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I Bought 4 Backpacks to Compare for 72-Hour Kits
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May 21, 2024
A good 72-Hour Kit starts with a good backpack. But a good backpack doesn't have to break the bank. In this video, I compare 4 backpacks at various price points and various sizes to help you know what will work best for your 72-hour kit. Links to Backpacks from this Video Reebow Gear Military Backpack (35L) - https://amzn.to/3Lj6CqS Falko Tactical Backpack (50L) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKT39XMZ?ref=t_ac_view_request_product_image&campaignId=amzn1.campaign.304UM0M5IPNDU&linkCode=tr1&tag=httpincomes0d-20&linkId=amzn1.campaign.304UM0M5IPNDU_1711410038965 Prospo Tactical Backpack (40L) - https://amzn.to/3LiJ717 5.11 Rush 2.0 Military Backpack (37L) - https://amzn.to/3rg59um Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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0:00
Welcome back to Pantry Preparedness, my friends. My name is Rick. And today I'm going to do something
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that I think is going to be kind of cool. I am in the middle of trying to prepare the ultimate
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72 hour kit. And the first thing that I need is a good backpack. So instead of just like buying
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one online and hoping it was good enough or spending a lot of money to know it was good enough
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I decided I should buy four and that way I can share them with you and hopefully help you know
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which of these is good enough. There are hundreds of backpacks you could buy like
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tactical style awesome backpacks on Amazon and it's hard to know how good any of them are
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especially because some are like 30 bucks and some are like 300 bucks and so today I
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want to share with you kind of some across a little bit of that spectrum. Now in an ideal
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situation I would have a really awesome pack like this for my 72-hour kit
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This is my hiking pack that I use for backpacking and all sorts of
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of stuff. This is from Black's Creek Guide Gear. I really like them. They're a local company here
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They make, they actually sew these here in Idaho, which is also super cool. I went right into
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their place, tried these on. They were able to kind of customize one to fit me really, really well
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But the thing is that a pack like this is hundreds of dollars. I don't know what I paid like
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five or six hundred dollars for this thing. It's a great pack. But for a 72 hour kit that we may
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never actually use. Having a really awesome hiking backpack is probably just not
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very financially feasible for most of us. And that's why I wanted to try this. So
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I bought four packs. I have not even opened them yet. They're still in the boxes
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And so you're gonna get literally my first impression. So first up is this one. Don't
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know what it is. It's black, but they all are. So okay
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This one is one I found on Amazon. It's inexpensive. It's the Rebo Gear military backpack. It's a 35 millimeter pack. We're going to open it up right now. I have my phone here to look at the pricing and stuff on these things. This one cost me $35. So really good price if it's halfway decent. Okay, right out of the box or bag, I guess, for this one. I'm pretty impressed. Okay. The material on it feels
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If you watched a recent video I did where I took a 72 hour kit that I just bought the kit
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it's a ready wise, not talking down about them at all. They make a lot of really great products
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But the pack itself felt like a kind of a really lightweight sort of cheap kids backpack for school
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This one already, the material that it's made out of feels durable
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By heavy, I mean heavy duty material, right? It has this molly system
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So, I mean, if you had other things that you wanted to attach, You could through this Moli system
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It's got lots of clips, right? Loads of clips everywhere, I guess, just to really tighten stuff down
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Which is actually really nice. The more you can compress everything is closer to your back
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The less of a back pulling weight you're going to feel. 35 liters is this is bigger than what you would use as a school backpack
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but not like tons bigger. But it can definitely hold more. Here's the next thing that I really like about this for a 72 hour kit
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It has a lot of pockets. And none of them are like so small that I couldn't actually put something into it
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So, I mean, I could fit a decent first aid kit into there, a decent one, not like the one
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I showed you in that other video. Every single one of these pockets is good sized
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It's got these two on the front that are fairly big. It's got these clips all over the place
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So that no matter how much or how little we put in here, I can clip those
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and I can really tighten it down. Again, to suck everything as close to my back as possible
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and minimize that backward pull. The straps, I mean, these have decent padding in them
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Nothing like what I get in that hiking pack that I showed you, but really pretty good
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35 liters, this seems about the same size as the backpacks that I have for the 72-hour kits that I have at home already
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the ones that we built ourselves. It seems like a pretty good size, but we're going to see as we get into some of these other ones what we think
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Also, we're going to see as we start putting together our ultimate 72 hour kit, we're going to start to get a good feel for just how much space we're really going to need
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So I'm probably not going to have a definitive answer on that one for you today. Let's open up this next box
