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#i honestly consider camp way more working class than i see it explained in articles
electricoutdoors · 4 years
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The INCH Bag – What Is It and Do You Need One
What is an INCH Bag?
Bug out bag discussions are everywhere and we all know what they are, but where does an INCH bag come in? The INCH bag is probably one of the less common survival kits out there, and it’s also a survival kit that doesn’t have strong support across the board from the preparedness community.
What is an INCH bag? INCH stands for I’m Never Coming Home Again. An INCH bag is basically a bug out bag that’s packed with gear that will allow you to go off into the wilderness and have all of the tools that you need to survive off the land indefinitely.
Do you have what it takes to go into the wilderness with just a bunch of gear and survive forever? [wc_toggle title=“Table of Contents” padding=“” border_width=“” class=“” layout=“box”]
What is an INCH Bag?
The INCH Bag
Difference Between an INCH Bag and a Bug Out Bag
Who Needs an INCH Bag
Do you need an INCH bag?
What Should be in an INCH Bag
Water
Food
Trapping/Snaring
Gardening
Shelter Making
Fire
First Aid
Power
Conclusion
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The INCH Bag
If you’ve been around the preparedness community for any length of time, then you’ve probably read about bug out bags. Everyone writes about them, does videos about them and tries to sell you one with pop-ups and e-mail lists, but where does the INCH bag work into the grand scheme of survival kits?
The INCH bag is an I’m Never Coming Home kit designed to let you go into the wilderness and survive without anything else. That sounds great, it honestly does, but is that really possible?
Difference Between an INCH Bag and a Bug Out Bag
If you just look at bug out bags and INCH bags side by side you’re going to see a lot of similarities between them. They both provide you with the means to survive when you decide things have become so bad that you need to bug out, but they do it in very different ways.
As an example, a bug out bag may have a bunch of MREs in it so you have something to eat, where an INCH bag will probably have traps or snares and a bow or rifle in it to allow you to catch food. It’s two different ways to accomplish the same thing.
The real difference, which drives what goes into both kits, is the philosophy behind each kit.
A bug out bag is designed to get safely get you from your home to your bug out location. Then when you’re at your bug out location, you have shelter, food, water, and a means to keep yourself going.
An INCH bag is designed to get you from your home and into the wilderness so you can survive off the land indefinitely using the tools in the bag and the skills that you possess.
Who Needs an INCH Bag
If your plan is to walk into the woods and disappear forever if anything bad happens, then an INCH bag is for you. Keep in mind that you probably won’t be able to do this alone, so hopefully, you’re bringing your family with you or at least have some like-minded friends.
Having a group is pretty much a necessity in all parts of preparedness, but it’s especially true if you want to stay safe and stay alive in the wilderness.
Do you need an INCH bag?
Can one kit fit everything that you need to live indefinitely? Do you have the skills to keep yourself alive even if you have every piece of gear you need to make it happen? Do you live near a place that can provide you with food, water, and shelter forever? Even if you can answer yes to all of these questions, I still don’t think that an INCH bag makes sense for almost anyone.
My idea of surviving disasters and survival situations is to prepare and plan ahead of time so I can get through whatever is going on and get back to a semi-normal life as quickly as possible. A well thought out bug out plan and a bug out location with everything you need to start over is the way to get back to normal.
Bugging out into the wilderness with a bag full of tools is just planning to force yourself into a survival situation for the foreseeable future, and then VERY slowly working your way back to some sort of normalcy. I guess you could plan to just drink when you can and eat what you can while living wherever you can but that’s barely living in my mind.
I wouldn’t recommend trying to rely on an INCH bag under normal circumstances. If you already live in the middle of nowhere and you absolutely can’t have a bug out location then it may make sense to have an INCH bag. I would still argue that if you can survive indefinitely in the wilderness then you’re even better prepared to set up a bug out location and be able to relocate if you’re forced out of your home.
So do you need an INCH bag? Only if you CANNOT have a bug out location of some kind. I can’t think of a reason why you couldn’t have some kind of bug out location that you could use, but I also don’t know everyone’s situation so I’m not going to rule it out.
What Should be in an INCH Bag
This isn’t an INCH bag packing list. This is just an overview of the types of gear that you’d need in an INCH bag.
Everything that goes into an INCH bag is made for long term survival. This means that you’re going to want tough, reliable tools that are going to last you for as long as possible. In most cases, you’re not going to be able to easily replace a broken tool, so pack accordingly!
