PROTECT YOUR DEUCE — ASSEMBLING EVERY DAY EMERGENCY SUPPLIES

End of the world scenarios are bad enough to consider.  You have the entire nature of the American social and legal contract hinging on the outcome of every election.  You can’t bend down to get anything without asking the people behind you who they voted for.

It is true that aliens, Al Qaeda, or just your nutty neighbors may attack in the middle of the day and plunge you into a Battle Los Angeles situation, but the more likely scenario is that some ridiculously common issue is going to have you sweating and going wee-wee-wee-all-the-way-home before the apocalypse happens.

Today, we’re going to talk about that.

I would like you to, when you can (soon) if you have not already, sit down and make a list of the most likely scenarios you will face day to day that may vex you, and consider how you need to deal with them.

If you live in downtown New Yawk, you absolutely need to think about your transportation needs and petty street crime issues.  If you live in the Pacific Northwest, the muggers might be grizzly bears and a breakdown might mean a night in the woods.  Your needs are your needs, and this is where a lot of survival advice falls short.

The common outrages can be as bad as the “big” problems.  Try getting stuck out on a highway in the middle of a snowstorm.  When people die of hypothermia, it’s in above freezing temperatures most of the time.

Ditto if you are driving the turnpike in the dead of winter at night and take a deer through your front end and radiator.  You will be lucky if you aren’t destroyed with the car.

What you don’t want to do is get stuck on “the worst-case scenario”.  For me, that would be a Russian Sarmat ICBM dropping its warheads onto a certain Central Texas city.  Game over for me.  I won’t be able to mitigate that—I’m good, but not that good.

Fortunately, it’s also pretty unlikely this will happen.  My truck breaking down or getting wrecked when I’m twenty miles from the house is a much more likely problem. Also consider your ability to do something about the problem if it happens.

Unfortunately, something might happen to you that will overload your practical capacity to cope.  Being in a traffic wreck where you have to be cut out of your vehicle probably means your next stop is a trauma center.  On that note, you ought to discuss with your friends or family what you would do “if”, but understand it will probably be someone else taking action.

Once you do this, break down the things you need to cope into three main categories:

Daily Carry:  Things you can keep on your person easily.  Don’t lie to yourself.  If you can’t do it, you won’t.

Vehicle Carry:  Chances are, your vehicle will always be with you; whether you are at home or work or out attending a Taylor Swift witchcraft session concert.  Unless something really, really bad happens, you will probably have it pretty close at hand.

For some of you this may mean something like a backpack you can carry with your bike or motor scooter/cycle, so it’s a grey area between here and daily carry.

Stored:  This is stuff you need to keep at workplaces or other locations you may frequent away from home where you might get stuck, or you might need to bail out to in the event of something bad happening.

Think.  If you are going through a nasty divorce, having some alternate sleeping pads might be a good idea.  If you live in a flood prone area, you could easily get stranded at work.  Or, put another way—you don’t want to try getting out on the road and wind up swept away.  It might be best to shelter in place, so be able to.

Remember the common needs we all have when putting this together:

• Eating.
• Sleeping.
• Hygiene.
• Situational awareness:  Vision and illumination.
• Warmth (or cool, depending)
• Shelter from the elements
• Health/injury mitigation
• Recovery from your situation (when possible)

Again, this is going to look different for each of you.  To use one of my favorite examples that we aren’t getting into:  Guns.  If you live in a desert where “short range” is 500 yards, you will equip differently than someone who lives in a city where any threats you have will probably materialize at arm’s length.

Think about your daily routines, errands, routes, needs, responsibilities, strengths, and weaknesses (including physical and medical ones) and ask what you need to make sure you can mitigate foreseeable daily emergencies and problems.

Several items you might consider including are:

Victorinox Swiss Army Knife: Ranger, Fieldmaster, or Explorer are my favorites.  Accept no cheap imitations.  Fixes everything from small mechanical devices to hangnails.

Faraday Wallet: make it hard to read your credit cards surreptitiously.

