What you carry on your person everyday (or at least accessible close to you) may dictate the success or the failure of a difficult situation.

Whether it is a medical, practical or defensive scenario carrying basic or advance equipment is really important.

If you live in an urban environment and you are not always close to your vehicle it’s suggested to build an EDC kit in a backpack or a sling-bag.

In our opinion your self defense tools and equipment should be at all times on your person. We only use our backpack to store extra mags, but not our primary firearm. If the situation does not allow us to reach for our EDC backpack we sill have a concealed-carry handgun with mounted light and extra mag, a folding blade, a smartphone, a wallet, a tactical flashlight and a tourniquet. Keeping our EDC defensive tool in the same location will also provide efficiency and accuracy to the situation.

We like to divide by priority and importance our daily-carry equipment into different levels.

Level 1: the EDC items carried on your belt and pant’s pockets.

Level 2: items in your bag directly accessible from the outside.

Level 3: items organized in pouches and dividers inside the bag.

About the backpack:

One of the key features that we really like of the Blade’s design is its side-access. This allows us to open and extract the content without dropping the bag or revealing what’s inside. Arc’teryx has padded this bag like a tank, it is comfortable, light and extremely protective towards electronics or fragile items.

The Blade has many pockets, some visible and some hidden. On the top, next to the handle, there are two pockets: one specifically designed for eye wear and one for GP items. On the side there are three pockets: the admin pocket (with stitched organizers for admin tools), the main compartment and the laptop (or even ballistic plates) compartment. All the internal parts of the bag are made of hi-viz nylon for better efficiency. The hidden pocket is located on the lower back close to the body, and it is intended for documents, extra cash, copy of conceal carry permit or passport.

Even on the road this backpack is really handy, in case of an accident (especially at night) you can grab it, exit the vehicle and move towards a safe location without keeping any valuables in the car. In the admin pocket we have placed two S&S Precision V-Lites and a Manta strobe to mark our presence to other drivers or the authorities until we have access to roadside flares.

This backpack is efficient and feature-rich without screaming “tactical”. We like the adaptability of PALs webbing and we like Camo but in most urban environments it just stands out too much. The clean design of the Blade 24 allows to be “undetected”  or just not to stand out too much.

Bag, Pouches and Cases:

Arc’teryx Blade 24

Maxpedition Fatty Organizer

Maxpedition Mini Organizer

Salewa Med Pouch (With personal kit)

6×6 Pals Multicam Pouch

Thule 13″ Laptop Case

Items directly accessible: 

Outdoor Research Helium II Jacket

Outdoor Research Halberd Sensor Tactical Gloves

Princeton Tec Remix MPLS Headlamp in Multicam

AKG Headphones

Boker VAT tool

Princeton Tec Switch light

S&S Precision V-lite Green

S&S Precision V-lite Blue

S&S Precision Manta Strobe

Gerber Impromptu Tactical Pen

Space Pen

Oakley SI Ballistic DetCord in Cerakote

Surefire E2D Defender Ultra

Pick Lock Kit with Tecnora and Kevlar Strings

Vapur 0.7 Water bottle

Items stored in pouches:

Pelican 1010 Case

Samsung 250gb T1 SDD

Storacell 123 Battery holder

Gerber MP1 Multiplier

550 Paracord

Gerber Shard Multitool

Surefire EP-1 C Ear Pro

Bic Lighter

Steiner T824 Compact Binoculars

Altoids Tin with basic Survival kit

Inforce 6vx backup Flashlight

Rite in the Rain notepad

Cyalume 6″ green

Samsung 13000mAh Battery Bank

Sharpie

Chargers for electronics

Med Kit:

1 x QuikClot Combat Gauze

2 x Gauze Pad (4″x 4″)

1 x Elastic Bandage

1 x Tourniquet

3 x Pharmaderm Antibiotic wipes

3 x BurnFree Gel

10 x Normal Band Aids

8 x Special Shape Band Aids

3 x 3M Steri-Strips

1 x Aluderm Gauze Pad (8″x 8″)

2 x Aluderm Gauze Pad (4″x 4″)

1 x 3M Micropore Tape

1 x Surgical Tape

2 x Sterilized Gloves Nitrile

2 x Ketoprofen

10 x Ioperamide

2 x Paracetamole

2 x Amoxilline (antibiotics)

4 x Aspirin

4 x Iburofen

1 x Fine-Point Metal Tweezers

1 x Space Blaket

Inside Altoids Tin:

3 x 3M Steristrips

2 x Bandaids

2 x Iboprufen

4 x Antihistamine

4 x Water tabs

1 x 3M Ear Pro Backup

1 x Pencil w/ 1ft of tape and 20 ft of floss

4 x Stormproof matches

1 x Exotac firestarter

1 x Clip Compass

2 x BurnFree gel

1 x Alchool wipes