It goes by different names. Go Bag, Bug Out Bag, or 72 Hour Kit. The concept is it is a bag you grab when you have to leave your house unexpectedly and will be gone for a few days. It could be due to some kind of local emergency, a problem with your house, or if you need to be someplace else urgently. In that case, it is helpful to have a bag you can grab that has enough supplies to take care of you for 3 days.
Just to be clear this is not going to enable you to go and live in the national wilderness and doing things like foraging for food, building a shelter, and establishing a place to hideout. If you don’t already have experience “roughing it” in the wilderness, a bag of gear will not turn you into a mountain man.
For the situations that most of us are going to encounter we need enough to make ourselves somewhat comfortable for a few days. Thus why it is often called a 72-hour kit. If you can take care of yourself for 3 days then usually either the emergency will have passed or other support will have become available.
For this write-up, it is assumed that you have a car available to carry some heavier items. No attempt will be made to put together a kit that you can completely carry on your back. Water alone will be more than many can carry. With a car, you will always have at least enough shelter to survive. While perhaps not comfortable, at least enough to keep you alive if you cannot find something better.
This page will contain links to a series of blog posts documenting the refreshing of my go-bag. Be sure to sign up for the e-mail list to get updated on this series of articles.