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Box is kind of heavy. This is the Falco Tactical Backpack. It says it's 2.4 times stronger working something
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I don't know what it's stronger. then, but it's 2.4 times stronger than something
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All right, let's see what this one cost. Okay, this one was 5999, not quite twice as much
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as the one we just looked at. Let me move this box out of my way. This one's also 50 liters
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So that was 35, this one's 50. And we're gonna see what that looks like
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Amazing, just how similar this looks. It like the same bag but bigger Like very very similar It not quite the same The material looks slightly different It probably is a little heavier material
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It's definitely physically larger. The insides also are lined. So I get this kind of nice lining
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This one doesn't have any sort of lining. So I guess less protection for whatever I'm putting in there
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Now that I have two open, it's kind of nice because I can start to sort of compare them a little bit
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So the height of the bags, the bigger one is just a couple inches taller, a little bit wider, and certainly a bit deeper
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But man, they are incredibly similar. Also, with the extra cost, you look at this one, the less expensive one, and it's just got that plain back
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This one has this like cool back, I think, is what they often call
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it, but basically it's to help keep it from just like being flat on my back and just trapping
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in heat and sweat and stuff. It's supposed to help keep me a little bit cooler
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Both of these packs by the way have an access to a flat pocket from the back
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This is, it's like a laptop pocket. It's a really thin pocket, but they both have one of those
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One thing I didn't talk about on the first one, but now that we have two to compare, let's talk briefly about zippers
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are one of those things that like on a bag they just man they're like the first thing to go
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out and when they go out it's like this is ruined just throw it away and give me a new one it's
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really hard to replace or fix a zipper yeah what i'm getting here is just the material here is
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thicker feels like it's going to be more durable probably quite a bit more durable i've got a lot
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of pockets let's open up the main pocket here i get a couple extra ones too with the extra size i get
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these extra small pockets but I also get a much bigger main pocket. That opens all the way up
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It's got little kind of like rivet things in the bottom. They're like a drain. So it's not
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just it's going to always have a little bit of airflow through it. If something wet, if you put
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something wet in there and it drained to the bottom, I guess that could drain out. So it seems like
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there's a couple cool reasons for that. This one doesn't have a drain system. I guess there's that
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Both of them also have these loops at the bottom. So if you did have like a thin tent or pad or something
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you could run it through the bottom. These aren't super long here
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but you could run something through there. There we go. It's holding
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Let's see on this other one. Here, similar size loops. I do have the little elastics
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to hold the extra, which is kind of nice. Again, a lot of little finishes that I get for that extra price
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but still at $60, this is really inexpensive. There's also, I mean, there's a lot of padding on that back and stuff
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There's a sleeve in here. You know, my stuff's going to be fairly well protected in here
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I'm pretty happy with that. Also, I think for my own 72-hour kit, something this size feels good
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I feel like I could carry what I needed to carry. in a pack this size. So again, that one's 50 liters. This one's only 35. Plus, they both have
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this Velcro on the top so I can Velcro cool things to it like the American flag, which is
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really cool. All right, two down. Let's look at this next one. This is another inexpensive
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Amazon, you know, Amazon special, we'll call them. This is a 40-liter bag. It is Prospo
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40-liter military tactical bag. I'm going to, by the way, I'll include links to all
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these so that you can go look at these. There are so many others like them. I tried to pick
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ones that I thought all would be good. But I wanted to check because you never know. Sometimes
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you get one and the material is just like super thin and you're like, man, if I put anything
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in there, it's just going to tear out the bottom. All right, let's look at what this one cost. Okay, this one was $30.59. Again, that's just what I paid. It's not necessarily what the
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price is currently on Amazon. Prices there change constantly. But I paid about $30 for this. So
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this is actually the cheapest backpack here. Okay. It's also the only one that came with a tag
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So it's the only one with that kind of branding. This is honestly, man, like if I had, I could
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I could honestly believe that these were all made at the same place. They're all a little bit
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different. This one does have some of that coolback stuff, which the first one, the Rebo
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didn't have. I think that's kind of cool. Zippers, I said I was going to talk about zippers. I didn't
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really talk about them. These zippers all feel good. They're not fancy, like really good zippers
