Ten Prepping Essentials Under Ten Dollars

We break down a practical, low-cost gear list that keeps you mobile, warm, and visible while steering clear of likely store unrest. A 70-hour Moscow gridlock story drives home why a small, smart vehicle kit matters when weather and distance pin you down.

• ten useful items under ten dollars for everyday carry and get-home bags
• rechargeable headlamps, ponchos, contractor bags and bandanas for shelter and visibility
• water purification tablets vs filters and when each fits
• five upgrades under twenty dollars including shovel, bivvy and titanium utensils
• vehicle kit priorities for 24-hour standstills in storms
• avoiding high-risk stores and intersections during outages
• safe road behavior at powerless four-way stops
• mindset, placement and rotation of budget gear

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Don't go to Walmart tomorrow if you don't have to

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Tone Setting, Halloween Context
• 0:51 Anticipating Store Unrest And Safety Choices
• 1:23 Ten Prep Items Under Ten Dollars
• 3:06 Headlamps And Rain Solutions
• 3:52 Water Purification And Zip Ties
• 4:33 Contractor Bags And Bandanas
• 5:42 Five Useful Items Under Twenty Dollars
• 8:35 The 70-Hour Moscow Gridlock Story
• 11:47 Vehicle Readiness For Remote Storms
• 13:08 Final Safety Reminders And Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:17

