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How To Prepare For a Disaster & Survival Kit Checklist

Making sure your family is prepared for various disasters is crucial for your survival.

Do you know how to get started?

Here’s a quick look at preparing your family for disaster.

There are three components that all types of disasters share.

  • They tend to be unpredictable and almost impossible to control.
  • They result in mass chaos and panic in the affected area.
  • They may impact the availability of electricity, clean water, and natural gas.

When you consider these facts, it is clear that survival training is the most crucial step.

Preparing every member of your family for the onset of various types of disasters should begin as soon as possible.

The Importance of Vigilance

Let’s face it. Rarely do disasters, whether they’re natural or man-made, give you any warning.

For example, flooding and earthquakes, which tend to strike quickly, can eradicate entire sections of huge cities. This shows you just how powerful nature can be.

To make certain your family can survive, they need to be conditioned to quickly, calmly, and confidently adapt to a survival mindset in the event of a disaster.

The First Line of Defence

When it comes to disasters, your first line of defence is always your knowledge of disaster preparedness, as well as the emergency equipment, supplies, and tools you have gathered together in advance.

During any disaster, your disaster supply kit will prove to be invaluable, particularly if your family must evacuate to a safer location.

Your Disaster Supply Kit

Disaster Supply Kit

Source: pixabay

Yes, your disaster supply kit needs food and water, but it needs more than just that. It should contain essentially everything you need to survive, including tools, medicine, and emergency supplies. In all actuality, you need two disaster supply kits:

  • A comprehensive kit that is kept at home
  • An emergency kit that is permanently stored in your family’s vehicle.

The kit stored in your car is more of a contingency equipment that you can use if you are unable to access the one you keep at home.

For example, if you are forced to evacuate before you can get it. It should contain essential items, such as water purifying tablets, dried and canned foods, etc.

The Most Crucial Items in Your Disaster Kit

Without any doubt, food and water are the essential items in your kit.

Select food that is tightly sealed, yet easy to open and consume. This is not the time to buy food your family is unfamiliar with, such as military-style rations. Select what you know they will eat.

A disaster can have an enormous psychological impact that may be tremendously reduced if your family can reach for familiar foods.

Many people opt for boxed or canned food, but you also have the option of canning and preserving your food for future use.

In fact, knowing how to preserve properly food is an excellent form of self-sufficiency.

As a bonus, homemade preserved food tends to be healthier and more natural than any processed foods.

Vital Food Items for Your Disaster Kit

Again, foods should be easy to open and consume, but they should also be nutritious, high in calories, and easy to store again in the future.

While it can be hard to find a variety of food that meets all these requirements, do your best to find enough to last your family a minimum of 10 days.

You may be surprised to learn that there are survivalists who have as much as six months worth of food in their survival kits.

While that may seem excessive, the point is that they are preparing for the uncertain conditions that occur after a disaster.

After all, you never know what condition your community will be in after a catastrophe hits, so having as much stored as possible is always a good idea.

If you are struggling with preparing for a disaster, speak to your family and create a plan that you can put into practice as a team.

When a disaster hits, it is crucial that you be able to trust and depend on each member of your family so that everyone stays safe.

Above, we looked at the importance of including food and water in your disaster kit for natural disasters or other emergency situations. Specifically food that is high in calories, nutritious, and easily stored with little chance of it spoiling.

Now, we are going to explore this topic further, focusing on important guidelines for food storage and producing drinkable water during disasters and emergencies.

Keeping Emergency Food Fresh and Safe

Unfortunately, it’s a fact that healthy foods are usually the ones that “go wrong” pretty quickly.

This means you are pretty much limited to commercially sealed, preserved, or dried foods. But, you do have available options.

To ensure your food supply stays safe, clean, and edible, here are several tips you should adhere to.

The food contained in your disaster kit should be routinely replaced.

It is suggested that you do this every six months to ensure that all the food kept in your kit will be edible in the event of an actual emergency.

Food should be stored in an area that is pretty cool and away from direct sunlight. It doesn’t have to be kept in a plastic box like other supplies. Instead, opt for an elevated shelf.

Dry ingredients and food, such as grains, beans, salt, and sugar, should be taken out of their plastic or foil packaging and placed in a larger, more durable container with a sealed cover.

Never store food in open bowls, containers, or plates.

You should be certain your emergency food is kept in a closed container, such as a plastic bowl with a tightly sealed lid, zip-lock bag, or glass jar with a top that screws on. (Mason jars are a great idea.)

Be sure to pack all containers, including boxes, jars, and foil packages, as carefully and neatly as possible.

This will allow you to easily re-close them. Exposed food can attract plenty of disease and bacteria during an emergency situation.

Be sure to inspect your food before consuming anything from your emergency stash. If no end date is visible, use sight and smell to decide whether you should eat the food.

Leftovers can remain safe from contamination by tightly wrapping them in clear plastic. Once wrapped, they should be placed in a plastic container with a cover or lid.

Be sure to include a bottle of multivitamins in your food stash. This will help make certain your family consumes a enough amount of trace nutrients during a prolonged emergency.

To make your scarce food supplies last as long as possible, rationing will be necessary.

Yet, each family member should consume at least one complete meal with plenty of calories daily. As activity slows down during the evening, opt for smaller meals.

Producing Clean Drinking Water During an Emergency

In an emergency situation, we use up significantly more energy thanks to the extra physical demands placed on our bodies.

For example, setting up a temporary shelter and the process of evacuating can be physically draining.

Keeping hydrated is critical. After all, without clean drinking water, we can’t survive for any extended period.

Before reading any further, be sure to check explanation about How long does bottled water last?

Here are a few reminders to keep in mind when trying to produce drinking water.

It’s important to understand that during a disaster, no one emergency procedure will result in completely pure water.

Even when you drink water that has been purified or disinfected, it’s still going to have some bacteria and possibly even sediments in it.

This is simply something you should be prepared to deal with, rather than being afraid of it.

If running water is accessible, but you are uncertain if the existing plumbing has been damaged, boiling water is one way of killing most types of bacteria responsible for diarrhea and other water-borne illnesses.

If you see stable sediments in the water (for example, soil), be sure to filter the water using manylayers of cloth before boiling.

Distillation is another way to purify water. Simply pour the water into a pot, place the cover on upside down, and hang a cup from the pot’s handle.

Evaporated water eventually distils and drops into the cup. Yet, larger contaminants will not evaporate.

If no other purification method is accessible, you can disinfect water using unscented bleach. Be aware that the instructions for water purification using bleach often vary from one manual to another.

Yet, the average ratio of bleach to water is 15 drops of bleach to each gallon of water. Allow the bleach-water to sit for a full hour before inspecting it.

If the water doesn’t have the slight scent of bleach, you may need to disinfect again using half as much bleach for another 30 minutes to ensure the water is safe for consumption.

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James Bergman - October 7, 2016

I agree that you should always have enough food and water in your preparedness kit. However, I also think it is important to have some kind or radio or even a two-way radio in the kit. Communication is key during a disaster to find out where you need to evacuate to and for peace of mind.

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