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but they're all, they're all also don't feel like the ultra cheap. I can run them back and forth
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quite a bit. I'm just not that worried about them, which is great. Again, this isn't a pack
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that I'm going to be using every other weekend to go hiking. With this one, I expect really good
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zippers. I just expect more. And so I get more. This, I'm pretty happy
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with The material itself is good as well It feels really really similar again to the Rebo Honestly these two packs are incredibly similar If I had to pick one or the other let see
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Well, with this one, that main back pocket that they all have, the other two unzip, this one
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just kind of Velcroes. But I guess if, you know, it were an emergency and I was like, well
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here's my emergency bag, but let me just throw in my laptop while I'm at it or an iPad, right
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I could just throw it in real quick. I could do that in any of these, but again
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I don't know how important it is that that back zips, but on this one it doesn't, just something to keep in mind
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Other than that, it has the basically the exact same pockets as the Rebo
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It has an upper back pocket. It's all just a little wider, it looks like
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And then it's got this big back pocket, and then they each have kind of a one big pocket here
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and another one behind it. So two large compartments. And then each of those has several of these little
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you know, kind of those mesh sleeves inside that you can use
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Basically, you could kind of put everything kind of in its place and then use the main portions, usually for larger items
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including food, water, etc. Yeah, overall pretty happy. If I had to pick between these two
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I might go with the 40 liter. It's a little bit bigger. It's also $5 cheaper
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and I just don't see a lot of reason to spend $5 more on this one
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I guess it just kind of depends on what the pricing is when you go looking. All of these, I think, are good enough, good enough for a 72-hour kit
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Again, probably not what I'm going to buy for going out hiking every other weekend or something
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but perfectly, perfectly great, honestly, for a 72-hour kit. I'm pretty impressed
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Okay, now we're going to look at one that cost a little bit more
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And I want to see, this is kind of the big comparison here
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I want to see how this one compares to these. This here is the 511 Rush 2.0
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So it's 511 gear. It's a well-known brand. It's the Rush 2.0
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It's a 37 liter, so it's really similar in size to these other two
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By the way, several of these said, I'm curious now, looking for them
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Several of them said they had an opening for like a hydration pack
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The Prospo, I don't see one. This one, the re-bow, it does
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It Velcro's shut, but it does have an opening so you could put a hydration pack in it and run that little hose out the front
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This larger one also does, right? It's got a good spot for that too
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So the Prospo is the only one here that doesn't seem to have an actual opening
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So maybe there's your reason. Or you could, oh, oh, oh, oh, I spoke too soon
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It has a little hole right there that's made for it. You might have to kind of tear that a little bit, which I don't love
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But it's there, it's made for it, and it's got a covering for it on the back that's elastic
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So you could put a hydration pack in there too. This one cost me $134.1
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So it's $100 more than two of these. It's a lot more expensive
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If you look at it from the outside, it's pretty comparable in a lot of ways in terms of like the shape, the size
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the pockets that you get. The zippers, they seem really good. This looks like one big pocket
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It's not. In fact, there's a connection here at the front. It's actually two smaller pockets
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Here's something, though. The shoulder straps, first of all, how they're attached
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you look and you can see that it's like, it's continuous through here
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It's not like it's just attached at one little spot right there
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A lot of backpacks, most backpacks even. A shoulder strap is attached at this like two inch seam right there. Okay
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This one, it attaches to the top of the pack across this entire space
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And so you just get a much better hold. Got a little pocket right there
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The material as well does feel more heavy duty. It just is
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It says it's rush tier compatible. I don't know the rush well enough to be able to know what that
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that means. Since it's laptop compatible, it does, so it does have this a laptop pocket. If I go to the inside
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you open it all the way up here. Undo these straps. Gosh, all the layers are just a little bit thicker
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a little bit heavier duty. It doesn't quite lay out flat like the other one did, but it's got everything. It's got that kind of
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padded laptop section open that up here and slide a laptop in This little pocket here that opens from the top this is a heavier duty material than some of those same kind of flap pockets
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that are on some of the other ones. Then of course your big pocket on the front, your Molley connections so that you can attach
