Shelter maybe isn’t the sexiest concept for a bug-out bag, but it can save your life. They say you can survive for three minutes without air, three hours without proper shelter in inclement weather, three days without water, and three weeks without food. This means that depending on your circumstances, shelter might be the #1 thing you need to focus on first. (Also, who can hold their breath for three minutes?? I’d be dead in a heartbeat.)

Now, I don’t claim to be someone who can build amazing shelters out of branches and other natural materials. I’ve watched a lot of videos and practiced on my own (sometimes with my kid, which is fun), but I’m definitely not an expert. So I need items in my bug-out bags that can quickly be used in a pinch.

There are a few items that fall into this category: tents, emergency blankets, and ponchos all fall into shelter, in my opinion. Anything that shelters you from the elements. Even the rain covers I bought for my bug-out bags probably qualify as shelter.

Here’s a picture of the shelter-related items in my bug-out bags, and below we’ll get into some details about them.

The gray bags are rain covers for my bug-out bags. There are a bunch of items I wouldn’t want getting soaked, so I recently added those. Each bag has two ponchos to keep me and my family dry, as well as survival tents, bivvy sacks, and emergency blankets to provide some protection from the elements.

A fairly recent addition I made was to add 6 stakes to each bag, so that I don’t have to make them out of wood when setting up the shelters.

Bag 1 also has a small book on building survival shelters, and as always with books I’m on the fence about whether to include it. If you have thoughts, let me know! Building shelters isn’t an area I’m super experienced in, so it might be good to have as a reference.

Finally, bug-out bag 1 has a length of paracord, and I need to add some to bag 2 as well. Paracord is one of those do-everything, versatile items that you’ll want to have on hand in an emergency. I have a big roll of it in the basement, so I’ll cut a length of it for bag 2.

That’s what I’ve got to shelter us from the elements. It actually doesn’t look like much when I lay it out like that, might have to revisit this category sometime soon!