The Basic Urban Pocket Kit

WTF? BUPK.
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Let's be honest. There are not so many real emergency situations you can encounter in an urban setting from which you can escape by means of a pocket "survival" kit.

(If you have an idea about how to escape from a building in flames, only using things you can carry in your pocket - handkerchiefs apart - please let me know...)

Furthermore survival is more about skills and mindset than about tools and kits. Ideally, you should have a McGyver mind.

Letting life-threatening emergencies alone, in an urban setting what can happen (and happens often) is that you have to face inconveniences rather than true emergencies.

Thats the reason that led me to develop my own B.U.P.K. aka Basic Urban Pocket Kit.

My goals were:
1. Have fun
2. More of the aforementioned
3. Assemble a small and light kit that might be useful in coping with things that might happen to me and fiercely attempt to ruin my day.

"Whatever might go wrong, it will."

Things I planned for...
1. Evading darkness (including, yes, dangerous situations as getting stuck in a dark subway train...)
2. Substituting that crucial shirt button seconds before the most important meeting of the year
3. Coping with having your wallet stolen
4. Fix things and restart computers
5. Mitigating your dumbness in wearing new shoes the day public transport is on strike
6. Minor cuts, headache
7. Running out of cigarettes
8. Being in dire need of setting fire to something or someone.

Of course, your needs, priorities and environment might be very different from mine - and consequentely your kit should be different. And should be modified according to the season, your daily plans and so on (more of that later).

BUPK: Kitting out, the container

If this is not the first time you think about survival, you will know that the benchmark for such urban (and not-urban) kits tend to be the one presented in John Wiseman's "The Urban Survival Handbook".

The guy, a former SAS member, has a rather high-tech, high profile approach in its general purpose / wilderness survival kit, including things like a radioactive, tritium based, light source.

I must admit that his Urban kit makes a lot of sense... but I believed I could improve on that.

Container

Just while I was pondering about which container might be suitable, given a primary goal of having a kit the size of a sigarette pack... Lucky Strike came out in Italy with a special edition pack. Made of plastic and metal, light and reasonably resistent. Problem solved.

I've seen good alternatives, such as much tougher tobacco metal boxes (the SAS option), specialized survival plastic containers (costing you an arm and a leg) and so on. Another classic is the "Altoids Mint Tin" (or equivalents). My recommendation is: try to have fun.

Stay alert, you'll soon find some food or equipment container or some box originally developed for some completely different purpose that you can hack into a BUPK container.

It's much more fun to find clever and cheap solutions than to buy specialized equipment when not absolutely necessary; and especially when the price difference is not fully justified by performances or special features.

Basic Urban Pocket Kit - General, money

General Overview - Money

Money, in our society, has a tendency to come in handy. Is without doubt one of the greatest problem-solving tools we have. Therefore it can be very unconvenient to find yourself without.

I included several coins, glued (with a removable sticky paste called Blu Tack) to the upper cover. Coins are not good for phones here - coin operated phones seem to heve disappeared... I mean, any kind of public phone seems to have been removed, due to the enormous success of portable phones. Still coins are good for a coffee when you really need one and left your wallet home, to buy bus tickets or to unscrew some kind of big screws.

It would be wise to add stuff like:

* A spare money card/credit card...
as your BUPK could be stolen, though, you shoud choose (if available in your country) a prepaid credit card or a universal gift credit card - i.e. a card you can electronically charge with a certain amount of money (let's say 50 €) and that is (should be) very difficult for crooks to recharge from your bank account after they have spent the amount left in your stolen card - oh well, if you want more details, just go and contact your local bank.

* Bills (10, 20 or 50 €) would come handy but tend to take space, needing to be folded. I woudn't suggest you to take large amounts of money unless you are runnig away from your local mob, and remember that large denomination notes (such as 500 € bills) are not always accepted when you need just a coffee or just a newspaper...

Transport
is an other crucial area.
If you are always able to easily get back home, most of the problems you might meet in town tend to be much easier to solve (girlfriend/boyfriend apart, of course).

Being stranded, penniless in a different city or just at night on the other side of your town could be a real PITA (Pain In The Anathomy).

That's why I included a 1-hour bus/subway ticket in my kit. You just include whatever makes sense in your environment, or tickets valid for the different towns you visit often.