Home/ Articles/Evacuation
Evacuation
The Get-Home Bag
What to pack in a get-home bag for when the trains stop and you are stranded at work, miles from home, with a practical UK kit list.
By Slightly Anxious
18 October 2026 8 minute read
IN SHORT
If you are stranded at work when the trains stop, a Get-Home Bag in your desk drawer turns a miserable night into an inconvenient one. Pack it, find a sofa near the office and talk to your employer.
Product links were live when this article was written. If one has changed, the Products page will have an alternative.
Most of our advice so far has assumed that when something goes wrong, you will be at home. That is a reasonable starting point. Home is where your stores are, where your plan is pinned to the fridge and where the people you care about usually gather.
But think about where you actually are on a Tuesday afternoon. For a great many of us the answer is at work, or on a train, or sitting in traffic, anything from ten to fifty miles from our own front door. And the things that stop the country working, such as a power cut, a heavy snowfall, a cyber attack or a flood, have no reason to wait until we are safely home with the kettle on.
This article is about that gap: the hours, and occasionally the night, between “the trains have stopped” and “I’m home”. Our answer is a Get-Home Bag that lives at work, in your desk drawer or locker, so it is already there on the day you need it.
In ‘What Japan can teach us’ we noted that Japan goes further than Britain in one important respect: it plans for people being stranded at work. Tokyo expects employers to keep staff in the building, with supplies, for up to three days after a major earthquake. This article borrows that idea and scales it down to a British office and a British winter.
It has happened before, more than once
On 11 March 2011 a huge earthquake stopped every train in Tokyo. Japan's Cabinet Office later estimated that around 5.15 million people in the Tokyo area had difficulty getting home that night. Many walked for hours. Many more spent the night in offices, stations and department stores.
We do not need an earthquake. On 7 July 2005, after the bombings in London, the Underground was closed for most of the day and thousands of people walked home. Vodafone's network reached capacity by mid-morning, so calls failed just when everybody wanted to make one.
On 2 March 2018, ice on the conductor rail near Lewisham left eight trains stranded for around four and a half hours. After more than an hour in crowded carriages without toilets, passengers began climbing out and walking along the track beside a live rail. The accident investigators' report makes uncomfortable reading.
The same week, heavy snow brought the M80 in Scotland to a standstill. Around 1,000 vehicles were stuck, and some drivers spent up to 13 hours, and the night, in their cars.
On 9 August 2019 a power failure cut off around 1.1 million electricity customers in England and Wales. A number of Thameslink trains shut down and could not be restarted until a technician arrived with a laptop, blocking key routes for hours.
And on 28 April 2025 the whole of Spain and Portugal lost power. Around 35,000 rail passengers had to be rescued by the emergency services, and the mobile networks went dark as the batteries in phone masts ran down.
Our trains do not need a disaster to stop. On the evening of 2 December 2010, during that winter’s big freeze, more than 300 commuters spent the night on a train at Three Bridges station in West Sussex after a series of line failures. They reached Littlehampton at 6.30 the next morning.
On 7 December 2023 an overhead cable fault near Paddington brought trains to a standstill. Hundreds of passengers sat for more than three hours in cold, dark carriages, and some said they could not get to a toilet.
None of these was the end of the world. All of them were long, cold, uncomfortable evenings for people who had not planned to be away from home that night.
Stranded away from home: it happens
-
7 July 2005: London transport stopped after the bombings
-
2 March 2018: passengers left trains on the track near Lewisham
-
March 2018: about 1,000 vehicles stuck on the M80, some for 13 hours
-
9 August 2019: a power failure hit about 1.1 million customers
-
2011: in Tokyo, 5.15 million people had difficulty getting home
Why the bag lives at work
When the snow came in March 2018, many staff at the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust stayed on site rather than risk the roads home. What they ran short of was not food or heat. They had no toiletries with them, and the Mothers’ Union stepped in with kits of toothpaste, shampoo and shower gel.
In January 2014 a few inches of snow brought Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, to a halt. Some drivers spent ten or twelve hours on the motorway, and in Birmingham the insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield had hundreds of people sleeping in its offices overnight.
