EricinMaryland's BOB, formerly "Yet Another BOB by a Noobie"

[EricinVirginia]

Think of ACU this way... some dirt, grime, and blood stains and you'll have all the earth tone camo you'd ever want for zPAW. I always looked at ACU as a compromise across all the different types of terrain you might find yourself in. Short of carrying forest type, forest type by season, urban, desert, and prey-specific camo with you, ACU gives you the best mix of all possible types. As a compromise, it's good. As far as camo for specific settings, it does leave a lot to be desired.

[killzombies]

tag

[bltjr1951]

tag

Is this the same as "bump" one guy was doing instead of "bookmarking" the thread????

Then again, some folks have said earth tone plaids will work better than camo.
One woodsman said his red plaid shirt blended in just great, thank you very much.

Anyone remember the weird camo they used to sell in ASG??
I will admit I've got some "urban" camo stuff.

[EricinVirginia]

When I first stumbled across ZS, it was because of a comment someone on another forum made about how ZS is a place where you can find people who not only will obsess about the best gear for end of world situations, but will also field test it. My wife and I dove into the whole BOB thing with an eye to getting our BIL/house set up first and then my bag and her bag. In the course of doing this, we acquired, tested, and have discarded many things that did not work. Some examples:
- Collapsible fishing poles still take up too much space.
- You can build a medical kit the size of a BOB if you're not careful.
- Silvered/x-metal/anti-odor socks and thermals kick @ss.
- Sterno melts if you're hiking and it's hot outside. If the can is sealed tightly, it's okay.

So, one day I was sitting around in my inventory area and looking at it all and thought, what the hell, I should put together a vehicle BOB - a get home bag (GHB). Tonight I was summoned from Maryland up into Delaware for a meeting early tomorrow morning. We're sitting under a winter storm advisory calling for wind gusts up to 20 mph and up to 20" of snow between right now (11 pm Friday night) and Sunday morning. Driving here was no problem, but going home tomorrow is going to suck.

Knowing this in advance, I wisely packed my snowboard and gear - ZPAW might involve snowboarding right? But I also grabbed an extra 5 gallons of gas, some blankets, and the Offroad Xterra, moving my GHB from my work car. So, here I am in a 200 year old converted farmhouse with nothing to do and I thought... lets see how I'd do with my GHB. Besides the car and snowboard gear, I brought thermal underwear, 9" hiking boots, and my Xterra has a pretty good medical kit (after I junked the one Nissan provides). This is an Oakley messenger style bag that had been collecting dust in my closet for several years.




Contents:
- Hammock, tarp, extra socks, emergency blanket, 30' paracord and 6 tarp clips with 10' paracord on each.
- 2 pkg of 3,600 calorie Mainstay bars, EZ Cheese, Chilli
- 16 oz water
- Essential med kit: dayquil, immodium, TUMS, water purification tablets, bandages (actual and liquid), large bandana
- Tinder, waterproof matches, lighter, handheld marine flare, aerial red flare, firesteel, Gerber headlamp... I'm going to toss an Esbit pack in here when I get home.
- Box knife and can opener, road maps, hand crank radio/light/charger, 2 weeks worth of epilepsy meds
- Lots of extra space for other stuff I could grab from my car or the farmhouse. For extra food, carrying water maybe, and clothing.

Looking at this, the only thing really screaming at me is that I need to toss some cash in here and some kind of weapon. I've got a crobar type thing in my car I guess but that's too big to work with the GHB. Whole thing weighs in at around 12 lbs.

[lunchboxTBC]

Good sweet mary's pink undies. I like it. a lot. It's very nice.
Question though... whats the orange thing on the floor by the chili can, and do you have anything to melt snow in? Other than the chili can after you have eaten the chili of course.
A few of those chemical hand warmer packs could be handy... but I tend to keep a bunch of those around for cold weather. At the end of last summer it was about 40 but very windy as we set up the Leave no Trace instruction booth at Woodbadge and the kids that were there fell in love with those hand warmers. Of course I ended up with 6 kids with their hands in their pockets instead of setting up the display camp.

::EDIT::

Oh yeah, a crowbar worked for Gordon Freeman!
http://www.gamespot.com/users/SKiLL_SS/ ... oi7hyf4BDv

[EricinVirginia]

It's a Black and Decker hand crank radio/LED flashlight/weather/accessory charger.... I picked it up at Target for $30 I think. It weighs just under 1 lb. Originally, I had a lantern style one in my BOB, but it was too big. So I got that orange one. Then I found a camo one about half the size with a hand crank radio/flashlight that weighs almost nothing.

