EMERGENCY SUITCASE FOR CIVILIANS IN CASE OF COMBAT ACTIONS: WHY YOU NEED IT

AUTHOR: MAX POLGIN

In connection with the discussion of the potential invasion of the Russian Federation, all mass media were simply flooded with articles on the topic of the alarming suitcase. It is surprising that no one was concerned about this topic before, although we have been living in a far from peaceful country for 8 years.

Therefore, I decided to shed some light on this topic, given the fact that sometimes the media publishes outright nonsense. Since the topic is very large, this will be a series of posts, and in the first one we will discuss the question of why an alarm backpack is needed.

So, the purpose of an emergency backpack is to provide you with the essentials in case of an emergency evacuation (1-10 min). An emergency evacuation means you don’t have time to pack and pack, all you can do is get dressed and grab that pesky backpack. Do not take documents from the closet or safe, first aid kit from the bedside table, money from the hiding place. No, all this should already be in the emergency backpack. You will say that this can be inconvenient. I agree, but if you live in the orange level of danger, when an extreme situation can arise at any moment – all these inconveniences can be tolerated.

In fact, such an evacuation is an extremely unlikely scenario. Here are a few possible cases when such a backpack may be needed in wartime conditions:

1. Sudden shelling of your locality (the classic “at exactly 4 in the morning, Kyiv was bombed…”). You woke up from the explosions, and you realize that you urgently need to go down to the basement or bomb shelter.

2. The military have knocked (rather broken into) your house/apartment and claim that your home is a very convenient firing point. And they give you 5 minutes for meetings.

3. The enemy quickly and unexpectedly found himself on the approaches to the settlement, and the “window” of the opportunity to evacuate quickly disappears, and a comrade in a car is waiting for you at the entrance.

4. You live in an area that is regularly shelled, and every time you go down to the basement, you realize that only one dust may remain from your home. And here every time you take with you a suitcase of anxiety.

5. The authorities have declared an emergency, and possibly even a forced evacuation.

In the rest of the cases, one way or another, you will have time to gather, load things into the car, or take something else with you, except for an alarming backpack.

In all of the above cases, you may find yourself in a situation where your distressed backpack is the only possession you have left, if not for a long time, then at least for a few days or weeks. Perhaps you will turn into refugees, like those who stormed the Belarusian-Polish border, and again you will only have what you can carry on your shoulders.

It is based on these introductions that you should pack your anxious backpack. I will say right away that this task is difficult, because assembling an ideal emergency backpack implies that you will have to duplicate some things from those that you use on a daily basis (after all, you will not be able to provide an emergency evacuation). However, the ideal exists in order to strive for it.

We will talk about the criteria of a high-quality emergency backpack in the next publication.

Max Polgin was on the call. Take care and subscribe to my Telegram channel.