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Notes -
Realistically, I wouldn't expect even something as dire as the current North Carolina situation to happen in literally an hour. If you live in a hurricane state, you should have some sort of reasonable plan laid out and be ready to execute in the event that something happens. This is probably good advice in general but becomes more important if you're somewhere that has a non-trivial probability of your house just being destroyed. If I lived in such a state, my go bag would include a few documents - it's not like these chew up much space or weight. Currently, I just always keep my passport in the backpack that I travel with, so that would be an automatic one without needing to think about it any further than chucking a few other things in and bugging out. Otherwise, top priorities would vary based on what the situation is. Things that I would pretty much always bring:
Imperfect, but doesn't weigh much, is enough calories to survive for a few days even with heavy movement, includes self-defense, some warmth, and includes money and ID restoration.
Most of these people do not live in places where hurricanes regularly cause damage, and many people were not expecting flooding until it was window-high.
https://x.com/smokiesvol/status/1840077470931832933
https://x.com/Rex_Williams/status/1840467637467574395
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