As the incident in Pennsylvania should remind us, we must always be prepared when venturing out in inclimate weather in our vehicles. I won’t say I’m always perfect in this regard, but there are several things every car should have when traveling, IMHO:
- Sufficient drinking water
- Some kind of emergency ration. Could just be some power bars or something
- Something to keep warm, you never know when you will be exposed for prolonged periods of time
- Some means of making fire
- Some means of extinguishing fire
- Cell phone
- Decent set of walking shoes if you have to wear heels or dress shoes
- Change of clothes if you’re in dress clothing.
- A rifle and spare ammunition, where legal
This is probably preaching to the choir a bit, since we gun nuts generally give more thought to this kind of thing than the average person, and are thus better prepared. The last entry will probably give non-gun folks the willies, but too bad. Most of them wouldn’t blink over my suggestion to have a fire extinguisher in the car, and having a rifle is really no different. A pistol could be substituted for a rifle, but rifles really are better for extreme circumstances, and they don’t take up much room in the car. For a car or truck gun, I think you can’t really beat the Kel-Tec SU-16 or SUB-2000 series. I wish they made the SUB-2000 in .45ACP though, because the great thing about the SUB-2000 is it takes the same ammo you carry in your pistol. A lot of people like to carry .45, and given that advantage, you’d think they’d want it available in all three of the common pistol calibers rather than just two.