The same lesson comes up each time. The people who coped best could stay where they were, and what they missed most was ordinary: a toothbrush, dry socks, a charged phone. You cannot buy those at nine o’clock at night once the shops near the station have shut. So the bag needs to be at work before the day it is needed, not in the hall cupboard at home.
Keeping the bag at work means it is waiting for you when you need it. It lives in your desk drawer or locker, and the few things that should never leave you go in your everyday bag.
Forget the heroic hike
If you look for advice on this online, much of it is American and assumes you will march twenty miles home with a rucksack on your back. Japanese guidance uses about 20 kilometres as a rough upper limit for walking home, which is four or five hours for a fit adult.
For most of our readers this is not a plan. Walking home is realistic only for younger people who live in the same town or city as their work. If you are older, if you have a bad knee, or if you commute by train from one county into another, the honest answer is that you are not walking home. Nor should you try.
So the Get Home Bag is not really about getting home. It is about getting through the wait safely and in reasonable comfort, and then going home when the trains, Tube or buses are running again. That is also what the government advises: GOV.UK's travel advice says that if you are delayed or stranded, "it is usually safer to stay where you are and wait for assistance".
Who the Get-Home Bag is for
The Get Home Bag is for people who rely on public transport to get to work. How you use it depends on how far you travel.
-
The train, Tube or bus commuter. Your most likely problem is that the trains stop while you are at work, at a station or on a train. Your plan is to stay put, either at work or with somebody nearby, and travel when services resume. If you are stuck on a train, stay on it. Lewisham shows exactly why.
-
The local worker. If you live a few miles away and you are fit, walking home may well be your plan. Do it in daylight if you can, on main roads, and tell someone your route and when you expect to arrive.
-
The driver. If you drive to work, you are already provided for. Your car is your shelter, and our Car Grab Bag bundles, in Basic, Better and Best versions, are made to live in the boot. Our article ‘Using the car in an emergency’ covers the rest, including keeping the tank or battery topped up in winter. The rest of this article is for everyone else.
The most useful thing is not in any bag
Before we come to the bag, here is the single most useful thing you can do, and it costs nothing.
Find someone near your work who would put you up for the night.
It might be a friend, a relative or a colleague who lives near the office. Ask them now, on an ordinary day, whether you could stay if the trains stopped, and offer the same in return. Write their address and phone number on a card and keep it in your wallet or purse.
For an older commuter, this is the real "get home" plan: you are not trying to reach your own house, just theirs. A sofa, a cup of tea and a phone charger twenty minutes' walk away is worth more than any amount of equipment. Tokyo has gone further and signed up more than 20,000 shops, cafés and petrol stations as support stations, where people on their way home can get tap water, a toilet and directions. Britain has nothing like that, so we need to arrange our own.
What goes in a Get-Home Bag
The home Grab Bag, which we cover in ‘Slightly Anxious says Get a Grab Bag’, is built to get you out of the house in minutes. The Get-Home Bag has a different job, so it is smaller and lighter. It comes in two parts, because you are not always at your desk when things go wrong.
Always in your everyday bag:
-
A charged power bank and charging cable
-
A written card with your key phone numbers, including your contact near work and an out-of-area contact
-
Some cash in small notes, because card machines stop when the power does (see ‘It's all about the Kerching Kerching!’)
-
At least a day or two of any medication you rely on
-
A small torch
-
A water bottle and a snack
-
A light, foldable waterproof
Kept in your desk drawer or locker at work:
-
Comfortable shoes and thick socks, for standing on platforms and walking to wherever you are staying
-
A warm layer, a hat or snood and gloves
-
A head torch, which keeps both hands free
-
Rechargeable hand warmers for a cold platform or carriage
-
A small first aid kit and some blister plasters
-
A few days' medication and a copy of your prescription
-
Overnight basics: toothbrush, wipes, compressed towels and a change of underwear
-
A pack of cards or a paperback, for a long evening in the office or on a stopped train
Check the bag twice a year, when the clocks change. Charge the power bank and hand warmers, replace any medication that is close to its date and swap the snack for a fresh one.
A radio, and why your phone probably can't help
When the mobile network fails, it fails in one of two ways. Sometimes it is simply too busy, as in London in 2005 and Tokyo in 2011, when Japan's biggest mobile operator restricted up to 80 per cent of calls. Texts and data often get through when calls do not, so text rather than ring.
