This is another introduction to a web application tool that I have launched, which is called the Mission Load out Inventory Checklist.
Some people would call it a bug out or evacuation type drill, or just packing up and having a checklist for if you're going camping or you're leaving town or traveling.
It might be helpful in emergency situations where relying on a checklist that's been prebuilt and thought through and is versatile and dynamic, meaning it, it can adapt to different scenarios, that documentation being in place makes things a lot easier, a lot more efficient.
So you pre organize things based on this process to make it even more efficient, and you preclude a lot of panic and a lot of inefficiency.
I heard one time back in my, the peak of my being a survival preparedness permaculture teacher in La County, I learned somewhere that only 3% of households are prepared in any way for a major earthquake, the long overdue major big one earthquake that could happen any day.
So I understand it's a niche. I just put it nicely and say, teaching survival and preparedness it's a niche. There places and people who have more of a need for it but it's definitely not popular. It's popular to watch tv shows that make fun of the culture, but it's not popular in and of itself.
It becomes more and more about what I can do for myself, what I need to do for myself, and then how that can also provide resources to people through my website. So I'm gifting this process to the world.
I'm gonna do this, doing it for myself. Hope it helps other people out there.
So what this tool is great for is what I've been doing without this tool, and what this tool is gonna help me do better, be even more efficient with the process.
I've done it for years, and a lot of people have some version of it, but often it's just in their mind.
Maybe it's with an app, and I'm sure they're very useful apps out there.
My prerogative is to create a web page that functions like an app, but does not extract any data from the users whatsoever.
None of the information that goes into the form fields to build this checklist actually goes back to the mothership server that hosts the page. You download the page you run it locally, all the information only lives on your device and then you can print it out and have your checklist put it on a clipboard or in a binder and it the content you enter never gets sent back across the wire.
Your only concern you local device. Is there a key logger on your keyboard? Is your browser up to date, and your operating system not compromised? You trust it, etc. But that's all downstream from me, it's none of my business.
Whatever you do using that file locally on your machine and your browser, if you export it by printing it into a PDF file, or you export it to a spreadsheet file, the way I have set it up, those files get built and constructed on your end on your device.
What is great about the way I'm doing these tools is that you look at the source code, what you see is what you get, and that's what your browser interprets.
Then from there, everything else is downstream. Nothing goes back upstream.
Now I'll walk though the features of the tool. On the very top of the screen, you have a series of forms where you input information.
Starting at the left, you you enter the item name. Let's say you're loading up to go somewhere a month or a week in advance, you fill out this web form app, print it out, put it in a binder or clipboard, and now it's time to use it.
What you're trying to do is make a list of items. So first thing you do on the form is you enter the first items name, and then you select a quantity from a number selector so you can keep track of how many you're packing how many you're supposed to have.
I pre-built out a list of categories that are relevant to this sort of subject matter, if there are requests, it's possible for me to allow a user to add their own fields, for now, if what you see doesn't fit, then there's the other category.
There's a form field called stored location, followed by a form field that is the packed location.
Then last field is notes you could enter to remind yourself about or give a description of or whatever else you wanna do in that notes field.
It is limited because I want this to be able to print out without getting cut off.
Going back to the stored location and the packed location. The reason I thought to do that for this is that I realized that it would be great to be able to click on the header of the table, of the columns, right rows and columns.
You click on the top, and then it gives you the ability to alphabetically sort all of the rows, all of your entries. You can sort them alphabetically by the name.
I don't see why you need to, but you can sort also by the quantity you and then this is where it gets powerful for me, is that if I wanna sort by category, then I can, I can do a drill or set depending on what I feel like doing or what the situation requires I can print out a couple of versions of this, or just practice with different configurations.
I wanna make this process as efficient as possible so let's say, you just list everything that you wanna pack and you do it willy nilly you just kind of wing it you list everything you can think of just in one sitting.
You're gonna list everything then you realize, if I fill it out on this form, I realize that they all came to me randomly. So when I entered them into the app, it's just a random arrangement of the storage locations where you're gonna retrieve it from.
But aha. Now, the way I built that, you click on that header, and you could actually group all of the locations discreetly, so that when you go do the packing of the checklist, you get everything out that you need from one area at a time without making excessive trips back and forth.
One of the coolest things I did with a partner when we did a bug out drill years and years ago was we said, we've got our bug out bags we know we're gonna take out of here to put in the vehicle.
Then there's extra vehicle supplies that go beyond our bug out bags.
We know what's on our everyday carry, etc.
But what we did is we laid out a blanket in the middle of the biggest room, and we started to go and do the scavenger hunt and get everything out that we wanted to take, whatever it was, whatever size it was, we got it all out. That was a tool.