Melting snow would be nice. When I add the esbit tabs, I'll see if I can find one of those collapsible esbit stoves and scavenge cup of some kind. If I'm doing that, I suppose I should grab some type of a saw/shovel eTool. It's pretty when it snows. I wish I was at home with my wife and kids.

[bltjr1951]

ZPAW might involve snowboarding right?

I'm pretty sure there's some movies with PAW and inline skating/skate boards.

Do you really want to hang between two trees while the wind chill is minus 20???

[lunchboxTBC]

If you set the tarp up right it should block most of the wind, and the hammok keeps your warm butt out of the cold snow... so unless he has a set of Snowmobile clothes hidden in that kit to keep him warm and dry, I think the hammok is ok... with the tarp... and if it's lined with the space blanket. I think tarp and hammok is way faster than snow cave/hut.

[EricinVirginia]

Funny story... as I was leaving DE around 9 pm last night still during the blizzard, one of the DE guys asks me if I'll be okay. "Yeah, I'll be okay." They asked what all I had, so I went through it all. Then they wanted to see the Mainstay bars and crank radio/light and firesteel. It was all very fun. I had snow pants, parka, heavy duty gloves. Sadly, I left too late to go boarding and my family lost power here in DC from 5 pm till midnight. I need to set up my Hennesy hammock and see how that does in the winter. The one in my car is super light. It'd need to be insulated to have a shot in the snow, but I think it'd be warmer than staying in a car during a blizzard.

[EricinVirginia]

So, BOB update... Christmas was good to the BOB. Pics follow.
- Kabar Tac Tool is my new go-to fixed blade.... I used paracord to tie the sheath to my left top shoulder strap so I can access it whenever. I'll do a field review of it when some of the snow melts here and I can get out in the wilderness. This link has some reviews that seem to match someone screwing around with the knife in their house. My wife found this for $67. The Kydex sheath is very sturdy and as a cutting tool goes, it's not the sharpest knife but it works just fine for chopping, prying, and cutting normal things. It weilds like a club. I just need to find some glass to see if it dices, slices, and smashes.
- Rapiclips Soft Ties... I've been collecting the metal twist ties off toys and other things you buy and threading them onto my FAK. They don't weigh anything and have some reusable utility... but these Soft Ties offer you 16' of twist ties. I see utility in this for hanging and lashing without having to cut and parse your paracord. This stuff cuts with about the same effort as paracord. Bass Pro sells a muted dark gray variety, but I can only find internet links to the green stuff.

So, Kabar/Becker Tac Tool first... compared to the Kukri as a size reference:




Twist ties on my FAK versus the Soft Ties: just having the garbage twist ties on my BOB for a few months and more than several treks, their plastic coating is becoming brittle and they don't have the strength I really want. The Soft Ties fix this. I haven't found any weight/tension rating on these, but will hang some weights on them and see how they do. My guess is that they'll stretch out or that the interior wire breaks and then stabs through the rubber sheathing at around 20 lbs. Still, much better than twist ties or chopping my paracord when all I really needed was 1' for a temporary tie.

[bltjr1951]

I've been collecting the metal twist ties off toys.

I thought I had a bunch when Santa left, but they got pitched cause they were "trash".
Sometimes it's hard to be a packrat.

[EricinVirginia]

So, the Soft Ties are essentially rubber wrapped around a wire. I got a magnified pic of this up against a standard garbage bag tie. The rubber will stretch and slide. The wire inside will not. This introduces all kinds of weakness if you plan on having this support anything with particular weakness around the ends where the rubber will stretch out past the wire and then break or come untied. I tied a section of Soft Ties up and then hung a 2.5 lb weight plate on it. After 10 minutes, the thing had stretched considerably but was fine. The 5 lb plate stretched till the ends broke before 5 minutes. If you carry garbage twist ties in your BOB, for finger splinting, lashing sticks together, or whatever and often find yourself thinking that you want something bigger, longer, with more strength, then Soft Ties will work. But if you think... "Hey, with 16' of that I could do cool paracord type stuff..." think again.

[BullOnParade]

leave the dead on demolition hammer behind. I know. It's great. It's designed to destroy houses, so naturally it would take down a zed ... if you can swing it long enough. I bought one when I started my last summer job as maintenance at a local marina. I needed a new hammer, and figured, hey, that's sweet looking. But I don't hit the gym often or hard enough to swing that thing more than an hour at a time. I was framing a doorway just a few nights ago, and put up with a sore arm through Christmas eve.