Water
When you first head into the wild making sure that you have drinkable water is going to be one of your first priorities. Long term water is more about where you decide to live rather than anything else.
As long as you set up camp near a water supply and brought steel containers that you can boil water in, you’ll be good to go from a water standpoint.
Food
Food production is going to take up a lot of your time. I would plan to have as many ways to passively grow and collect food as possible.
The less time you need to spend finding food, the more time you’ll have for other things. This is especially important for individuals and very small groups.
Make sure that you know how to smoke and dry food to preserve it!
Trapping/Snaring
Trapping and snaring is a great way to passively catch food while you do other things. Just make sure that you bring enough snare wire because you usually only get to use them once.
If you’re near water you can also set up lines to catch fish for you. This trotline article does a great job of explaining how to get one set up.
Gardening
Take seeds with you so you can start a garden right away if the weather is good. I’d get as much land planted and growing food as fast as I could.
Shelter Making
Having a good hatchet and saw are going to make shelter building the easiest for you and should be considered required items in an INCH bag. There are a bunch of shelters that you can build with just a saw and a hatchet.
Fire
Fire goes without saying…you need fire to keep you warm, boil water and cook food. Ferro rods are a good long term option to get fires going but you’re eventually going to have to rely on something like a hand drill, bow-drill or flint and steel.
First Aid
Long term first aid is one of the most difficult things that you’ll encounter with an INCH bag. You can only pack so much first aid gear in your kit and no matter how much you bring, you’re eventually going to run out.
I’d suggest packing things that are difficult to find or make in the wild. Things like antibiotic ointment, sterile gauze and dressings, etc. should probably make up a lot of your loadout if you really plan on staying out for a long time. A minor infection can quickly turn life-threatening if you don’t have antibiotics and modern medicine.
Power
If you brought any kind of electronic devices, you’re going to need some way to power them out in the middle of nowhere. This most likely means solar power and rechargeable batteries either in the device itself or in a separate battery charger.
Conclusion
An INCH bag is designed to allow you to go into the wilderness and survive for an extended period of time. This means that you have to take everything that you can’t make yourself and the tools that you’ll need to make those things that you can. It also requires a TON of knowledge and skill.
Overall, I don’t think building an INCH bag is important and I certainly don’t recommend that you decide to just head off into the woods following a disaster. Have a well-developed bug out plan and a fully supplied bug out location to go to and you’ll be much better off.
The article The INCH Bag – What Is It and Do You Need One is available on: https://readylifestyle.com
The INCH Bag – What Is It and Do You Need One published first on https://readylifesytle.tumblr.com
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kayla-turpin · 6 years
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Another year, another list of longform articles that were my, quote-unquote, jam!
In no way is this a definitive, objective list of The Best Articles™ that were released this year because god-knows any attempt at a year-end list from a locust of authority is a bit silly. However, if you ever wondered what cultural narratives struck my fancy this year, here they are:
10. FML: Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression - Michael Hobbes//Huffington Post
Of all the triteness of Millennial think-pieces, this was by far my favourite - substantive dialogue with a mountain of factually diagnoses and (hey, as a millennial) some cool visual effects:
We often think of poverty in America as a pool, a fixed portion of the population that remains destitute for years. In fact, Krishna says, poverty is more like a lake, with streams flowing steadily in and out all the time. “The number of people in danger of becoming poor is far larger than the number of people who are actually poor,” he says.We’re all living in a state of permanent volatility. Between 1970 and 2002, the probability that a working-age American would unexpectedly lose at least half her family income more than doubled. And the danger is particularly severe for young people. In the 1970s, when the boomers were our age, young workers had a 24 percent chance of falling below the poverty line. By the 1990s, that had risen to 37 percent. And the numbers only seem to be getting worse. From 1979 to 2014, the poverty rate among young workers with only a high school diploma more than tripled, to 22 percent. “Millennials feel like they can lose everything at any time,” Hacker says. “And, increasingly, they can.”