We have the wherewithal while we're inside. We're trying to get everything but it's very important we don't wonder whether we left anything or, or if something was left.
We pulled it out of where it stored, but then we left it on the bed, or we left it on the counter.
Go to where it stored. Get it and then centralize it, and then pack out, pack up, or load out from that staging area is a good way to call it.
We just used the blanket in the middle of the room. But whatever works, it could be that the floor of the garage is totally empty, and so you can just take everything out over there.
That was a useful tactic, but to just describe the utility of this a little bit, hopefully that was helpful. But when you're scrambling to put together everything that you wanna pack out, that you wanna load out, and everything in your list is disorganized...
The list is disorganized because everything's in different places. This tool gives you the ability to list things, add things, add each item in whatever order comes to mind, so you don't have to sit there and try to think, oh no, I forgot.
I thought I remembered everything that I was gonna get from the garage. Then I thought of a few more things. The way this tool works, you can add things in any order, and then when you really know you're done, that's when you can sort by the category, if that helps, or the item name, if you forgot where it was on the list.
You can add up to a hundred items. You get the ability to sort those by each header, I don't know why you would need to sort by the notes, but the option is there.
I will be adding eventually the feature to export it to a spreadsheet so from that framework you would be able to save it to a file that you could edit later.
As it stands right now, it's set up to be, you sit there, you have a meeting with whoever you know is relevant to the process, if there is anyone and you fill it out, and then you print it out.
It's got check boxes. After you add an item with the form, then it, it extends on the page, going down to a hundred, but they're also numbered.
It was some out of the box thinking I had to do to get this to work but natively, the sort function was making it so if I were to automatically add a number to each entry so that you could easily reference them. And this helps a lot when you're working as a team, you say, hey, can you get items five through ten or whatever, and I'll get the first, whatever. Or I can't hear what you're saying just yell the number to have an identifier that's a new number.
That's helpful certainly if you're in a hurry, or you're stressed, or its an emergency.
But in general, if it's hard to pronounce or it, it could be confused with something else. If you're shouting back and forth between rooms or whatever, you just say number five or whatever, and there it is.
So obviously, naturally, the sort function was sorting the whole row. And so to get number five to stay in place, cause that would destroy the utility of having them be numbered if when you do a sort by another column, it ends up just scrambling that order of numbers. So there is a separate, independent, static, unchanging list of numbers, so that when you sort by any of the other columns the item numbers don't move around.
You don't lose that ability to continue to still reference a unique identifying number. The point is, whichever sort mode you prefer, you have the added value that if you synchronize on that, meaning you print it out and you make two copies, you're both working from the same document, then it doesn't matter what order you put stuff in. The fact is, once you print it, those numbers don't change or will not have changed on the far left.
So whatever sorting method you prefer that's appropriate for the time, you don't have to worry about the numbers were getting scrambled.
The quantity field is useful for the prepper lifestyle. I end up with redundancy beyond redundancy. If it's not well organized, which I try to tend to be, but it's not perfect. There are times where I will buy extra batteries then next time I buy batteries, I'll be like, oh, I should always buy extra batteries. It's kind of a habit, and it's a good habit. But then if I don't keep them organized and easy to access, I end up either up with way more than I need, but then they're scattered and I can't find any when I need them because I don't know where they are or I'm not keeping track of inventory so I run out.
So for me this could be both a simple one off exercise to do either just as practice or for real situation.
But I think more longer term the utility of it is that it can evolve to be a way to always maintain readiness. If I have food in my bug out bag, how often do I rotate that food? Am I aware of when it might expire or get stale?
Are there issues like that to be aware of, and also to know, to not overpack. I only wanted to pack three days worth of anything for the get home bag or the bug out bag, this isn't supposed to be to live out of it for the rest of my life kind of a pack job but maybe I end up packing five sets of silverware.
It's not the end of the world but every bit adds up in terms of the weight.
I've discovered that before, so consolidating things, keeping an inventory, knowing when your supplies are getting low and trying to keep them restocked before they get low. Actually restock at the midway point of some is a good habit.
This tool, as it stands, does not account for all of that stuff. If you were savvy, then you could make your own spreadsheet, and you could have all kinds of reminders to email you to rotate at certain intervals and whatnot.
But the point of me making these tools is that they can be used without spreadsheet software if you don't have it.
There's no reason not to up your preparedness game. Just like self defense training, people in my life, if we're gonna go out into the world and have the pretense of having each other's backs, let's not be sloppy about it.
Let's take it seriously and make it part of a healthy friendship, a healthy partnership, a healthy lifestyle.