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all sorts of other gear to it if you want to on the sides and on the front
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I'll also say that the very bottom of this pack, the actual bottom
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layer does feel a little more heavy duty than some of the other ones I dealt with
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Here's another thing. I get these little loops here at the bottom. I have two on this side
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two on this side. So it doesn't have like a built-in strap to be able to like attach a tent or
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something at the very bottom or a pad or, you know. But because it has those, I could run webbing
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I could run my own straps. I could even run paracord through there and attach something to it
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without any trouble. So basically it's not putting extra straps on here that I, that might just be in
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the way if I weren't using them, but it's leading me the option to be able to attach something else
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Likewise, I've got loops right here on the bottom, on the back, that I could very easily attach
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a strap to, um, to be able to have a waistband. But by default, it doesn't have the waistband
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So a few things like that that are kind of interesting. I open this up
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It also has this pocket along the back. I guess this looks like, yeah, this one is made actually to house
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This back pocket, this one's made to hold your hydration bladder. If you're using one like that, if you have a hydration pack
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It's also got, this isn't really a pocket, this is just to hold that kind of hard shell
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So there's, it does have kind of a hard plastic along the back to help keep the back rigid
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You can take that out if you wanted it not rigid, but that's what that is
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So you could put your hydration pack inside here and then it's got an access for that as well
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As you can see, based on all the features we've talked about, these packs are really, really similar in terms of
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they offer. The difference is just a little bit just in the quality that you get as you sort of
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step up. There are a couple things though that the 511 pack does have that I haven't addressed
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yet that are unique to this pack. The first is that in addition to all these, you know, front
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packs and stuff, there's also a hidden CCW compartment. You would think, oh look, that's the
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pocket, right? You can tear that open. It's just Velcro and it opens right up and it's
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right there. And it's just got a bunch of Velcro inside so that you could Velcro in a holster
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that fits your CCW just fine. So if, again, for a daily use backpack, if that's something that's
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important to you, that could be a reason to go after the 5-11. The other thing is that this exact
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backpack actually comes in three sizes. So I got the 37, but they also have it in a 24-liter
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size, which should probably be for a lot of us better for kind of your daily use backpack, although
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This would work really well for me. But they also have it in a 55
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So if you are the person who's going to carry the most gear in a sort of situation
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if you're like me, right? You've got a family. You're going to be carrying a bunch of gear, some maybe even some of like your children's stuff
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in your pack. You need it to hold up. You might go with something as big as like a 55 liter
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You could also go with something like this falco that is 50 liters, not quite 55
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but that's also 2.4 times stronger. than what we don't know, but it is 2.4 times stronger
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Actually, though, of all these packs, this is the most heavy duty except for the 5-11
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and I don't know that it's that big of a difference. I think for a more heavy-duty everyday backpack, it's probably worth it in a lot of cases
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to go with something that is a little bit better, right? A little bit more high-end
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But frankly, for a 72-hour kit that I'm going to pack up, put it in a safe
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place and check on it once a year and hopefully only have her have to use well
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maybe never but for most of us only a few times in our lives I think something
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like these is gonna do just fine and I'll probably use this as kind of a
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go-to daily use backpack because I do think it's awesome I just don't know that
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for a 72-hour kit there's any reason with these kind of backpacks out on the
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market to justify spending this kind of money unless you just have this kind of
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money in which case do whatever you want now that we have backpack
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kind of figured out, we're going to dive into some other aspects of 72-hour kits
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We've talked about emergency food. We're going to be talking soon about first aid kits
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as well as other survival gear that I strongly recommend for a 72-hour kit
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But it's also important that with all survival gear, you know really well how to use it
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So we'll talk about that too here on this channel. If there are things that you think absolutely belong in a 72-hour kit that other people are
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neglecting, please comment below. I am trying to put together the ultimate 72-hour kit and I could really use your help
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I also hope to see you in our next video
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