Having a home survival kit is one of the few ways that you can be prepared when an emergency happens in your community. Most government agencies suggest that you have enough resources to survive on your own for 72 hours after a disaster. Your home emergency survival kit will be essential during this time period.
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It is easy to put off getting a kit together because imagining that you will go through a severe emergency or disaster can be difficult. You may not even know how to start getting your home disaster kit set up. This makes creating a survival checklist next to impossible. On top of that, you still have to go out and buy all of your supplies for your kit and put everything together. When you combine the time and money involved with the difficulty of imagining a scenario that you would need one, it is no surprise that most people don't have one.
A Quality Home Survival Kit Can Face A Range of Emergencies
The first thing you need to understand about a home emergency kit is that it could be needed in a variety of different situations. Without knowing what you are preparing for, how do you create a preparedness checklist? This is the first obstacle to having a kit that most people will never overcome. By taking a step back and looking at the big picture, it gets easier to decide what should be included.
Emergencies Are Impossible to Predict Which Makes a Pre-Packaged Kit Ideal
You will never be able to predict when a serious emergency will arise, which is one of the main reasons why people purchase a kit. When choosing a home disaster survival kit, you should begin by focusing on a survival time frame. It is recommended by preparedness experts that your kit can support you for at least 72 hours.
Your Home Emergency Kit Should Cover As Many Scenarios As Possible
When creating a checklist you should try to cover as many different scenarios as possible. This doesn't mean that you create one kit for a tornado, another for an earthquake, and another for a chemical spill. Instead, it means that you should focus on the preparing for the effects of these disasters when creating your kit. Common issues that you may need to deal with in an emergency includes the loss of electricity, no running water, lack of heat, shortage of food, and potentially needing to vacate your home. Once you begin to narrow down what you need your family survival kit to do, building a survival checklist gets easier.
What to Include In Your Home Survival Kit
Now that you have a narrower focus on what you will need to you deal with, it is time to look at specific scenarios. One thing to keep in mind is that your kit will have limitations due to size and weight because it must be portable. To reconcile this, you should try to add items to your list which are versatile and can be used to accomplish multiple tasks in a range of possible scenarios.
Focus on Items That Can Be Used Indoors When Choosing a Home Survival Kit
The first issue that you need to address is what you will do without electricity. This is normally the most common problem that people face in an emergency. A radio flashlight is an excellent item to start with. It provides you with versatility because you will get light as well as the ability to listen for emergency broadcasts. Additionally, the flashlight should be hand powered so that batteries will never be an issue. Glow sticks and long life candles can be excellent additions as well. You should also consider the food because you may not be able to cook without electricity.
If you lose electricity, the next thing to follow is normally your water. This makes adding water purification tablets and bottled or packaged water is vital. When possible, use the purification tablets first because they allow you to purify a liter of water at a time which can be stored for use over the next few days. Another problem that water loss causes which you may not think about is hygiene and sanitation. Adding toilet bags and hygiene kits to your home survival kit should not be overlooked.
If you don't already have a first aid kit in your home, you should add one to your home disaster kit as well.
A Home Survival Kit Should Still Allow You to Be Mobile
While you are building your home emergency survival kit primarily to be used in your house, it should also be easy to transport. You never know when you will need to evacuate your house and leaving your kit behind shouldn't be considered an option. This could be because emergency services are on their way and you want to be visible or the disaster could have caused structural damage to your home.
Since you no longer have shelter, your kit must include items like survival blankets, a tube tent, and a hooded poncho. Your kit should provide you with enough protection against the elements that you can get through the emergency without getting hammered by the weather.
There are also a number of lightweight, useful, versatile tools that should be added too. Something as simple as duct tape and a tarp can be turned into a bevy of different items. If you are forced to leave your home, or get trapped inside, a flat pry bar becomes essential. It offers you a lot of leverage while being light and taking up very little space in your kit. Your kit would also benefit from things like a multifunction knife, leather work gloves, safety goggles, and respirator dust masks.
The Easy Answer is a Pre-Packaged Family Survival Kit
As you can see, creating and fulfilling a comprehensive checklist can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, there is now a kit that makes this entire process much easier and less expensive. Purchasing a prepackaged home survival kit has proven to be the simple solution to a complicated problem.
