Prepping Your Car: Safety in Your Vehicle

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One of the concepts we’ve discussed on our blog is the importance of a Get Home Bag. If you haven’t learned about this item, I’d encourage you to check it out. Today we’re going to cover how to prep your car for an emergency, and the essential items that you should always be carrying in your vehicle. Prepping for your car is an aspect even some seasoned preppers forget about. The fact is, we’re in our cars a lot. It should be treated like a mobile residence, especially on long trips.

Prepping a Car

Whenever we look at prepping, we want to make sure to evaluate the essentials, then move to important but not essential, then to comfort items.

What are essentials that we care about in a vehicle?

• Water
• Food
• Protection
• Cash

Water is straightforward. You should always have at least 1 gallon of extra water stored in a hard container. This water can come in handy for a number of uses, but primarily to keep you hydrated if you can’t get to a safe place right away. If you’re in a hot environment, have more water available. Make sure you change it out often. You should be drinking a lot of water on a regular basis, anyway!

Food is easy to cover. Have some calorie-dense snacks available in the car. Protein bars are an excellent choice, because they have both protein and carbohydrates. I recommend Pure Protein bars. They’re inexpensive, high in protein, and taste better than most protein bars. Throw in some candy, just in case you have someone who is diabetic in your car. You’d hate for someone to experience a drop in their blood sugar levels and not have some kind of remedy for them.

Protection refers to multiple items. You should have self-defense tools available, whether it’s a handgun, knife, baton, or pepper spray. If you’re looking for something small, yet packs a punch, the Hickory Stick is available for less than $18. It makes a great “tire checker” for when you want to thump your tires…

A can of top-notch, police pepper spray is less than $8. Every car should have at least one of those to give you some piece of mind.

Now that you have your personal protection covered, you also want to be mindful of your elements. The weather can turn nasty, and you don’t want to be caught without a way to keep yourself warm. Remember, your car might be dead and you could be stranded for a few hours to a few days.

Lastly, having $100 hidden somewhere in your car can help get you out of a bind. You never know when all electronic payment systems are down and you need to pay for gasoline.

Prep for Hours, then Days

Start with prepping your car for a few hours, then slowly begin to increase the amount you prep to cover you for 24 hours, then more. Cars have somewhat limited space, especially if you have to haul around kids, groceries, etc. You’ll have to find a way to get creative. I’ve found that I can accumulate a lot of junk in my car, so if you can stay on top of this, you’ll have more space for prepping items.

Once you handle the essentials, you can begin to add more to your stockpile in your car.

Use the Nooks and Crannies of Your Car

Have you ever seen National Geographic’s TV shows where Border Patrol agents do a huge drug bust, and find drugs in all these hidden compartments of a vehicle? Well, you don’t have to be a part of Pablo Escobar’s crew for properly prepping your car. Use the space that your car has created for tools, and see what other items you can hide in there. These are great spots to hide cash, or other essential items.

Constantly Think Ahead

The time we don’t want to be thinking about what we need is once we’re in an emergency situation, and we’re left saying, “oh sh*t, I needed to pack…”

There are many more items that are important, but not life-or-death. We’ll cover those in a future article.

Until then, stay tuned and start prepping your car.