Two U.S. Army issue green wool blankets:  Field tested by yours truly in a frigid forest about forty years ago, and they worked perfectly to keep me warm.  I have never been without them since.  I won’t say you can’t freeze to death with them, but it’s really hard.

Spare cellphone battery/charger:  Because life ceases when the cellphone dies.

Spare Glasses:  Because if you can’t see straight nothing much else—navigating, shooting, sensing danger, driving, or reading, can be done well.  Do you have a hard case for the spares?

Earplugs:  If you have an active shooter, being without these will be like Godzilla whacking a trash can that’s over your head as the bad guy destroys your hearing as he destroys you.  No one shows the hero putting in ear plugs in the action movies.

Local bus or subway pass card:  For when you break down on the other side of the Dallas metroplex from where you live and get your car towed, and need to get home.  It beats walking.

Spare credit card:  Keep in a secure place outside of your wallet in case it gets lost, so you can pay for things until you can get home 

Spare Cash:  Might be handy also.

Alternate ID:  Same as above—in case your driver’s license gets lost.  Consider a state ID card, possibly a concealed carry license, or even an expired driver’s license.  It’s better than nothing.

Flint and steel:  So you can start a fire on demand. 

Zebra Pen: Ex-SEAL Clint Emerson’s favorite writing utensil that can be used as a stabbing or impact tool. ‘Nuff said.

Spare car key/FOB:  Because when you lose the one that came with your car, your vehicle is now an expensive road block.  Keep it in a secure place; even the trunk if you can get in there, in a Faraday bag.  The wrecker driver may have to get you into your car to get to the key.

First aid kit with a tourniquet and Quick-Clot:  Something that you can carry around to work, in your car, etc..

Matches in waterproof case

Change of clothes in waterproof or other sealed bag

U.S. Army 2-quart canteen with sling and cover:  One of the best water sources ever invented.  Two quarts of rehydration.  Keep it around and carry it with you if you need to.

Tactical Tomahawk or hatchet:  Great for breaking into cars or places in emergencies; don’t go cheap and make sure you have one made of good steel.  If you obey the law, you will find it is amazingly difficult to break into anything without a sturdy tool.

Mini-shovel:  The Russian Spetznaz never go to battle without their trusty spades that they use to dig in with, make cover, dig out vehicles that are stuck, and use as weapons (the Spetsnaz can actually throw their spades and kill people).  Not that we would recommend that, but if you live in a Communist location that forbids guns or tomahawks, try a Cold Steel Spetznaz shovel or a U.S. Army foldable entrenching tool.

Flotation device and rescue rope:  In heavy rains, the most innocent locations can turn into raging flooding deathtraps.  I don’t recommend you do water rescues or try to traverse flooded areas without proper training and good cause, but it helps to have these items in your trunk.

MREs or dehydrated rations, or snacks:  Keep these around in your workplace or car so that when you get stuck with flooded roadways there or trying to get home you have something to eat.  True military MREs are government property and are not for sale to the public in most every case, but you can get civilian ones that are just as good from the same manufacturers.

Of course, you could keep several cans of soup or grocery store snacks around and rotate them if you don’t feel like spending money on hard military rations.  Your food, regardless, will be sensitive to the temperature you store it in.  Beware.

Mini-Flashlight or headlamp with spare batteries in case:  Not seeing sucks; in this case, in your office building downtown during a blackout or other place that doesn’t get natural light, or in the dead of night in East Hell.

Fix-a Flat Cans:  For impromptu temporary tire repairs.

Small gasoline container:  Don’t necessarily fill it.  But if you run out of gas and have to hoof it to the gas station, you need something to put the fuel in.  Keep it empty in the trunk.

Jumper cables:  No one ever has them.

We will discuss more exotic preparedness issues in other articles, but for the moment, make sure you can handle the day-to-day maladies that you may face as opposed to things that make good movies with hard rock soundtracks.  Professionals excel by dealing solidly with the basics.

Mark Deuce has had a life-long career in community law enforcement. He is the author of Deuces Wild for TTP.