How to Make an Emergency Survival Kit for Your Home

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The best home emergency survival kit contains the same items you normally use in the course of your daily life

Making a good home emergency survival kit will help ensure you and your loved ones remain safe and healthy should a disaster occur. Survival Topics has compiled a list of what should be included in your home emergency survival kit and why these items are important to the survival of you and your family.

Because a home emergency survival kit is not constrained so much by weight and bulk as a kit made for vehicle or foot travel, it can be made using items you typically use on a daily basis.

Why Making an Emergency Survival Kit Makes Sense

Even after the Katrina debacle, many people still erroneously believe the government and other organizations will be there in a timely manner to help them should a disaster occur in their community. For large scale disasters this is certainly not always true; you and your family could be on your own for several weeks or even months.

When a disaster occurs local resources may be strained to the limit. Roads may be impassable and local supplies unavailable, destroyed, or already taken. For this reason you should have on hand a minimum of three days worth of supplies beyond that which you already have for your regular daily needs.

Note that three days worth of supplies in an emergency survival kit is a minimum. I recommend you gradually build up to at least enough for one-month.

Why Not Just Buy an Emergency Survival Kit?

The best home emergency survival kit contains the same items you normally use in the course of your daily life

While you could easily go out and purchase a pre-made emergency survival kit I generally advise against it. The pressure on emergency survival kit makers to produce products at the lowest prices to maximize profits often results in the use of inferior items or even leaving out key components you may sorely lack should you find yourself relying upon the kit during a disaster.

What’s more, by making an emergency survival kit you will become familiar with its individual components and their applications. You can take into consideration important factors such as your local climate, the size and makeup of your family, your eating and activity habits, likely disaster scenarios and the like.

The bottom line: buying a cheap emergency survival kit could put you at risk. By making an emergency survival kit you can tailor it to your own specific needs.

Emergency Survival Kit Contents

Emergency Food

An emergency survival kit for home should always include an extra supply of food beyond what you have for every day use such as that in your refrigerator, freezer, and on the shelf.

Laying in a survival food supply is not as difficult or expensive as you may think. As you do your regular shopping, simply purchase a little extra of the non-perishable items you tend to eat anyway.

My advice is not to purchase special survival rations or foods that you and your family are not already eating. Rather, stock up on the very same foods you consume on a regular basis.

There are several important reasons for this. Perhaps the most overlooked is that your body, and especially during the stress of a disaster, is vulnerable to changes in diet. Should you suddenly go from eating your regular foods to eating unfamiliar emergency survival rations you are likely to find yourself with intestinal upset at the most inopportune time. This could affect your ability to function at one-hundred percent and perhaps even jeopardize your very survival when margins are thin.

You are also better off eating familiar foods for psychological reasons. Imagine being faced with eating a particular food you do not enjoy day in and day out because that is all you have.

In choosing foods for your emergency survival kit be sure to select items that are easily stored for long periods of time without the need for refrigeration. These foods should require a minimum of preparation for consumption. Rotate them out on a regular basis by having them with your everyday meals, replacing the survival food as you go.

Foods for an emergency survival kit should be high in nutritional value. Example foods that store well in an emergency survival kit include:

It is also wise to include a can opener, cooking supplies, and eating utensils.

Emergency Water

While it is true you can live many weeks without food, the length of time you can live without water is limited to only days. During a disaster access to clean disease free drinking water is of utmost importance.

Some survival kits supply you with canned or boxed water but this is only a stop gap measure at best since they cannot possibly provide enough for longer term needs.

For optimum health each member of your family requires at least one-gallon of water per day for drinking and hygiene. For a family of four this would be 120-gallons per month.

Unfortunately local water supplies will often become polluted with runoff and wastes. Should you drink this water untreated, you may injest disease organisms such as giardia or parasites that jeopardize your ability to survive. In order to protect yourself from waterborne illness you will need to include a means of making water safe to drink in your emergency survival kit.

By far the best way to destroy disease causing organisms in water is to boil it. In contrast to water filters or chemical disinfectants that can be misused, expire, or fail, boiling water is simple, nearly foolproof, and renders all pathogens inactive.

