What do I Need in a personal survival kit?
Hurricane season is here and having a personal survival kit can give you and your family the ability to sustain yourselves until professional help arrives.
MRE or meals ready to eat are always a great thing to have in your personal survival kits, but let’s face it they can be expensive. You can buy quality car emergency kits just about anywhere even at your local Costco. Always have a blanket, food (e.g., power bars) and water in sealed containers. Keep a Catastrophe mini-Kit for your car(s).
Local phone access is often turned off or destroyed during emergencies. Call friends/family outside your state to leave update info. Important: a battery radio for emergency broadcasts; ideally a CB radio or Nextel-type network phone; your Family List with names, essential medical and contact information, as well as local emergency numbers. You can get cost-effective home emergency kits at Costco. Clean out your bathroom cabinets and make sure to pack first aid remedies like ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin, bandages, anti-bacterial ointment, etc.
Some doctors will give you double prescriptions once if you ask. Include another plastic sealed container with all of the basic medicines or vitamins you and your family must have. This is a good concentrated food source. If you eat a protein drink (or power bar) regularly, throw in a big container (or a 12-pack of cans/bars) and enough liquid to mix it up. beef stew, spaghetti) and carbohydrate foods like cereal bars and dried fruit leathers for energy.
Concentrate on meals (e.g. If you smoke, put a carton of cigarettes in to prevent withdrawal sickness. Instant coffee keeps withdrawal headaches away. Dried foods will use precious water to reconstitute.
Canned goods as complete meals are ideal. Make a separate sealed container with food in it. Tents, Tarps, Ponchos, Sleeping bags or Wool blankets (wool will keep you warmer even when wet), cooking gear, Lighters, Utensils, Can-openers and a pan to boil water. Clean out the camping gear you are not using: this is the perfect place for it. You need a complete change of dry clothing that you can be warm enough in to sleep while dressed.
Clean out your closets and put in layered clothing AND tough shoes for each family member. Or use a small plastic/metal garden shed in your yard. It is as easy as getting a plastic 55-gallon trash bin with clips on the lid to hold it shut. Create a Catastrophe Kit on your property outside your house and garage (in a back corner of your yard, for instance). Swap water out every six months - put a reminder in your calendar.
Even if some of it is compromised you will still have other bottles intact. I just bought shrink-wrapped cases of quart-sized plastic water bottles and stacked them under the backyard picnic table. At Home: Put at least enough water in sealed containers so that your family will have one gallon per day for two weeks. Keep a Family Emergency Numbers List inside too. Plus, put in dried fruit, power bars, your daily medications or vitamins and a small first aid kit.
At Work: Keep a backpack at work with as much bottled water as you can carry. Thirst kills you faster than famine. Water is number one, so our first tip is, Without water you lose your ability to make clear decisions within 24 hours. Time is the second most important factor in surviving a catastrophe.
You can use these catastrophe survival tips to buy yourself and your family more time. No one can predict the future, but you can take measures now so you know that you have done what you can to prepare. It can happen anywhere, and it is not if, it is when it will happen. Tragically, even 10 days after post-Katrina rescue efforts began, there were still people starving to death in New Orleans. Please, do not for one moment think that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is going to be able to get to you in time, unless you have already taken these steps to rescue yourself.
After you survive, rebuilding your life and business quickly becomes critical. Whether it is a natural disaster like hurricane Katrina or an unnatural catastrophe like an upwind industrial chemical explosion, what you do now to protect yourself and your family can make the difference between life and death. Whether it’s a self assembled “do-it-yourself” kit or a purchased one, we all need to fulfill this very important element of our disaster survival plan. A survival kit will allow you to take care of your basic needs until help arrives.
First responders and rescue teams may take awhile to get to everyone. You need to be prepared to take care of yourself and your family if that should occur. It is equally important to consider that the home could be destroyed. Many people have invested the time, effort and money to prepare their homes for a disaster.
Also, most manufacturers will assemble custom survival kits for larger groups of people such as businesses, schools or churches. There’s also plenty of extra storage space, which allows you to customize your kit to accommodate your own individual needs. There are kits that are designed specifically for children that include items to keep them entertained during a disaster. There are individual survival kits, 2 person survival kits, and smaller kits to keep in our vehicles.
Others come conveniently packed into backpacks. Some are packaged in storage buckets. There are a variety of survival kit products available. A survival kit includes many products that most of us would not have considered necessary until the time of need had come to pass. Manufacturers have already done the research, procured the basic items in the recommended quantities, made them lightweight and portable, and offer the entire basic kit at an affordable price.
Instead you should give consideration to purchasing a ready-made survival kit. The physical size of the kit can be an issue as well, and portability can become very difficult. Those who do take the initiative in putting a survival kit together, find that the individual items can be costly. Time is valuable and seems to get exhausted focusing on matters that are currently necessary. However, most of us will never follow through with the task.
You should print out the list, purchase the items, squirrel them away and hope the need never arises. You can find out “what” and “how much” of each item is recommended in order to be able to survive for a minimum of three days. Searching the Internet regarding this topic, you will find several sites that catalog the basic recommended items that your survival kit should contain. It is essential in disaster preparedness to organize a disaster survival kit. We all know we should be prepared for disasters.
