What's actually in my apartment go-bag — not what Reddit told me to pack
I started with a Reddit-prepper checklist and cut it in half. What an honest 72-hour go bag actually contains for someone who lives in a city apartment, not a survival cabin.
First version of my bag weighed 18 kg. I'd checked everything off a list someone posted on a preparedness subreddit: a multi-day water filter, a tarp, paracord, two knives, an entrenching tool, a hand-crank radio with USB output, three days of freeze-dried food. The bag was almost too heavy to carry on a flat sidewalk.
The realistic question is: what am I actually preparing for? In an apartment in a city, the likely emergencies are a power outage lasting a few days, a building evacuation (gas leak, fire), a winter storm where the heat goes out, or a need to walk somewhere because transit is down. I'm not preparing for the forest. I removed everything that was forest-adjacent.
What stayed
- A high-capacity power bank kept charged. Not a hand-crank radio. A 20,000mAh power bank charges a phone six times. Six phone charges is two days of useful information during a blackout.
- A small first-aid kit — the trauma kit kind with a tourniquet and pressure bandages, plus the boring stuff: pain reliever, antihistamines, bandaids, a few days of any prescription medication in original packaging.
- Cash. $200 in small bills in an envelope. ATMs fail. Card readers fail. A taxi driver doesn't care about your e-transfer in a storm.
- Copies of documents. Driver's license, passport, lease, insurance card — printed and in a sealed bag. If the building has to be evacuated for a week, this saves a lot of phone calls.
- A change of clothes — warm layer, socks, underwear. Not a full survival kit. Not a tarp. Clothes I'd be comfortable sleeping in at a hotel or a shelter.
- Two litres of water in collapsible bottles, plus a small pack of Potable Aqua purification tablets. Not a backpacking filter. Tablets.
- One day of food — granola bars, a few packets of nut butter, a small bag of trail mix. Not three days of freeze-dried meals.
- A real flashlight with spare batteries. A Streamlight ProTac 1L, not a phone light.
- A small AM/FM radio. Pocket-sized. Just for emergency broadcasts when cell networks are choked.
- A multitool. One Leatherman Wave Plus. Not three knives. The multitool covers 95% of what knives are for in an urban setting.
What I cut
Tarp. Paracord. Entrenching tool. Compass. Fire starters. A second knife. A solar charger. A water filter rated for river water. The big freeze-dried food kit. A wool blanket that took up half the bag.
None of those are wrong items. They're the right items for a different emergency. If I lived rurally, or in a region with hurricane risk where I might be sheltering in place for a week, the list would be different. For "apartment in a city, things might go sideways for 72 hours," the heavy stuff is a costume.
The weight test
The current bag is about 4.5 kg. I can carry it for an hour without thinking about it. That matters more than the contents — a bag I won't carry is a bag I won't bring. A perfect bag in a closet I can't lift is a worse bag than a "good enough" bag I'll actually pick up.
Principle, if there is one: prep for what's likely, not what's dramatic. The Reddit list is built for the most extreme scenario it can imagine. Most lives will never see that scenario. Build for yours.
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