Which is where my backpack cooler resides on work rides. Hmmmm?
when the weather gets cool and I wear my jacket I basically have a get home bag on my back. I have an old field jacket that has lots of pockets and I keep many items that I would need. Tools, lighters, flashlight, ammo, first aid, wet pad and pen, and then there’s a get home bag in the truck. And I only work a mile from the house.
My get home bag is more of a shtf bag basically because it’s more set up for winter survival in a bad situation. I icefish and I have the bag loaded up for a sudden drop in through the ice. I have a float suit and all the necessary self rescue gear but once out of the water, it’s important to get out of the wet gear before hypothermia and organ shutdown and dry warm clothes are important. First aid is a good thing to have at all times. I was out on the ice once during a very cold polar vortex in a nice whiteout condition. I caught a big pickerel and in the struggle I stuck my hand into the big girls gills. Those things are like razor blades. I was bleeding pretty good and couldn’t stop the bleeding and I left a trail of blood for half a mile in the snow dragging all my gear out. At the time I didn’t carry first aid gear when that SHTF. I do now.
I work from home and keep “something” near my desk that the cameras do not see when on calls.
Some highlights of stuff I have dealt with in the last 36 years.
Rioting post Rodney King incident.
Supply chain issues, during Covid. Real lack of food & personal hygiene items. Helping neighbors as we were able.
Hazmat spill, local road closed for 6 hours for clean up. Me standing in the road flagging down traffic to prevent secondary collisions, after checking both driver for injuries, both ambulatory reporting no medical assistance needed. Alternate route home added 45 min to a 7 hour drive.
Trees falling blocking vehicle egress from your street, blocking both ends.
Earthquake, Northridge California.
Massive wildfires, California & Arizona. Offering a generator to power well pumps as homes were without power and zero generators were avalible to buy in a 100+ mile radius on day 2.
Not in the SHTF, in the natural or man made disaster category.
Roll play any of those. What would you need?
Exactly, SHTF can be anything. It’s not always guns a blazing I got my ammo! I promise, if my house catch fire or my roof gets ripped off via tornado, I’m bugging out haha
I’ve said it for a while now-most “doomsdays” are personal or local events.
I live on a busy road (in fact, THE main surface road through the city) AND across the street from a gas station. A few blocks north, this (and all other main N-S routes) have chokepoints in the form of a canal (one of many) that runs through almost the entire county, from sea to ‘Glades. And we get hurricanes. The whole "TEOTWAWKI is/ain’t comin’!" thing is of no concern to me. I have much smaller potential horrors to think about, like the fact that our HOA has gotten us a city fine that has hit 6 digits and literally goes up every day.
Did I mention we had riots one city over a couple years back?
After seeing the news of current events and seeing an interview of a guy who was in the area in Pennsylvania of a manhunt of an escaped murderer, I have a question for the community. This thread assumes you have some time to kit up. But what if you didn’t? Go with one minute until the bad guy kicks your door in. What, if anything, do you grab? Assume you are downstairs watching the Breaking News and see your house on the helicopter feed with a guy(s) running right at your door, could you grab something spicier than whatever you might have on your body?
I’ve tried doing this to a timer for a test and I absolutely failed. Now, I don’t really want to live like John Wick with stuff stashed along every wall. Makes having friends over more than a little weird. (Unless they’re awesome PSA friends, of course.) It’s making me rethink what I’m going for and where it is stored.
Give it a try. Time yourself from couch to kit. Everything empty and safe, please. I’m not asking for times, but I’m curious if anyone can pull it off in a time they like without having every table covered in goodies.
LOL, In one minute! The guy is walking into my house facing a 12g loaded with 00 buck. He loses the race.
If I had to do this I definitely wouldn’t be running toward something that was empty and needed to be loaded. My old go to was a suppressed CZ Scorpion folded up in the top of my closet. Once I get some more rounds through my JAKL 300BLK to make sure it runs flawlessly it will take the Scorpions place. I don’t have a very big house so making it to my bedroom and grabbing my gun, unfolding the stock and making it back to my front door in under a minute wouldn’t be hard at all.
It takes me a minute to get my old, tired, fat butt off of the couch.