9. She Didn't Want This Come Hell or High Water”: Inside Melania Trump's Secretive East Wing - Sarah Ellison//Vanity Fair Despite former political aspirations, all my knowledge about the White House, especially the East Wing, has come from Scandal. It is a fun exercise inserting Melania Trump into this fictional vision, especially with the stark reluctancy of a woman uninterested:
Friends say she is slowly warming to the job. But she has had to state so frequently that she is independent from her husband that it is hard not to see her as distancing herself from his positions, or even from him. That is not to say that she has ever taken any proactive stance against him. An immigrant herself, she never found a voice to stand up for the immigrants that Donald Trump was bashing. A First Lady has always been able to choose the cause that will occupy some of her working hours. For Michelle Obama, it was childhood obesity and girls’ education. For Laura Bush, it was literacy. (Stockard Channing’s First Lady, Dr. Abbey Bartlet, on The West Wing, volunteered in a clinic in an underprivileged neighborhood in Washington, D.C., giving vaccinations.) For Melania Trump, the cause of choice is—improbably—cyberbullying. It has become almost too easy to point out the irony, given her husband’s habit of using Twitter to bully not only political opponents but also members of his own party and even his own Cabinet. Cyberbullying cannot have been Donald Trump’s idea. It’s unlikely but possible that she chose the cause by way of trolling her own husband. (“Wouldn’t that be great?” one former Obama adviser commented.)
8. Greta Gerwig’s Radical Confidence - Christine Smallwood//New York Times
It seems a bit trite to include an article that revolves solely around a single celebrity individual - but it has all my favourite trappings of a good portraiture or human study: Strong, bad-add woman doing cool, creative things that is spoke about in an almost lyrical way. Last year was Kesha, this year is Greta. Also, Lady Bird was one of my favourite films of the year and because I don’t normally do a Best Of of film, this is the next best thing:
After breakfast, while we were power-walking through the West Village, I mentioned that I had seen that she was doing a voice part in Wes Anderson’s forthcoming animated movie, “Isle of Dogs.” She remarked that Anderson’s previous animated film, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” isn’t “really” about animals. “It’s not?” I said, which prompted the beginnings of an earnest analysis, until I cut her off to explain that I had been kidding. “Ohhhhh,” she said. “I don’t understand sarcasm. I take it seriously!” Her T’s are shiny and bright, like the ringing of a hand bell.
7. Twelve Second of Gunfire - John Woodrow Cox//Washington Post
I am aware that a fascination with tragedy can become borderline perverse so I try to be conscious of towing that line. I also think good journalism allows human narratives around tragedy unfold in such a way that provokes empathy rather than sensationalism. This article is of the former and delicately provides insight into the aftermath of a school shooting among the students at Townville Elementary:
One day, Siena announced to her mother, Marylea, that she couldn’t go to summer camp anymore: “They don’t have a police officer.”
Like many of her classmates, loud, unexpected sounds petrified her. Once, outside a Publix, a car backfired, and she dropped to the ground before dashing inside. Another time, after a balloon popped at a school dance, the entire gymnasium went silent as the principal rushed to turn the lights on. Fredericks later banned balloons at the spring festival. “Noises are different now,” she said.
6. The House on the Corner - Lane DeGregory//Tampa Bay Times
This article leads with “what would drive a man to shoot 17 times?” which immediately begins to swivel that moral compass. The answer seems easy, until it’s not. The article touches on social class, poverty, ownership, and the elusive need to protect one’s own. It is structured as an interview which gives it an interesting ‘he said/she said’ perspective - needless to say, I didn’t come out with a clear answer.
ROY: He pulled a gun on me twice, come up in my face showing me, “This gun right here I just bought.” He always used to make comments about my house not having nowhere to hide. He’d knock on my window 2 o’clock in the morning 'cause he see me sitting on my bed watching TV, just to let me know like, “I see you sitting right there in front of the window.”
QUARLES: We never had a gun in D.C. Never needed one. But now it’s time to do something. The police aren’t going to protect you. You gotta protect yourself. That’s why I bought the gun.
5. The Last of the Iron Lungs - Jennings Brown//Gizmodo
This was a fascinating read on a very tiny sub-sect of the population that technology and healthcare forgot. I think especially in the wake of the anti-vaccination narratives that seem to persist, it is a reminder of the potential health catastrophes that might re-emerge. There is also a warm undertone of friendship that emerges in this article that was pleasantly surprising - many of the individuals in iron lungs rely on the goodness of those who have the skillset to maintain an object that has no simple parts that can be ordered or any warranty to rely on.
When I met with the Randolphs, Mark gave me photocopies of old service manuals and operating instructions. He filled me in on little-known history about the Emerson iron lung and its inventor, whom they met at a Post-Polio convention. I realized what each of these iron lung users have in common are the aid of generous, mechanically skilled friends and family. And that’s probably the main reason they’ve been able to live long and full lives, despite the hardships and anxieties of depending on aging machinery to survive.
