Is your bug-out bag ready?

 It’s just seven days to D-day! My bug-out bag is ready. There are already reports on heightened paranormal activity in the sky, around Diyawanna and at a celestial temple with a few trees where devotees flock for enlightenment. In the name of conspiracies, I am bracing for the event of the millennium but if it fails to come as predicted we can excoriate it as nothing but a doomed Chinthanaya of Mayan vintage.

An unidentified caller wants to know what a bug-out bag is; talk about paranormal activity! I can see a white van parked across the street and the driver is on the phone.

A bug-out bag is a portable bag that’s pre-packed with essential items one would require to survive, for seventy-two hours in the aftermath of a disaster, especially when evacuating. The term ‘bug-out bag’ is widely believed to be a derivative of the ‘bail-out bag,’ an emergency kit many military aviators carry. As for families or groups, it may do well for each individual to carry his own bag. A bug-out bag is also called a grab bag, a battle box, a Personal Emergency Relocation Kit (PERK), a go bag or a GOOD bag (Get Out Of Dodge).

For most politicians and kinsmen preparing a bug-out bag has been their life’s calling. There bags are pertinaciously stashed with cash and collectibles that would last for generations in case their rein ends abruptly. Their survival kit includes real estate, fancy cars and of course the pass book for a Swiss Bank account. For them D-day can be swift but being ready is their motto.

I can see the white van pulling out in a hurry. He’s been so busy driving around, unlike his masters he hasn’t really had much time for a bug-out bag, the poor soul. As for the rest of us too, it’s good to have a bug-out bag ready, just in case. There’s no telling where the world is heading and every parent would do well to make sure there’s one ready. Our bug-out bags should have the bare essentials required to leave in a hurry; things every family need to survive, at least for few days. End of the world? Well, only God knows but we do know that catastrophes, natural or man-made can hit us without warning.

My advice: never panic and never be caught unprepared. Be ready to move out in an instant; be ready to continue civilisation. Even if you never have to run, it’s always good to maintain a box of food and other essentials that can help your family survive for at least a few weeks if there’s no power, no running water and no food on super market shelves. It pays to be forewarned and forearmed.

Signs were getting very ominous this week. Newspapers and webcasts carried pictures of MPs known to butcher each other in the Talk Shop reconciling their differences in the Meat Shop; yes there’s a committee to look into that, too. In Colombo’s social circuit they all looked happy; as if they were all nuts from the same bunch.

While everyone else was hustling to save themselves, the noblest and most famous Silva of them all, was outdoing what he knows best: saving the pigs. A world without him will be like a bath kadei without parippu; so for our sake let’s hope that he has a bug-out bag; and that he can carry it in a hurry.

As for me, I think I’ll go hit my head on my bug-out bag.

(Dinesh Watawana is a former foreign correspondent and military analyst. He is a brand consultant and heads The 7th Frontier, an integrated communications agency which masterminded the globally-acclaimed eco tourism hotspot KumbukRiver. Email him at [email protected].)