Ready America 70280 Review: A Go-Bag Checked Every Season

Two days of rain, and the creek at the bottom of the road came up faster than I have ever seen it. A deputy came down the gravel at dusk and told the low households to leave. I lifted the Ready America 70280 off the floor just inside the hall closet door, and we were in the pickup about ten minutes later.

Four months before that, in December, I stood in the same hall and tried to work out what a person ought to carry out of a house in a hurry. I priced the pieces one at a time that fall, in the weeks before I bought this bag last December. I never built my own. That is the honest account of how it got here, and it is why I still think it earns its square foot of floor.

How I've Used It

The Ready America 70280 has been on the floor just inside the hall closet door since last December. Not on a shelf, not at the back of the closet. On the floor by the door, because the one time I needed it, I was not going to be moving boxes at nine at night with a deputy in the driveway.

I have owned it eleven months. It has come out of that closet for exactly one night, in April, and it gets opened for a check on the same four dates every year. That is the entire record. I would rather hand you that than a paragraph about what it might do in a situation I have never been in.

What I can tell you is what it is like to live with. It sits there and takes up about a foot of floor and nothing else. It does not need charging, it does not need fuel, and it does not care whether the power is on. I step over it to reach the box of food kits on the shelf, and that is the most attention it gets between checks.

At 7.8 pounds it is light enough that I carry it one handed, out to the truck, up the porch steps, wherever it needs to go. Eleven months on a closet floor and the nylon still looks like the day I took it out of the box, which is more than I can say for the box.

What Is Actually In the Bag

The Ready America contents list is short and specific: two food bars at 2,400 calories each, twelve sealed water pouches at 4.225 ounces each, two survival blankets, a 33 piece first aid kit, two twelve hour lightsticks, two dust masks, four nitrile gloves, a whistle, two ponchos and a tissue pack. The bag itself is nylon, 7.8 pounds, and measures 9.5 by 6 by 12 inches. That is the whole inventory, and there is nothing hiding in it that you did not pay for.

Add it up honestly and you get two people through one bad night and the morning after. The food bars total 4,800 calories, which is 800 a day apiece against a three day label. The water pouches total around 51 ounces, which is under half a gallon between two people. That is not a complaint exactly. It is arithmetic, and you should have it in front of you before you decide the bag is the whole answer.

I priced the pieces myself that fall. Food bars, water, a first aid kit, a blanket, a poncho, something to carry it in. After a couple of weeks of it I still had no list I trusted, and I had bought none of it. That is the argument for a boxed bag, stated plainly: it is done, and done is the only thing that matters at nine at night.

The two survival blankets are the foil kind that fold down to the size of a deck of cards. I have unfolded one to look at it and folded it back. They are for keeping the wind off, not for sleeping under in February.

The 33 piece first aid kit is the part I would correct first. Thirty three sounds like a clinic. It is mostly adhesive bandages, tape and a few gauze pads, and it will handle a cut hand on a truck door. It will not handle anything that wants stitches. If you take a prescription, that goes into the bag yourself, in its own bottle, and you rotate it.

The ponchos are thin enough to see light through, and that is the point, because they fold to nothing. The lightsticks are the twelve hour kind you bend and shake. The dust masks and the gloves are for the sort of dust that comes off a fallen building, and the whistle is a whistle. Nobody needs the whistle explained until the night they need the whistle.

The bag's own list covers your body. What it does not cover is the day after, and that is the gap I filled myself. Inside the front of mine are copies of our documents, a written list of our medications, a phone cable, cash in small bills, and a spare pair of glasses.

The two LifeStraw filters moved into it in February, because a filter that lives on a shelf is a filter you have to remember. Before that they sat on the closet shelf above it, which sounds close and is not, not at nine at night.

Both the food bars and the water pouches carry a 5 year shelf life on the package. I wrote the month and the year on the inside of the flap in pencil so I do not have to squint at six little printed dates in a dim hall. When they come due I will replace the food and the water and keep the bag, which is the cheapest way to own one of these.

