Home survival kit

[aris]

If you had to make survival kit for home - that would fit in an average sized hold all - what would you put it?

By home survival I mean kit for disasters where usual amenities are unavailable. No elec, gas, shops, etc.

I'm thinking:

First aid (a discussion in itself)
Wind up radio
Torch (possibly also windup)
Water purification (discuss)
PMR walkie talkie

Keeping in mind you are at home there are many things you already have at hand.

 

[susi]

First aid - should have that anyway, disaster or not.

Wind up radio - just go with a normal radio plus a spare pack of batteries. If the disaster lasts longer than that, nobody will be broadcasting anything anyway

Torch (possibly also windup) - ditto

Water purification (discuss) - just stock 5 litre canisters of water from the supermarket. Allow 15 litres per person (7 days worth). If the disaster last longer than 7 days, there will be bigger worries

PMR walkie talkie - maybe :-/


In addition you should consider:

- Potassium Iodide tablets if you live near a nuclear plant and are still youngish (do some research on this)
- food and snacks
- wood burning stove (and wood!)
- candles
- something to defend yourself with (remember how quickly law and order broke down in the London riots. We are only ever 2 meals away from anarchy)
- Finally, most important IMO, make friends with your neighbours. Pulling together in a disaster is the best solution for all.

 

[Greek1983]

If you're talking for a ca. 60 litre holdall, I would for sure have


1) Camping Solar Panel. A must have, especially when you need to recharge batteries.
2) Batteries for PMR, torch, head Torch.
3) BP-5 Ration Packs or Army Rations
4) Water Purifiers (Katadyn, LifesaverBottle, LifeStraw), and tablets
5) First Aid Kit, either a Military IFAK or a civilian one
6) Green soap
7) Wet Hankies
8) A sleeping bag maybe, unless they are provided by the Military or Civil Protection agencies.

 

[Fat Rog]

Disposable dust masks? No good for nuclear fallout, but might a bit help if there's a cloud of volcanic ash headed your way.

 

[rik_uk3]

BOBs (Bug Out Bags) are often talked about on survival / prepper sites they aren't really a bushcraft thing. Google bug out bag or look on survival sites is perhaps your best bet, something like survivalistboards.com

 

[santaman2000]

Here's a link to what the Red Cross reccomends for hurricanes: www.arcno.org/Hurricane_Preparedness.php

Just adjust it for whatever natural disaster you might reasonably expect.

 

[Corso]

are you asking about BOB or stay at home kits - i plan to stay at home - even if it ends up being at the end of the garden....

and Potassium Iodide is all well and good but what are the chances of getting enough warning....

 

[treefrog]

look out for space weather and EMP power outages effecting any powered devices.
http://www.spaceweather.com
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmdfence/1552/1552.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html

 

[oldtimer]

Checkout Cody Lundin. Arizona based but if you translate American into English you can penetrate his ideas- not solutions but food for thought on which to base your own decisions. Bug in and bug out ideas centred around major events like Hurricane Katrina. If you have a Kindle its cheap and easy.

 

[aris]

From the sounds of things, I may have to pack some tin foil hats too

 

[Shovel]

Eton FRX1, 2 or 3.

 

[bushwacker bob]

Eton FRX1, 2 or 3.

Is that a qualification from a public school? Qualifications as such become largely irrelevant in wide scale disasters

 

[brambles]

Radios, on the other hand, can be quite useful.

 

[cbr6fs]

Water will be your biggest problem, it's no good having a filter if there is no water to filter in the first place.

I keep at the very least 6 x 1.5 litre bottles of water in my emergency bag, but that's really for earthquakes so it's something i need to carry.
If i'm staying at home then i then have around 700 litres of water in my fishtanks if need be.

He's a list of what's in my emergency bag from this recent thread:

Living in a very active earthquake zone i have a bag i keep stocked up in case we need to make a quick exit.
The contents change depending on the season, not much need for a sleeping bag here in summer so i replace that with more water.

I also have 2 tents, a winter one and a summer one made of reflective material to keep it a little cooler.

