Car Kit

[BlueTrain]

There have been a few good lists of kit posted in various places here, including one very good list starting with pocket kit and on up. It had some things intended to be kept in the car. (This might have been a link).

Now, here is my problem. Where I live it is sub-tropical for four months of the year, most years. A car in an unshaded parking lot is sitting in 100 degrees (F) temperatures and the inside temperature could go twenty degrees higher easily, or so it would seem. This rather limits the sorts of things you might want to keep in the car day in and day out. It won't harm water, of course, but I wouldn't think most foods will handle that too well. Clearly it eliminates beer from your car kit!

Any comments on the situation?

Frankly, I think there might be a greater need for an emergency back-up kit in the car during cold weather, since sometimes it snows here and I don't work at home. Furthermore, I can't visualize much of any local evacuation (Oh, yeah! I live in a suburb of Washington, D.C.) for much of any reason, although people talk about it now and then. But in other places, mainly along the southern coast, evacuations are fairly common and I would expect the most people have the routine worked out. Hurricanes are the chief reason along the coast, floods are in other places. But I don't think there has ever been an evacuation around here. I know nobody left town on 9/11.

 

[Squidders]

I would recommend dry foods that you would boil up like a pot noodle. Also boiled sweets. Little jars of jam last forever if they're not opened before hand. If you're desperate, just get a few MREs.

 

[NickBristol]

You could try insulating your dried food - rice, pasta, noodles etc with the flavour sachets included - by wrapping it in bubble wrap and tin foil. Found it works quite well in the past. Thinking about it, if you had a way to seal heavy duty polythene bags you fill them in water and use that as a heat sink around your foods, and would supply additional water too.

Given that staying near your car in the majority of cases is the best action, having a large orange tarp with a set of very long aluminium tent poles crossed in the middle of the tarp and fixed to the corners, and some guy lines that you can use to fix the tarp over the car or alongside would give a nice shaded area and increase visability from the air. This would leave you with a kind of dome tent for your car. Anyone got any idea of how feasible that would be to design and build? I know there are some commercial versions on the market that do a similar thing at the rear of a vehicle.

 

[Squidders]

I think that kind of arrangement comes under the category of "more than planning for a small emergency" and is a little overkill for most peoples needs, unless you're planning a long road trip somewhere likely to have a catastrophy.

My car kit consists of:

a pot noodle
a bottle of water changed from time to time
basic car kit with jump leads, reflective triangle, a few sockets, torch, jack etc
small UK legal folding knife
a tin of evaporated milk and some instant coffee sachets
a few disposable lighters
and a medium fleece blanket

This all fits in to a little bag that sits in the corner of my boot... I think these things shouldn't take up too much room and things only get worse if you try and plan for everything.

As with all things, you can't beat improvisation.

 

[11binf]

hey blue train: i keep those life boat ration bars in my jeep..they seem to with stand the heat pretty well and keep for a long time,i live in phx. arizona and you know how darn hot it is here ....by the way i used to store a couple of quarts of oil for use in my jeep in my "crash kit" but with the darn heat they all purged in side the kit it was a mess!! now i have them packed in zip bags....vince g. 11b inf.....