Survival Go Bag

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Echo-Sigma.

I’m not sure when it officially started, but the concept of the “go bag” has been around for a while. I remember having one and using the term in the 1990s when I was a patrol officer and a sniper on SWAT. It was a shoulder bag, and I filled it with spare rifle/pistol mags, first-aid supplies, ChemLights, water, food bars, maps and marking pens. Then came Y2K, and we thought the world was going to end, so we created larger survival bags for our trunks and outfitted them with more supplies. It’s easy to get carried away, and pretty soon you need an SUV to carry all your gear. So where do you draw the line? How much gear do you really need? Only you can answer this, but the folks at Echo-Sigma Emergency Systems have created a line of survival packs to help you be prepared for the worst.

Runner LE Pack

The theory behind a survival pack is it should have all the necessary supplies needed for an extended stay away from resources such as food, water and shelter. How extended the stay will determine what size pack you need. Echo-Sigma has a full line of disaster preparedness packs, ranging from their small, lightweight Runner to their Emergency Roll Away for two. Working with real street cops, they recognized the need for a pack geared specifically towards LE. Using the Runner pack as a base, they added a few things and created the Runner LE. This pack is perfect for keeping in your trunk and has just about everything you could want.

The Runner LE starts out with an HCB Condor Outdoor pack (in black or coyote brown), a small, thin, MOLLE-compatible backpack, which you can add to an existing pack or use as a stand-alone pack. Another Condor utility pouch is attached to the front of the pack, giving you plenty of storage space to hold all of the included equipment, which is good because there’s a lot of it!
To keep you energized and hydrated, there’s a provision pack containing six food bars and a liter of drinking water. There’s also a survival kit packed with more stuff than you’re likely to need. I like this since I usually need the stuff I didn’t plan for. Survival kit products include waterproof matches, a compass, lighter, emergency blanket, water purification tablets and a lot more.

More Goodies

There’s a very nice first-aid kit in this pack. It’s a good all-around kit stocked with everything you need for most minor injuries. To beef up my pack, I took my department-issued gunshot trauma kit and attached it to the outside via the MOLLE webbing. I’m sure you can find all kinds of ways to augment the first-aid supplies.
Now comes the cool stuff. Echo-Sigma recognizes we have some specific needs in our job, so they added a few well-thought-out extras. You can never have enough light, so the Runner LE kit comes with two Fenix lights. The first one is the LD12 tactical flashlight with a nylon holster. The second is the HL21 headlamp. Both lights run on a single AA battery. Since alkaline batteries deteriorate when stored in a hot trunk, a 4-pack of Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries are included. These operate in temperatures from -40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and have a storage life of 15 years!
You should always have a good folding knife on you, but just in case you don’t, one’s included in this kit. The SOG Escape folder has a glass breaker and seat belt cutter, making it a great tool for most of your needs. Also included is a pair of nitrile gloves, 25′ of 550 paracord and a dual pistol magazine pouch.

Make It Your Own

As good as the Runner LE kit is, it won’t fit everyone’s needs perfectly, and that’s where the MOLLE comes in handy. I added a couple of things to mine including a dual rifle mag pouch, a multitool, colored markers, extra gloves and a water bottle pouch. And because we’ve all got our own list of what we think is important to have, it’s wise to add to your pack. You can hardly outfit a pack like this on your own — and buying everything individually would be quite expensive.

Aside from adding a few extra items to my pack, I also went through it and organized things in the order I might want them. I highly recommend this if for no other reason than you are familiar with everything and where to find it. You don’t want to be opening the pack for the first time in the middle of crisis. If you pay any attention to the news, you see tragedy striking around the country on a weekly basis, be it an active killer in a school, tornado or other natural disaster. The go bag is a great concept and we should all have one — Echo-Sigma’s Runner LE makes it easy. Whether on- or off-duty, you can be prepared to stay on station for an extended period of time or even help out during a major tragedy.
By John Russo