Off the top of my head roughly this is what i keep year round:
Pretty comprehensive home level First aid kit with 2 weeks supply of prescription medicine (regularly rotated).
Water filters (2 in case 1 fails) and purification tablets
Box of 6 x 1.5 Litre bottled water
Food, exactly what changes, as with the prescription medicine it's regularly rotated (should also say i also include food for the dog)
Washing stuff, soaps, shampoos, toilet paper, hand wipes etc
Shelter (as above different tent depending on summer or winter)
Sleeping mats
Sleeping bags and/or wool blankets
Clothing (again depends on the seasons)
Couple of flashlights with spare batteries and car charger
Camping stove, cutlery, pots and pans
Sun block (stays in as i regularly get sunburnt ever in winter)
Duct tape
Paracord
Tie-wraps
Few basic tools like wire clippers, adjustable spanner, knife, shovel etc
Tarp (extends camping area)
Mosquito spray/treatment
Radio
Spare batteries for phones etc with car chargers.
Copy of all important documents

Sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's basically my backpacking kit with bells on.

Should also say that the plan is to stay near one of a few places i know of with out of the way natural wells.
I wouldn't drink straight from them but that's why i include water filters and treatment tablets.

I figure with that lot we should be ok for 3 days.
If we're out the house for longer than 3 days then it's probably fallen down or burnt to a shell, if that's the case then certainly before 3 days was up, we would have moved to one of our other houses or will be staying with family/friends.
If it's still standing then the chances are we would have needed the bag to get out while the after shocks hit.

We're on the top of a hill so flooding is not a worry, so it's really only in the case of a fire or earthquake i envisage needing it.
Hopefully it's a waste of time and never gets used.

Really depends on where you are and what problems you envisage though.

For me personally, the least i'd want it 3 days of food and water and FAK if i was staying at home.
Not worried about solar chargers as i have my cars with 12v chargers.

 

[susi]

Potassium Iodide is all well and good but what are the chances of getting enough warning....

Good point Here we have a system of alarms and announcements which interrupt TV and radio broadcasts (the last time I saw it in action, it was warning of a bear wandering around a high street somewhere, but the same alarms can be use for forest fire, chemical factory leak, war and of course radiation leaks). There is a network of a few hundred automatic radiation monitoring stations which inititiate any warning/action and would continue to monitor the "radiation weather" in the event of a leak.

You must have something similar over there?

 

[treefrog]

From the sounds of things, I may have to pack some tin foil hats too

Only when outside, tinfoil wallpaper works just as well

 

[FGYT]

All your important documents (passport Insurance policy house deeds ) and Photos etc copied onto USB sticks ( waterproof ones )

Mobile phone backup charger battery

Marker pen permanent to write your contact/name info on your kids arm for when the authorities mess up and sent you each to different places

Cash (waterproof )

 

[cbr6fs]

From the sounds of things, I may have to pack some tin foil hats too

I like to think of myself as a rational, logical person.
I'm not into far fetched conspiracies or anything like.

I do think you have to be monumentally short sighted and a bit stupid NOT to have a few things prepared "just in case".

I'm not talking about only here in the middle of a earthquake zone either, a mates has had his house flooded out twice in the last 3 years.

Another mate had cable layers hitting a water main and the area was without running water for just over a day.

Yet another was without electricity for 48 hours last winter.


Of course it's not like these things are happening every single year BUT at 43 i would say your likely to experience something like the above a few times during your lifetime IF your lucky.


Filling a old bag with a few things "just in case" is hardly a mammoth task either is it.
It's not like your family is asking you to run across the Himalayas bare foot.

You don't have to go overboard with vast stocks of food, water, weapons etc.
Just enough stuff to see your household through say 24 to 36 hours if the water, electricity went out, house was flooded, high winds etc etc etc.

To me having a few essentials in a bag stuck in a cupboard out the way, is about as level headed and sensible as you can get.

 

[cbr6fs]

Just did a quick search and found that after the big freeze in 2010 103,000 put in insurance claims for damage and burst pipes.

Over here we had a reasonably big earthquake in 1999, folks are STILL living in temporary accommodation to this day after their homes were destroyed.

What with very very few little quakes here it seems logical to me that pressure is building up and the next one is going to be even bigger.


Hopefully i'm wrong, if i am chucking a few things in a bad isn't really much of a chore to waste is it?

 

[Corso]

Good point Here we have a system of alarms and announcements which interrupt TV and radio broadcasts (the last time I saw it in action, it was warning of a bear wandering around a high street somewhere, but the same alarms can be use for forest fire, chemical factory leak, war and of course radiation leaks). There is a network of a few hundred automatic radiation monitoring stations which inititiate any warning/action and would continue to monitor the "radiation weather" in the event of a leak.

You must have something similar over there?

not sure? but does that mean you carry the stuff around with you all the time?