An effective survival kit generally contains food and water, medications, first aid kit, medical supplies, personal hygiene, extra cash, and tools such as flashlights, candles, radio, pocket knife, gears, and maps to name a few. Maintaining it requires tools that can give automatic notifications. Tools such as Google Calendar are great to use.
Assembling and maintaining a survival kit can be a daunting task especially for regular people like you and me.
It takes money and mental capacity to build a survival kit, an effective one that is.
It is okay to be overwhelmed, that is why I would suggest filling up your survival kit little by little according to your capacity, while sticking to the needed basics.
Below are the suggested things to keep in a survival kit and how to maintain it.
Assemble your survival kit
At a minimum, you should have the basic supplies listed below. After a disaster, stores may be closed for a day or two, or help & rescue may not arrive soon. So it is important that you stock up for at least 3 days to be self-sufficient.
Below are the supplies and items you’ll need to prepare.
- Drinking water with 1 gallon budget per person per day. If you’re on the move, your capacity to carry water is not this much. So only bring the water you can carry, unfortunately.
- Food that is easy to prepare, or ready-to-eat including nutrition bars, trail mix, etc.
- Medications
- Hydrogen peroxide to wash and disinfect wounds
- Antibiotic ointment
- Individually wrapped alcohol swabs
- Aspirin and non-aspirin tablets
- Prescriptions
- Maintenance medications such as for high blood pressure or cholesterol (if applicable)
- Diarrhea medicine
- Eye drops [2]
- Flashlights
- Battery-powered or hand-crank radio
- Extra batteries for your flashlights, radio, and other electronics
- Charged up power banks for your mobile phone
- Toiletries and personal hygiene items
- List of emergency contacts in hardcopy for each family member
- Extra cash
- First aid kit
- Bandage strips
- Ace bandages
- Rolled gauze
- Cotton-tipped swabs
- Adhesive tape roll
- First-aid book
- Scissors
- Tweezers
- Thermometer
- Bar soap
- Tissues
- Sunscreen
- Paper cups
- Pocket knife
- Small plastic bags
- Safety pins
- Needle and thread
- Instant cold packs for sprains
- Sanitary napkins
- Splinting materials [2]
- Water purification tablets
- Full tank of gas for your vehicles
- Extra set of car keys and house keys
- Clean clothes, towels
- Fire extinguisher — multipurpose, dry chemical type
- N95 or surgical masks [1]
If you have family members with special needs such as infants, elederly, pets, and those with medical conditions, you need to stock up the supplies that they uniquely need. These may include but not limited to –
- Medical tools and supplies (e.g. blood pressure kit, GCU monitoring kit, unique medicines, hearing aids with extra batteries, glasses, contact lenses, syringes, etc)
- Baby supplies (bottles, milk formula, food, diapers, medicines, vitamins)
- Pet supplies (food, medicines, collar with ID and contact number) [1]
Additional Items:
- Tools & supplies for emergency fixes and repairs for electrical, plumbing, or carpentry
- PPEs such as goggles, rubber gloves, or work gloves
- Whistle
- Sanitizers
- Matches
- Rain gear
- Hard hat and sturdy shoes
- Plastic sheeting
- Duct tape
- Scissors
- Rope for towing or rescue
- Small mirror for signaling
- Jumper cables (most necessary for your car’s survival/tool kit)
- Household liquid bleach (can disinfect water as well)
- Blankets or sleeping bags
- Map(s) of the area and navigation tools
- Pocket tools such as swiss army knife
- Two-way radios [1]
Maintenance of survival kit
After gathering all the items for the survival kit, we may tend to forget about it as we get on with our daily lives. The fact is, there are items in there that have expiry dates and so subject for replacement later on. So it is important we get to remember when to replace them. So how?
By using technology, there are several apps you can use to get yourself reminded. The one that works best for me for this purpose is to use Google Calendar and Google Tasks.
I like Google Calendar because it is reliable and you can update your entries either through desktop or mobile. Everything gets synced across all your devices. It is cloud-based so you can access your calendar anywhere in the world. Then you can set several notifications.
How to set up your Google Calendar?
- As a best practice, create a separate calendar called “Survival Kit” from your Google Calendar account. You’ll see below why. To create this calendar, open your Google Calendar account. Click the + sign to create a calendar.
Name it “Survival Kit”. Click Create Calendar.
Assign a unique color.
2. Add Events under your “Survival Kit” calendar. From the title, write the item to replace. Set as many notifications as you wish. Then make sure to select the calendar “Survival Kit”.
- Do the same for the other items needing replacements upon expiry.
- Once completed, you’ll be able to distinguish those entries for your “Survival Kit” calendar due to the color coding as shown in the screenshot below. When the day comes to replace a kit, you’ll get all the notifications that you have initially set.
How to set up your Google Tasks?
- Select Tasks from the right side of your Google Calendar or Google Email app.
- Create a new list called “Survival Kit”. This is to organize your list and not get mixed up with your daily lists.
- Add tasks under the “Survival Kit” list.
- The task entries can also be viewed in Google Calendar with their unique color code.
Rule of thumb is to have a survival kit for the areas you frequent. Typically this is your home, car and office. There are disasters that we cannot know when to strike such as earthquakes. That is why the places you frequent are best to have an ample survival kit.
As the saying goes –
So what are you waiting for? Start building up your practical and effective survival kit now.
References
[1] American Red Cross. (n.d.). Hurricane Safety. Redcross.Org. https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/survival-kit-supplies.html
[2] CDC. “Emergency Supplies for Earthquake Preparedness | Natural Disasters and Severe Weather | CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 June 2005, www.cdc.gov/disasters/earthquakes/supplies.html.
