The 5 W’s of Every Day Carry #2 - Who

The “Who” of Every Day Carry encompasses several different concepts. First, is the rhetorical question of “Who is carrying your EDC?” The answer, of course, is that YOU are. You are the one who is responsible for assessing what tools need to be part of your EDC. You are the one who is responsible for carrying them with you every day. Most importantly, you are the one who is responsible for ensuring that you have the skills and training to effectively utilize the tools you have. This is one of the most important points regarding a set of Every Day Carry tools, and one of the easiest points to overlook. Tools ALONE do not provide capability, but TOOLS + TRAINING do. If you carry a knife, but don’t know how to use it effectively and safely, you are at risk of injuring yourself and turning an asset into a liability. If you carry a tourniquet but don’t know how to apply it, you cannot take advantage of the expanded capabilities that carrying a tourniquet provides. Skills and training are as important as the physical tools you carry. Your skills and training are unique to you, and you carry them with you at all times. So, “Who is carrying your EDC?” You are. It’s YOUR responsibility to ensure that you are properly squared away and ready, by virtue of tools and training, for the challenges that you may face in your day.

Now, as an expansion on this, it is important to consider: WHO you are carrying your EDC FOR? Are you preparing to take care of yourself as you go to your day job? Or are you taking responsibility for others outside of yourself who you need to consider while assembling your EDC? These could be people such as your children, your significant other, or family members. Your children likely have a very different set of challenges they face on a day to day basis, and likely have a much lower capacity for the transport and application of EDC tools. The same can be said for others in your immediate interaction circles. If you are responsible for someone else’s wellbeing, you need to consider them in your EDC. You may have significant overlap in the challenges you may face, and your own standard EDC may be well suited to overcome the challenges you face alone as well as the potential challenges of the people you are responsible for. Or, perhaps their likely challenges are drastically different from yours, and you need to expand your EDC. This could be as simple as carrying emergency snacks for young children, or as complex as carrying additional medicine for a significant other who requires it.

Ideally, the people you interact with in your close circles will be able to recognize their own EDC needs and prepare accordingly. No matter who you are, your capacity to carry items in your EDC is always limited by a number of factors. You simply cannot carry everything you would want to be able to deal with every possible scenario. With this in mind, it is useful to know WHO in your immediate circle has specific items and skills as part of THEIR EDC. This information can be factored into your capability assessment. When they are PRESENT, their tools and skills are part of your group’s capabilities. Now, there may be overlap, even significant overlap, in your EDCs. This is not necessarily a bad thing. This provides redundancy, and the ability to diversify tasks. A common saying in the preparedness community is, “Two is one, and one is none.” Redundancy provides insulation against the repercussions of unexpected equipment failures and accidents. In addition to redundancy, coordinating the EDCs of those you live with, work with, or are commonly in proximity with can allow you the capacity to prepare for a greater variety of challenges. If there is a specialized tool for a specific challenge, it may be that only ONE person carries that tool in order to give the group that expanded capability, and allow the rest of the group to allocate their capacity to other things. However, these expanded capabilities are only available to the group that is in proximity to each other. If your friend has the tool you need, but they’re at home and you’re at work, that does you no good.

At the end of the day, YOU are the WHO ™ . YOU are responsible for creating, maintaining, carrying, and utilizing the tools and skills of your Every Day Carry. You may be responsible for the consideration of others you care about in your EDC, but you always need to carry the tools and learn the skills YOU believe will be most beneficial. There are opportunities for redundancy and coordination within EDCs in your family/groups, but that does not diminish the importance of your own personal EDC.

Get up, gear up, get after it™

~ Eric