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Escape from New York- Part 2, by Ragnar
Saturday, July 16, 2016 1:02
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Evaluation
In the after action review, I realized there were a lot of things I learned and will do differently in the future:
- The small almost empty bug out bag approach worked great, but there were a few items I had room for that would have been game changers in the event something happened. In the event I have to survive with just the bag and its contents, I have since added a few items. The first thing I added was a small water filter (like a Sawyer mini). Water is key, and this was a big thing to have missing. Sure, I may have been able to get some bottled water (there were two large bottles in my hotel room), but water is the cornerstone and should not have been overlooked. Second thing added was a small but complete first aid kit (including trauma supplies), which had been another no-brainer item I previously overlooked. Third was a steel cup or water bottle. There was snow everywhere, but absent a vessel to melt it in it was not immediately useful in the event of a walk out. The next item was a solar charging device that is small and holds almost three full charges of my smartphone. As useful as a smart phone is, information for planning and navigation would be critical to bugging out, but what if the cell towers were all down? So now, hard copy maps and travel information are also carried. A small GPS may be a good back up item. Sure, I could walk down I-95, but that would likely not be advisable in a bug out situation. Lastly, at least $100 in small bills, in case debit/credit card infrastructure is down.
- The city that never sleeps… never sleeps. I have always regarded the night as the preferred time to travel and avoid the masses in any situation. In NYC, this is not a valid paradigm; in fact it means that you could have chaos at night as readily as daytime, which would impact travel plans. The city streets were almost as busy when we left our project at midnight as they were at noon. My partner and I debated at length if this was the one place where you did not want to be bugging out at 1 AM, especially since we had no practical intelligence what areas, streets or neighborhoods to avoid. Now when I travel to a new city, I do a little extra prep work, trying to have a better developed situational awareness about that area.
- The biggest surprise was the bags. The building in which we worked (which was part of a complex for a major financial company you would know) had tight security to the extent that you had to be registered in advance and show ID to gain entry and receive a visitor pass but there was no searching of bags or metal detectors, and everyone had a bag, usually a big bag! Between the fact that folks took the subway and the distance away they had parked if they drove, everyone looked like they were going on backpacking trip when they showed up for work.
Source: https://survivalblog.com/escape-from-new-york-part-2-by-ragnar/