For this reason your emergency survival kit should contain the means to boil water and a safe way store it. Since utilities are likely to be turned off, you will probably have to rely upon a local source of fuel for boiling. Usually this means building a fire using wood obtained either from your natural surroundings or from man made structures.

I keep on hand a number of plastic 5-gallon water containers containing water already treated. This will be enough to get my family through the initial phases of an emergency disaster. Once this water is consumed it is an easy matter to make new batches of potable drinking water by boiling it over a flame.

Remember, it has been proven that no matter what your altitude you only need to bring water to a boil to make it safe to drink. Many agencies will tell you that you must boil water for ten or even twenty minutes – a massive waste of fuel that may be in short supply during an emergency survival situation. Once the water reaches the boiling point it has actually been safe to drink for quite some time.

Some people keep on hand a bottle of common household bleach in order to disinfect water. As I mention in the Survival Topic on using Calcium Hypochlorite to make water safe to drink, bleach has an expiration of only several months. A one-pound container of Calcium Hypochlorite stores indefinitely and will treat thousands of gallons of water. If you think the means to boil water may be a problem, it is an easy matter to include this in your kit.

Your emergency survival kit should contain:

Emergency Lighting

A part of your emergency survival kit should be devoted to emergency lighting. A disaster may cause electricity to be out for weeks or even months. Rather than flounder about in the darkness at night, it is essential you have a means to light the way. Emergency lighting such as candles and lanterns can also be used to help heat your shelter or signal would-be rescuers.

I recommend having at least one flashlight for every member of your family, along with spare bulbs and batteries. A good headlamp like those used by hikers and rock climbers can free your hands from holding the light should you have to travel on foot or do repair work in the dark.

In addition, you can stockpile emergency candles of the long-burning variety, a couple of gas burning lanterns, and some emergency lightsticks that can also be used for signaling would be rescuers.

Emergency Communications

Every emergency survival kit should contain an AM FM hand cranked radio. This will give you the means to stay tuned to emergency broadcasts giving you essential information about the status of rescue efforts and evacuation procedures.

Remember that cell phones and other forms of person to person communication may not always work. Towers may be down and or there may be interference of the signal from a variety of sources. Don’t make the mistake of thinking emergency services are always just a phone call away.

A good emergency survival kit should also have the means to signal would be rescuers directly, including a signal mirror and whistle. While you can only shout for a short period of time before exhausting your voice, you can blow on a shrill survival whistle for an extended period of time - and the whistle is heard much further. A signal mirror is an excellent tool for catching the eye of aircraft passing nearby.

Emergency First Aid

Your emergency survival kit should contain extra first aid materials set aside specifically for use during a disaster scenario. These supplies should also include your essential medications and are rotated out on a regular basis.

Without proper training or comprehensive emergency supplies that only a hospital sized organization could have, often your only recourse to major medical emergencies is to stabilize the victim as best you can and wait for help.

Members of your family may incur cuts, burns or many other injuries. Most of these are not immediate threats to life but early treatment can prevent complications in the future.

The first aid component of your emergency supply kit should contain the basics that allow you to control bleeding and stop infection:

Emergency Shelter

During a disaster situation your home may not be habitable or you may be forced to evacuate. For this reason every emergency survival kit should contain a portable shelter and bedding materials.

An ideal shelter for emergency usage is a well-made tent large enough for all family members. Sleeping bags warm enough for outdoor temperatures in your area as well as sleeping pads and thermal blankets.

Emergency Sanitation

Since plumbing may not be working during a disaster it is essential your emergency survival kit include emergency sanitation supplies. These include:

Because water borne disease can easily become rampant in disaster areas, dispose of all human and household waste as far from water sources as you can. In flooded areas this is not always possible and highly contaminated water is often the result.

Emergency Search and Rescue

Many types of disasters result in collapsed structures requiring search and rescue of trapped individuals. You should supply your emergency survival kit with the tools and safety gear necessary for participation in search and rescue operations. These include:

Additional Emergency Survival Kit Supplies

Besides making an Emergency Survival Kit with the above items should include:

Making your own emergency survival kit is the best way to make sure you are best prepared should a disaster occur. Use this Survival Topic as a starting point and build your kit now. It may just be the key to your survival.

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