You can’t think in that event you’ll have time to get to your full-size safe (wherever it is,) unlock it, grab a weapon, load it (if your ammo is in the same place as your weapons) and engage. That’s a pretty long process and if you’re facing a scenario where you need to use a weapon defensively, time is something you probably don’t have.
I keep a pistol on a magnet next to my bed for bumps in the night. I remove it in the morning and put it in a lockbox, return it before I go to sleep. It’s hidden enough where you wouldn’t see it unless you knew it was there.
In the living room, there’s a hidden lockbox with a quick 4-digit combination (on a push pad, not a dial) and a loaded pistol in it. Would realistically probably take me about 5 seconds, 10 max, to get to it.
In the safe where all my other guns are stored, there’s a loaded PC Charger that shares mag compatibility with the two pistols. Bump in the night, living room, gun safe…that’s gotta be the big 3 for all-around home defense, right?
If someone kicks in the door when I’m on the can, then, well…cheers to them for proper timing, I guess.
That’s what the Bathroom Gun is for…
That’s what I was running into as well. Run down, unlock the safe, untangle the sling from everything, find the right mag, load it, etc. I was comically slow. A full size handgun, no problem, unless I slip getting to it. Shotgun, maybe if I’m on the right floor of my house already. But a rifle was a complete failure. That’s why I said couch to kit. Not, running shoes on and tight and you’re focused and ready to run. I mean barefoot with the bag of Doritos on the belly and beer in hand flipping through the TV channels when you see the news. From that sort of “condition white” to “red” isn’t likely to ever be super easy, but bad staging and location moved it from hard to hilarious. It’s not like this result was hard to predict, but I’d never actually tried to do it and that was eye opening.
my living room couch is 15 feet away from my bedroom where the gun case is. It is key open and the key is in the lock when I’m home and we don’t have small children guests. (we never have small children guests). It takes me all of 5 seconds to lay hands on a loaded firearm. I then step out of the room and the front door is in my sights.
The problem that I have is choosing which gun. I could stand there far too long saying to myself, "grab the shotgun, wait no grab the AR, wait which one? Just grab the damn shotgun… which one? Geez, the 7.62, no the 5.56… but nothing says get out like a 12g… oh my god just grab a pistol… which one?
By the time I finally make a decision the bad guy is in the house sitting on my couch drinking my last beer. So I decided from no on it’ll be the shotgun.
But which one?
All kidding a side, it’s just my wife and I now. We have a handgun with extra mags in one of those hidden shelves in the living room, 10 feet from the couch. A handgun stays in my desk (I work from home and have a dedicated office space). The bedroom has a handgun in the nightstand and a 300 blk pistol leaned up against the corner on my side with a STANDARD capacity mag. I want to get a suppressor for it but hoping they will be removed from the NFA soon.
I walk very slowly, but my apartment is very small, so, yes, I can grab a long gun quickly. So can my wife.
Oh, the timing. On our way home today, i spotted two hovering helicopters in the general direction of our place, so we took a slightly circuitous route to avoid whatever they were watching (betting it was a major intersection in our town).
EDIT-
Reclining in my chair to rifle at low ready is 20 seconds. I walked at my normal pace. I can’t run, anyway. My rifle is hidden, but unlocked, while I’m at home. Told ya my place is small!
If the NFA gets wiped (like, with a towel or something), everything gets back-burnerfied so I can put a can on an 11.5 for HD!
Add a sling keep to your long guns. I make my own with shock cord, but you can buy them from FCD, War Horse, and I think Neo-Mag has one now. Or, Velcro tape. Even painter’s tape would work, because it breaks easy enough.
The ones I made for myself are like the Sling Keep A from FCD. If you go this route, you’ll have enough materials to make sling keeps for every rifle on your block. 
20s is a pretty darn good time! That’s plenty fast for a “wait, is that our house…” moment before you hear banging. I’m not saying I sent the helicopters to reinforce this topic, but I’m not not saying that either…
I haven’t tried the stretchy string version. I’ve done ranger bands and those are always grabby at the wrong time and slick at an even worse time. Haven’t seen the War Horse version, but it looks pretty nice; I’ll give it a try. The Sentry Strap, man I love those. Rip loose and the little tab doesn’t even swing because it’ll magnet itself to something.