But I'd like to get it a little more of "okay, and now I'm stuck outside for a week."
well, battle rattle is very individual, in the military you're largely left on your own to customize your load bearing equipment to something suitable for your specific job - often your NCO will have very particular advice on how something should be carried born from field experience. you're also intended to enhance your gear with field craft or learned experience - maybe a certain pouch works better if it's modified in a certain way for the location you intend to attach it to or for what you're putting inside it. maybe you should take some cheap paint and spray paint the buttons with lacquer so they don't freeze up in very fine sand (Kuwait for example has sand like flour...).
typically you want to carry your fighting load, your sustainment gear, your admin, and your specialized equipment if any. these days you would be underserved by not using a simple plate carrier with either LBE or an LBV on top. a "fighting load" will vary and for some people might not even be much of anything because they aren't fighting, they're hunting or bugging out or something and a bunch of loaded mags is just dead weight.
also if you're curious:
US Army M56 LCE, Korean War appropriate, although a lot of WW2 stuff was used:
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2015/11/12/m1956-load-carrying-equipment/
USMC transitioned and improved from the M56 with the M61:
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2015/11/16/m1961-marine-load-carrying-equipment/
USMC further improve things with the M67 although the US Army was integrating the MLCE system with the M56 to expand on it (which is where you get variations like H suspenders, Y suspenders, different belts and pouches, color variation, did something use a keeper or wire, et c:
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2015/11/12/m1967-llce/
then you get the ALICE first issue in the early 70's:
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2015/11/13/all-purpose-lightweight-individual-carrying-equipment/
which was refined a few times into LC-1 and LC-2 variations and stuck with LC-2 through until the 80's with more improvements for LC-3 when the 90's started with the LBE and LBV systems (this is what i wore in the early part of my military career):
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2017/06/28/marine-modular-load-bearing-vest/ and
https://www.gear-illustration.com/2015/11/17/individual-integrated-fighting-system-iifs/
personally for a lot of "grab and go" type stuff a minute man might want, a decent body armor vest with an LBV or LBE is hard to beat for cost effectiveness, although you're stick out as a combatant pretty easily. a cheap FLC on top of a vest and customize your pouches to have the load you are going to use would probably be even more effective.
for other reasons, an ALICE pistol belt, an M12 holster, a couple of appropriate pouches is really low profile under a coat and is handy as a cheap hunting gear carrier, leaving you to carry sustainment in a more modern camping type backpack et c.
rifle mags, admin pouch, water, buttpack, IFAK, pistol. modernize or swap around as needed, wear with appropriate clothing. while cutting off the grenade loops is common, i've seen people convert them to carry batons or other random stuff with some sewing expertise. if you are going to use 7.62 NATO 20 round mags, consider the older USMC M61 pouches designed for the M14, or get cheap G3 or FAL pouches from foreign sources. PALS and MOLLE can be adapted back and forth with ALICE - just bear in mind they will be a bit loose.