[mega-hertz]

CHILLE EATERS UNITE
i don't care what anybody says, chille is great bob food and it's delishous.

if anyone has a problem with that, PM me and we will set up a bare naked fistfight in the woods over hot coals to settle the matter.

[commandojoe]

I don't even disagree with the chili remark... it's just been too long since I've had a bare naked fist fight in the woods over hot coals....

ahhhh... childhood....

uhmm.... i mean... great post Erik. I especially like the links to all the gear you've reviewed. Thanks for your work.

[Stormrider]

Yeah I finally got my Vulture-II and I'm in love with it too...

Also got the Becker BK-2. I don't know about the tactool, it seems like more of an urban thing, but the BK2 kicks total ass. "new axe" just went near the bottom of my shopping list because of that thing

[EricinVirginia]

Becker BK2 link... if you want to see what the BK2's specs are. Nice knife. The Tactool has plenty of heft and my 7 year old daughter was having fun Sunday loping 1" and 2" branches off of trees by the river. Between that and the machette, I've never felt the need for an ax either. Cuts great at that level and chops and hefts like an ax.

I was going through my assorted and sundry knives over the weekend and for what they weigh, I'm finding there really is a need to be very picky and choosy about what goes into a BOB. On Sunday, I did a 3 mile off-trail hike along a river with my daughter and while I had plenty of room left in the BOB, it would have been nice to have even more. Picking up smaller and lighter fire and knife/tools is a good way to go.

Also, it's worth noting that I had 2 packs of Mainstay 3,600 calorie bars in my BOB on this hike and one of them, the foil wrapper ruptured and so my kids have been eating them for snacks and breakfast since. Because they're vaccuum-sealed, they feel indestructible, but actually they are not. If you're going to carry them around pre-PAW, I guess my lesson learned is to not carry them for day treks or that you should try and armor them up a bit.



edited to add Mainstay pic and txt msg from wife: "They have the taste and consistency of like a graham cracker crust. They smell and taste slightly like lemon though. I'd eat it if I had nothing else. They don't suck! But if possible I'd rather eat something else. Kids (4 and 7 year old girls) like the food rations... They want to eat them in the car. Weirdo."

[lunchboxTBC]

I had some of those bars in my old Y2K pack inside a snap lid plastic container that seemed to keep them safe from the other stuff in the pack.

I LOLed at your wife's text, sounds very familiar.

[EricinVirginia]

Yeah, well, it's been about 5 days since the Mainstay wrapper broke and there's still about 80% of it left. These bars work as a great appetite suppresant... to continue eating Mainstay. They really need a bacon flavored Mainstay bar. I bet they could jack the calories up to 4,000+ just by oiling it up with bacon flavor.

[EricinVirginia]

So, a mid-January update. The Mainstay bar is down to 80%, has resisted going stale, and is lightly wraped in cellophane. The kids snack on it occassionally as do I. It does a great job curbing any urges to snack. I find it kills my appetite.

BOB update, I dropped my katadyn pocket filter... for a steripen. I was worried about the nalgene-sized katadyn filter getting crushed in my BOB. The steripen can be wrapped and inserted into my nalgene for protection and access. It weighs a bit less, feels a bit more fragile, seeing the green light in sunlight is a PITA, but it works. It's been 3 days since I used it on my Saturday 10 miler and I have yet to fall ill to intestinal leprosy. That being said, you need filter water through a cloth... steripens leave all the grit and grime in the water. Mmmm, crunchy. Dropping the katadyn, which will stay in BIL for that 13,000 gallons of purifying goodness, frees up space for more electronics and charging equipment.

BOB in current configuration, steripen, and pics:







I like the scenery here... very apocalyptic when frozen. The grass in this area is actually a thriving marshland in the summer.

[EricinVirginia]

So, some updates... I've added electrically insulated wire cutters to my pack along with adding a window smasher to the ASP baton and aerial pocket rockets in lieu of the large Orion handheld flares. I also added this really cool Blazer PB207 butane lighter. Final pic of the his and hers BOBs sheltering from all the storms here. Oh yeah, and a gratiutious "smokin' hot" picture. I'm waffling on putting this in my BOB just because of space considerations... but the babe has her own bag and is definitely along for the bug out. And yes, life is good.

[Stormrider]

So is that a smoke grenade? Custom ligher/vibrator? WTF is that?

[smallthunder]

So is that a smoke grenade? Custom ligher/vibrator? WTF is that?

[EricinVirginia]

It's a red smoke grenade. I was shooting for CNS when I ordered them, not realizing that's restricted. They had already taken my money and offered these in lieu of CNS. Go figure.