To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:41

Everybody is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. Happy Halloween, October 31st, 2025. So let's steer away from the doom and gloom. The government will not open tomorrow, and money will not be placed back on folks' EBT cards. Now, what do I think is going to happen at local grocery stores? I think people are going to be opportunistic. I think people are going to cause trouble that don't need to cause trouble. I think there is going to be a little bit of civil unrest at Walmarts and other grocery stores. I'm going to stay away from those Walmarts and grocery stores because I don't need anything. So with that said, let's talk about gear. Let's talk about gear that is not expensive. I hesitate to use the word cheap because when I say the word cheap, that leads me to believe we're talking about the quality. So I will say less expensive. So let's talk about the top 10 items less than$10. Number one, paracord. Paracord is not expensive. You can make necklaces, you can make bracelets, you can just have the paracord laying loose in your get home bag. But if you can wear the paracord as a necklace or a bracelet, it's readily available and it can be removed from your wrist or your neck and it can be unraveled and it can be used. Now, on Amazon, they make paracord jigs or paracord kits that come with paracord and instructions on how to make necklaces, bracelets, keychains, that sort of thing. Now that is going to be more than$10 for those kits. Two, a whistle. A whistle at Dollar Tree. I think it's the$1.25 tree now. So a$1.25 will get you a cheap whistle. Harbor Freight has a louder version that's about two bucks, two and a half, two fifty for their whistle. A little bit louder, a little bit heavier plastic. Three, duct tape. Now you don't need an entire roll of duct tape. What you can do is you can take a pencil, a pen, or maybe your fire starter, and you can wrap a thin layer or a narrow band of duct tape around that several times instead of throwing the entire roll because that's basically too much weight and that's going to go to waste. Headlamps. I didn't realize that the price of these were less than$10. I looked on Amazon and they have like three packs for 20, 4 packs for 40, and a couple singles that are like eight or nine dollars. So I would go ahead and it's gonna make the list if we can get two for 20 or 3 for 23. I saw some three for 23 and they had some really good reviews. These are rechargeable USB Cs, so you don't necessarily have to worry about a spare set of batteries. Ponchos, dollar store ponchos, about a buck. REI has ponchos, a little bit more expensive, and you can find those on Amazon. They're good for shelter, they're good for a ground cover, and of course, they will keep you dry if it's raining. Seven, purification tablets. You can get them at Walmart in the pharmacy aisle, you can get them on Amazon, you can get them at several different stores, not very expensive at all. I think Amazon calls theirs portable aqua, I think is one of the brand names. Not expensive at all. Of course, your life straw, your sawyer squeeze, but we're talking about water purification tablets. Eight, zip ties, not expensive at all. Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, Amazon, Dollar Tree. You get a handful for a few bucks. Get the small ones, get the long, thick ones, get a variety pack, throw 10 or 12 into your bag. Number nine, trash bags or what I call contractor bags or contractor grade trash bags. Now, for your go bag, your get home bag, your bug out bag, a lot of people will line the bag with a contractor grade trash bag. It kind of makes sense. If your bug out bag or whatever bag you have is not waterproof, if you have that bag inside and everything packed inside that bag, you don't need to worry about anything getting wet. Plus, it could serve as a makeshift poncho, ground cover, a makeshift shelter. So throw a couple of those in your bags. They do not weigh anything, they do not take up hardly any room. Number 10, bandanas. Walmart fabric section, you can make your own. Thrift stores, Amazon, they're a dime a dozen. They can be used as filters, they can be used as a face covering if there's dust, if there's smoke, it can be used for first aid. It can be made into a makeshift tourniquet, but we're carrying our tourniquets as well in our trauma bag or our or with our boo-boo kit with a tourniquet attached to it. Let's talk about five items under$20. So this is kind of a luxury item. A manual coffee grinder, about$15 on Amazon. Walmart has their brand, and it's about$13, kind of a knockoff, but it still works. I'm not sure if many folks know here in the States, Walmart, their camping brand is called Ozark Trail. Ozark Trail Tumblers are just as good as the Yeti's, just as good as the Igloos, almost just as good as Stanley's, at like one-third the price. So they have some decent gear. Number two, a titanium fork and spoon set. About$16 at Amazon, about$15 at Walmart,$16 at Amazon. They're pretty close, but shop around, you may be able to save a few bucks. Three, a folding shovel from Walmart, Ozark Trail Folding Shovel. Now, this is something that goes in my vehicle, not necessarily in my get home bag, depending on the situation. If I have to abandon my car and I think that shovel is going to be needed, I will take that with me. They're not light, about three or four pounds, but if you think you're going to need it, you should go ahead and take it with you. Number four, mylar emergency sleeping bags. Not the little mini mylar covers, but a mylar sleeping bag. Walmart, about 20 bucks. REI has them, about$25, a little more, a little more expensive. And then Amazon has a generic for like two for$20. And again, this is like the emergency bivvy, not necessarily the Mylar Poncho or the Mylar blanket. This is something you could actually crawl into a Mylar sleeping bag. Number five, and I had fun looking this one up: a five-gallon collapsible bucket. Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot. And I actually did some digging on Amazon. They have some really nice five-gallon folding buckets or collapsible buckets. I found one manufacturer, three for$23. So roughly, you know, eight bucks a pop. Now, some of them are$10 to$15 a piece, but some of them are like a heavy canvas, a heavy plastic, a nylon combination. They collapse down to nothing. The one I have is like from RubberMade and it collapses down pretty small, but it's not nylon or a heavy cloth canvas. So it weighs a little more, and you really can't do much with it. It's it keeps its shape, so it's going in the bottom of my bag, but the canvas ones and the nylon ones are a little more pliable. So depending on how much stuff you have in your bag, you might be able to tuck it into a corner, tuck it into a side pocket. So those are the five must-have items under$20, and then the 10 must-have items under$10. Now we talk about get home bags, we talk about getting stuck in traffic. Here's a little story. Back in the last week of November in 2012, I went to Russia. I went to Moscow and I went to St. Petersburg. Got picked up at the airport by a taxi that took me to the hotel. The hotel was not very far from the airport, and we got off the interstate, but three exits up, there was a serious traffic jam. Not soon after that, a serious snowstorm hit Moscow. Again, late November, Moscow, Russia. It's snowing, not much of a surprise there. It was about three and a half feet of snow, but here's the thing: the snow came down so fast, and there were a couple minor accidents that there was an intense traffic jam. This traffic jam lasted 70 hours. Picture this your commute home from work tonight, last night, a week ago. Imagine sitting in traffic and then all of a sudden, you're not moving. I've been in plenty of traffic jams where it's pretty much gridlock. I've never been in a traffic jam where I was stopped more than three or three and a half hours. Imagine not able to get out of your car. 70 hours, three days. People ran out of gas. There were gas trucks that tried, emergency services tried to get fuel to some of these vehicles. They were able to get to some, but the snow was so bad, the roads were blocked, they couldn't get to a lot of these people. Now, luckily, there were no serious injuries, there were no deaths. After about a day, people just abandoned their vehicles and walked home or were able to get to an area where a friend or family member could pick them up, but they just left the vehicle there. If you live in the Midwest, if you live out west, and I'm sure there's places all around the world where a storm can come up quick and you're in the middle of nowhere. You don't have the benefit of being able to walk back a mile, two miles to an exit and have somebody pick you up. Kansas, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, middle of nowhere, a snowstorm hits, you slide off the road, you're stuck in traffic. You know, you've seen heavy fog, you've seen these severe accidents, these pile-ups and heavy fog with cars, motorhomes, tractor trailers. But just imagine you're in the middle of nowhere, 30 miles ahead is the nearest exit, and 30 miles behind you is the nearest exit. Do you have what you need in your vehicle to at least get you through 24 hours? Now, I would hope that emergency services, National Guard, who knows, would be able to get to these folks. We got cell service, people are able to use messenger apps, EMS is aware that there's an accident, tractor trailer overturned. So help is gonna get to you eventually. And depending on how bad the weather is going to get or how bad the weather is, dictates on whether or not you're gonna be able to get around the accident in three or four hours, or you're gonna be able to pull off the road, call somebody, and hopefully walk back or walk somewhere that somebody can pick you up. But if you're traveling around the cities or just outside the city and there is a traffic jam, there's a pile up, not as difficult, no major hardship compared to Iowa, North South Dakota, somewhere where there's bad weather and you're in the middle of nowhere. All right, folks, thanks for stopping by. Again, I really do appreciate it. And as a reminder, with the August and Farms affiliate link, all the proceeds from any sales, any commissions that I make through the month of November, all of those commissions will be donated to the Chesterfield County Food Bank. Folks in the States, when midnight hits, all that money is not going on those EBT cards. I hope you've done your shopping. I hope you don't have to go to grocery stores tomorrow. If you don't, don't go sightseeing. Don't get yourself in a pickle. There's no need to go see what's going on. It's kind of like when there's a hurricane and the trees are down, there's no power, and everybody's like, oh, I want to get out on the roads. I want to leave my neighborhood and drive around and clog up the roads even more. I want to get stuck. I want to get in the way of emergency services. I want to get in the way of the power companies. It's a tree down. If you can see a tree down from your front lawn, you don't need to go driving around town to see all the other trees that are down. One tree across the road looks like the looks like any other tree across the road. And there's no power. So when you go through intersections, there's no there's not even a flashing yellow light. There's no power. You have to treat those like four-way stops. People think that if you're on the major artery, that you have the right of way when you come up the smaller side streets. That is not true. If you come up to an uncontrolled intersection, you treat that as a four-way stop. Unless there's temporary signage, unless there's police officers out directing traffic, and then you obey their signals. All right, folks. As always, take care of one another. Please be safe out there. Don't go to Walmart tomorrow if you don't have to. And until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 14:04

Thanks for listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you're at it, help spread the word by leaving a rating and review.