What I did not put in: a stove, fuel, tools, or anything heavy. The reason this bag works for me is that it weighs 7.8 pounds and I can lift it with one hand at 61 years old. A bag you cannot pick up is a bag you leave in the closet and apologize to later.

The Night It Came Off the Closet Floor

After two days of rain the creek rose fast. At dusk a deputy came down the road and told the low households to leave. I took the backpack and our phones. The radio stayed on the kitchen table, and the power station and the food kits stayed in the closet, and there was no time to argue with any of that.

We spent one night in a church fellowship hall in town, on folding chairs pushed together and a cot somebody found. Between the two of us we used the poncho and the tissue pack, split one of the food bars, and drank from the water pouches. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was sick. The drive took less time than the decision did.

The pouches are plain water and taste like the inside of a plastic pouch, which is what they are. On that night nobody said a word about it. I have drunk worse out of a thermos on the route.

Ten minutes is not a brag. It is ten minutes because the bag was on the floor by the door and I did not have to look for it. The phones took longer than the bag did.

We came home the next afternoon. The water had reached the yard and stopped short of the porch. The house was fine, the road was a mess, and I put the bag back on the floor inside the closet door and went to bed.

That is not a dramatic story and I am not going to dress it up. What it is, is the reason I keep the thing. Ten minutes from a knock at the door to a truck headed uphill is the number I care about, and I did not have to think about it once.

Ten minutes from a knock at the door to a truck headed uphill. The bag was on the floor by the door, and the phones took longer to find than the bag did.

What It Will Not Do

It will not make water. Twelve pouches is twelve pouches, and when they are gone the bag has nothing to say about it. The filters inside will not remove viruses, chemicals, fuel or salt, and floodwater can carry all four. A filter is not permission to drink out of a creek.

It will not tell you what is happening. There is no radio in it and nothing in it that knows the weather. That is a different bag on a different shelf, and on the night the creek came up I did not have either one in my hand.

It will not keep you warm for long, treat anything serious, or stand in for a plan you made while you were calm. It is equipment. It is the equipment a plan uses in the first hour, and it is worth what it is worth because it is packed and sitting by the door.

It also will not fit everything you suddenly decide you need. There is room in mine for the papers and the filters and the glasses, and that is about the end of it. If you stuff it you will not be able to close it, and if you cannot close it you will set it down somewhere and forget it.

And it is not a guarantee of anything. Follow what your local officials tell you. If they say leave, leave. A deputy came down my road at dusk and I did not ask him to justify it, and neither should you.

The Ten Minute Check

I check it on the first of March, June, September and December, the same four dates I top up the power station. It takes about ten minutes. I open it on the kitchen table, take everything out, look at each piece, and put it back.

What I am looking for is water pouches that are still firm and not leaking, food bar wrappers with no splits in them, lightsticks still sealed, and a medication list that is still correct. The paper is the part that goes out of date fastest. A bag packed with last spring's information is a bag packed with nothing.

A check takes about ten minutes. I read the labels, look at the dates, and close it back up.

Ten minutes, four times a year, is forty minutes. I have spent longer than that looking for a receipt. If you take one thing from this, take the calendar part, because the checking is the difference between a bag and a bag shaped object.

I also pencil the date on the inside of the flap. Not for anybody else. For me, so that in March I can see whether I actually did this in December or whether I am remembering a different December.

Who This Is For

This is for the neighbor who knows they ought to have something and has been meaning to get to it since the spring. Two people in a house, one bag, one date on the calendar. That is the whole system, and it does not need to be more complicated than that to work.

It is also for the person who does not want to spend a weekend assembling one off a list. I priced the pieces myself that fall and never got around to building it. That is not a character flaw. It is how most of us are, and the bag on the floor beats the better bag I was going to put together someday.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want water treatment, shelter and news in a single box, because the Ready America 70280 is not that, and no amount of wishing will make it that. Skip it if you are not going to open it. A sealed bag in a closet is a nice feeling and nothing else.

Skip it if you live somewhere with a specific hazard and a specific official kit list. Their list beats mine, and mine beats nothing. And skip it if you are buying it to feel finished. The bag is not the plan. The bag is what you grab while you are making the plan.