that was labeled-optimistically, I thought-a “tube tent.” It tasted startlingly horrible, like licking a handful of change. Still, resolved to hydrate, I tore the corner of a water packet and drank it. I know water is important and all, blah blah, but I’ll confess a rush of dismay when I opened it-mainly because the water took up so much space that it didn’t leave much room for other gear to make my night more pleasant. I hate multitools-I find them fiddly, and prefer a fixed-blade knife for just about everything-but I acknowledge that’s a me problem, so I tucked it in my pocket and continued the search.Īs it turned out, the main pocket of the pack contained a cardboard box stuffed full with metallic pouches of drinking water. The outside of the pack had a flashlight and multitool strapped to it, presumably for easy access, though the flashlight’s batteries were packed much deeper inside. As I considered the pack, I felt a rush of excitement, like I was opening a long-awaited gift. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be a bad thing to find in the bug-out bag. In those first weeks of Covid lockdown, when friends were panic-buying toilet paper, my husband and I received identical packages from Amazon: without mentioning it to the other, we had both ordered snares. As an adult, I became a long-distance dogsledder, a pursuit that even on its best days toes the line between recreation and survival. ![]() As a kid in suburban California, I recall having a strong, uneasy sense that most human beings throughout history have dealt with famines, natural disasters, and so on, and that I could hardly presume to live my whole life as the lucky exception. To be honest, the idea of preparedness has always struck me as solid and reassuring. The latter recommend paying off debt and getting in shape. When I’ve read prepper forums-ostensibly as research for my novel, Small Game, but come on, I chose the topic for a reason-I’ve often seen an even split between the folks who fantasize about guarding their stocks of fish antibiotics, post-apocalypse, from desperate and presumably infected neighbors, and those who remind others that the most likely crises are mundane, like unemployment. When you lose power for a week at a time, as we have from summer storms, you’d be foolish not to consider a generator and stored water. It’s not that I’m a prepper, although up here in the Northwoods, the line between prepared and paranoid can blur. Pepé and the bug-out bag from Echo Sigma. I found a rock to sit on, took off my pack, and unzipped it, waiting to learn my fate. I crossed a broad meadow and entered the trees, where it was instantly colder and darker. The pack was the size of a high school book bag, which seemed awfully small to hold food, water, shelter, and warmth, but at eighteen pounds, at least it had a comforting heft. I wore insulated coveralls-I’m not a complete masochist-and brought nothing else with me but a camera and Pepé, my most competent dog. I hadn’t peeked in the bag I wouldn’t know its contents until I got into the woods. My mission was to live out of it for twenty-four hours, and to learn something along the way about survival, or at least about the ways that we try to prepare for it. The week before, a package had arrived in the mail from a company called Echo Sigma (motto: “Be ready for anything”) with a backpack, or “bug-out bag,” containing all I needed-supposedly-to survive for three days in an emergency, after “bugging out” of modern life. The Most Epic Hiking Trails to Try This Summer. ![]()
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