Sometimes it goes down altogether, as in Spain in 2025, when the masts ran out of battery power. Then nothing on your phone works except what is already stored on it.
You might expect your phone to fall back on FM radio. Most can't. iPhones, Google Pixels and Samsung's Galaxy S phones have no FM radio, and the phones that do usually need wired earphones as the aerial. So we have included a small pocket FM radio in the bundle. It weighs about the same as a phone, runs on two AA batteries and will tell you what is happening with the trains when your phone can't. We cover radios in more detail in ‘How to keep informed and keep talking’.
The Slightly Anxious Get-Home Bag bundle
We have put together a Get-Home Bag bundle from products we already recommend, so that one button adds the lot to your basket. It includes:
-
Osprey Daylite 26-litre daypack, small enough for a desk drawer or locker
-
Anker 20,000mAh power bank
-
Olight Baton4 pocket torch and Petzl Tikka Core head torch
-
HydraMate collapsible water bottle
-
Ropelux rechargeable hand warmers and a merino snood
-
Trekmates waterproof poncho, which covers you and the bag
-
St John Ambulance first aid kit
-
Yumqua waterproof pouches for your contact card, cash and prescription
-
Waddingtons playing cards, for the long wait
-
PRUNUS J-166 pocket AM/FM radio, which runs on two AA batteries
-
Compressed towels and large wet wipes
There are things we cannot put in a bundle, and we would rather say so plainly. Shoes and socks need to fit you, medication is personal, and snacks and cash are up to you. Please add them, because the shoes in particular matter more than anything else on the list.
Make a plan before the day
Your to do list is:
1. Ask someone near work whether you could stay with them
2. Agree a family plan: who collects the children, who checks on parents
3. Know the other ways home
4. If you might walk, try part of the route on a nice day
5. Carry a paper map as well as offline maps
6. Check the bag twice a year, when the clocks change
A bag is only half of it. Spend half an hour on these and you will be better prepared than most of the country.
-
Ask someone near work whether you could stay with them, and write their details on your contact card.
-
Agree a family plan. Who collects the children if you can't? Who checks on an elderly parent? Who is your out-of-area contact? Tokyo exempts carers from its stay-put rules for exactly this reason, because those are the people who most need to get home.
-
Know the other ways home: replacement buses, river services, a lift from a colleague heading the same way.
-
If you might walk, walk part of the route on a nice day so you know the distance, the hills and the places to rest.
-
Carry a paper map or a list of directions. Download offline maps as well, but don't rely on them.
Never walk through floodwater. It is deeper and
A question for your employer
In 2013 Tokyo brought in an ordinance asking employers to keep three days of supplies for their staff and not to send everybody out onto the streets at once. As far as we can find, Britain has no equivalent. Most employers have never considered what happens if their staff can't get home.
So we would like you to ask. Next time the subject of resilience or business continuity comes up at work, try these five questions:
-
If the trains stop, can we stay in the building overnight?
-
Is there water, food and somewhere warm to wait?
-
Will you stagger our departures rather than send everyone to the station at once?
-
Will staff with caring responsibilities be allowed to leave first?
-
Who will tell us what is happening, and how?
-
Ask your manager or HR team. A workplace that has thought about this is a calmer place to be on the evening it matters.
Prepared, not frightened
None of this means expecting to be stranded every winter. Most of us never will be. But the Get-Home Bag costs little, takes up the space of a desk drawer and turns a miserable night into an inconvenient one.
Pack the bag, find your sofa near the office, have a word with your employer, and then get on with your life.
Sources
-
Japan Cabinet Office white paper 2022: 5.15 million people had difficulty getting home
-
Metropolitan Tokyo Ordinance on Measures for Stranded Individuals
-
Tokyo Metropolitan Government: Disaster Return Support Stations
-
RAIB: self-detrainment of passengers at Lewisham, 2 March 2018
-
Telco Magazine: Spain orders more back-up power for mobile networks
-
Channel 4 News: travellers sleep in cars and trains as big freeze continues (2010)
-
Anglican News: Mothers’ Union helps snow-trapped medics (2018)
