Emergency preparedness.

Click here for an updated version of this post.

It includes many essential items that had been in a different post.

If you've read my post about the Bag of Useful Stuff, you know that I like to be prepared: Not just for emergencies, but even for simple desires like taking home pretty rocks. That said, I have until recently been lax about preparation for major crises.

Nobody wants to think about this sort of stuff, but that's no excuse. If you're caught unprepared, you'll want to punch your past self in the face for not doing a little planning and shopping when you had the chance.

Being prepared for emergencies involves more than just knowing where your flashlights, batteries, and first aid kit are. It bears thinking about now, because the moment you realize that you desperately need some item, it will be days (or weeks) too late to go out and get it. (Dealing with this stuff was on my to-do list long before the election, by the way. Although I increased its priority in November due to additional threat models, you don't have to care about politics to recognize that preparedness is a good thing. Even the National Weather Services has long recommended having a bug out bag ready in case you need to evacuate quickly.) This is, by the way, an ongoing project of learning and equipping. Feel free to comment with suggestions or links.

I have been thinking about four categories of situations:

1. Staying home, unable to go out for supplies. (Threat models (most likely to least likely) include being snowed in; an oil crunch causing the cessation of food deliveries to grocery stores; riots and looting; hostile police or military occupation.)
2. Staying home, with no electricity or water. (Threat models include breakdown of the existing, outdated, and poorly maintained and regulated electric infrastructure (as has already happened), local weather-related outages (possibly from the same snowfall that creates situation 1), and sabotage (to which the electric grid is quite vulnerable; see the National Research Council's report).)
3. Leaving home to find shelter with others for a while. (Note that the converse of this, sheltering others who have had to leave their homes, is not covered here. Assuming that none of the other categories apply, clearing out a guest room and shopping to feed extra mouths (and even shopping for an air mattress) do not require advance preparation.)
4. Leaving home to survive in the wild for a while. (Threat models include, well, nothing terribly likely: Finding yourself in a war zone, or having no recourse to people you can trust to help you (for whatever reason; maybe they left first) when running from authorities or lynch mobs. I actually included this situation mostly to make a distinction from situation 3: A distinction which is needed but lacking on the web pages I have seen about bug out bags. Also, if you already live far from civilization, and your transportation fails, situation 3 becomes situation 4.)

Having said this much, I can leave it to you to think about these possibilities, do the research, and figure out how you'd like to prepare. The following sections detail some of my own thoughts and preparations. Your mileage may vary.


( Situation 1: Stuck at home. )

( Situation 2: Power outage. )

( Situation 3: Leaving to stay with someone else. )

( Situation 4: Roughing it. )

Thanks to botia for reptile care tips. Thanks to two very helpful and talkative sales reps at Field and Stream for camping tips.

I have some generally applicable thoughts on further preparations, which will constitute their own post.