4. The Unimaginable, Infamous Case of Pam Hupp - Jeannette Cooperman/St. Louis Magazine
Honestly, considering how much true crime I consume (don’t look through my browser history), I am surprised more true crime longform articles didn’t make it onto this last. All things considered, I am glad it was this one. Or you should be glad it was this one, as it’s a wild ride that is still ongoing.
Schwartz puzzled it out: If you went out of your way to drive your friend home just so she could get there a few hours earlier because she needed sleep so badly, why would you bother her by calling when you were just a few miles from her house? And if she didn’t answer your call, and you knew she was exhausted by chemo and coming down with a cold, wouldn’t you just think she wanted to sleep?
He asked Russ about this Pam Hupp person.
“The last six months to a year, they started hanging out,” Russ said. “It just kind of gradually—once she was diagnosed with cancer, a lot of people wanted to be with her. I never had a problem with Pam personally. She was easy to talk to. But I could name half a dozen other people Betsy was closer to.”
3. The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare - David Zax//Fast Company
I know you’re thinking how interesting an article about mattresses actually could be - I was thinking the same when I read it the first time. However, it was down-right captivating and managed to ping a bunch of my interests: blogging, e-commerce, side hustles, and internet drama. So much drama. A few weeks ago when I was out with friends we began reciting common podcast advertisements as a lark - it was inevitable that Casper and Endy came up. I think that says something - for something as mundane as mattress shopping to enter the collective consciousness, there has got to be something interesting happening beneath the surface. Turns out, there is.
It was possible that Derek genuinely loved the Leesa above all other mattresses; he’d reviewed it favorably even before Casper cut off his payments. But many people I spoke to suggested that other things were possible, too. If most mattress companies paid around $50 per commission, other companies paid two or three times that, even as much as $250. In one email I saw, an unscrupulous mattress reviewer said companies regularly approached him offering to “buy” top placement on his site; so long as the reviewer liked the mattress, he’d happily negotiate a price. “Honestly, the FTC has to step in at some point and make review sites divulge what they are paid for each bed or brand,” Nest Bedding’s Joe Alexander, told me. “This industry is a freight train out of control.”
2. Trapped: The Grenfell Tower Story - Tom Lamont//GQ
This article was near visceral - I actually think I held back tears at multiple points. From the perspective of multiple people on different floors, all experiencing the same impending fire yet very different stories.
The fire neared their corner of the building. Talabi fastened the end of his knotted bedsheets inside the bedroom, fed the remainder out the open window, and then climbed out after it. As he hung on the outside of Grenfell Tower, his fingers curled around the frame of his bedroom window, he wasn't willing, yet, to test the strength of the sheets. Instead Talabi told Rosemary to pass out their daughter. But their daughter, crying and struggling, would not let herself be passed. She pushed herself away from the window frame, and Talabi in this moment saw that his plan as it was—to descend holding the bedsheets in one hand, his daughter in the other—was not going to work. As his belief in the plan failed, so did his strength. He realized he could not pull himself back inside. He kicked for a foothold beneath him, but the building's paneling was too slippery and his feet wouldn't stick. He stopped kicking. He clung to the window frame.
1. Deliverance from 27,000 Feet - John Branch//New York Times
This article snuck in at the end of the year but quickly rose to the top of my personal Best Of - two mountain climbers die at the top of Everest. A normal occurrence, as it goes, but it is rare for these bodies to be retrieved even when still alive let alone after death. This article is captivating in writing alone, but it is is also paired with photo and video of the victim’s rescue - before and after their death. 
The first photographs arrived on Tuesday, May 16. Debasish Ghosh received one on his phone at 6:17 that evening while sitting at his hotel. Numbly, he stared at it, tugging the edges with his fingertips to zoom in for a better look. He sent the message to his son and to Chandana at home in Kolkata. He also sent it to Sunita Hazra, the only survivor among the four Indians in the expedition the year before.
The photo showed a body in a faded yellow snowsuit bent like a horseshoe and half-buried in snow. It looked like something archaeologists were midway through excavating. There was no face visible, but the boots and the gear matched what Ghosh was wearing a year before. The pattern of the yellow-and-black snowsuit matched what Sunita had in her closet at home, the one she bought alongside Ghosh at a little shop in Kathmandu.
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