It's been my experience that most people who do BOBs and such haven't spent a night under the stars in years, let alone walked more than the distance from their vehicle to the back of Wal Mart
Which is the main reason why I always suggest people keep both their Bug Out Bags and Every Day Carry bags tailored towards an actual realistic goal. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that 90% of us on THR
don't live in rural Wyoming or some other such area. Most of us live in cities or towns, and are only a few miles away from many other cities or towns. So where are you Bugging Out to? Probably another city or town. If there is some disaster in your city, like a tornado, and you have an unaffected city a few miles away, your first thought
should not be "I'm gonna go live in the woods til this is over". That's counterproductive. Get from affected city A to unaffected city B. As human beings, our greatest strength lies in our ability to work as a group, and the use of complex tools (technology). Thus, your greatest chance of you and your family surviving is to take advantage of those two things, and get to another
unaffected urban center. Your BOB should be tailored to make that goal easier.
Think of the challenges your will encounter along the way. Excessive traffic, LE checkpoints, price gouging on food and gas, petty crime and assault, even boredom. Then look at what you would need to tackle those challenges. Does a fishing kit help you get gas for your car? You might say "No, but it gives me food". Again, that might be true if you live in the wilderness already. But if you're traveling from a big city to another city, how many opportunities to go fishing do you really think you'll have? How about a place to gut and prepare fish? Make a fire for cooing? Keep in mind, you're doing this in a city, on the highway, or in yet another city. That's the kind of disconnect in thinking I see a lot of people have with their BOBs. They get overtaken by the "gee this little fishing kit is neat" factor, and don't really think "when am I really going to use this?"
wheelgunslinger mentioned that most probably haven't spent a night under the stars in years. He's probably right. But that generally doesn't matter. If you're a city dweller, that's the kind of area you live in and need to get out of, probably to another city. So your camping skills, or lack thereof, are basically irrelevant. So don't build your BOB around camping. Build it around challenges that would arise
in a city.
Make a list of goals
Figure out how those goals relate to
where you are and
where you're realistically going
Plan your gear around those two things, and leave stuff that doesn't fit that plan behind.
