Quick Start Guide

from the emergencyprep.net

http://www.emergencyprep.net/starting.shtml

The Quick-Start Prep Guide
(for the COMPLETELY Unprepared)

How prepared are you? Here’s a little quiz to find out:

1. If you had no way to get to the grocery store, how long would you last before starvation kicked in?
2. If a hurricane or forest fire were forecast to hit your area, how quickly could you be ready to evacuate?
3. What’s under your bed?

Desired answers:

1. Any amount of time that’s longer than a week.
2. Any amount of time under fifteen minutes.
3. A small cache of stuff for a middle-of-the-night emergency. (If you have junk under the bed in addition to your emergency cache, that's fine, too.)

If you can honestly answer "more than a week" to the first question and "under 15 minutes" to the second, skip ahead to the next section; this guide won't help you at all.

On the other hand, if you're blushing and trying to hide under the table right now, you need to do the activities in this section.

If you do nothing else on this site, please do the following three activities in this section, which will leave you better prepared than the majority of Americans.

Exercise: Grocery Store Roundup

This step requires nothing more than a little extra money and a few extra minutes of your time. Next time you go to a grocery or warehouse store to do your shopping, pick up the following items along with your regular groceries:
Item Amount Estimated Cost
Bottled Water One case for every 2 people in your family
(One case per person is even better.) $7/case
Canned Food Enough to feed your family for one week $15/person
First Aid Kit One small pre-packaged kit $10

The canned food should consist of items that you know your family will eat. Ideally, it will also consist of foods you eat on a regular basis, so you can rotate your supplies to keep them fresh.
Suggested Canned Foods
Fruit (pineapple, peaches, etc.) Chili
Vegetables (green beans, corn, etc.) Chunky Soup
Meat (chicken, turkey, SPAM, etc.) Vienna Sausages
Seafood (tuna, salmon, crab, etc.) Pork'n'beans
Canned Pasta (Spaghetti-O's, canned ravioli) Stew

When you rotate these supplies, buy the replacements before you open the old cans. You should never have less than a week’s supply of food on hand.

There. You’re done. Now wasn’t that easy?

Exercise: BOB-in-the-Box

Now you are going to put together a basic 72-hour kit, or Bug-Out Bag (BOB). You are going to do this using materials you should already have in your house. Don’t go out and buy anything as part of this exercise: just use what you have around your house.

First you’ll need a container to hold everything. Many people prefer to keep everything separated out, one kit per person in the household, but you can put everything in one big container if you like.

What could you use as a container? Anything that you have. Anything from an extra large shopping bag to a cardboard box to a tote bag to a 5-gallon bucket. In short, you can use anything that you currently have at home that will hold all of these things.

In the last exercise, you bought enough canned food for one week. Take enough of this food to last three days and stack this on the bottom of your container.

As part of the last exercise, you also bought a case (or more) of bottled water. From this, take six bottles of water per person and put them on top of the canned goods.

Now head to your closet. Take out one pair of pants, one shirt, one pair of socks, and one set of underwear per person. It’s nice to put your clothes in gallon-sized plastic bags before putting them in with the canned goods, but if you don’t have any available just fold the clothes and put them on top of the water.

Finally, take the first-aid kit that you bought at the store and put it on the very top.

Close the container.

Congratulations! You now have a very basic 72-hour kit. If, for any reason, you have to evacuate your home, you can just pick up this container and put it in your car. You will have basic emergency supplies at your fingertips: food, water, clothing, and medical items.


Exercise: Under-Bed Treasure Trove

Place the following items under your bed:

* A pair of sturdy shoes. No sandals, flip-flops, or high heels, please; these should be sensible, closed-toe shoes. If you can’t afford an extra pair, use the sneakers you were about to discard as “too worn;” they won’t be ideal, but they’ll be better than bare feet.
* A flashlight. You will be tempted to use it sometimes. That’s fine, but make sure it always gets put back right away.
* A set of clothing. One pair of long pants (jeans preferable), a long-sleeved shirt, and socks.

Why do you do this?

Quite simply, there’s no guarantee that an emergency will happen during daylight hours, or even when you’re awake. During the early 1990’s, for example, two major earthquakes struck Southern California in the darkness before sunrise. In the Northridge quake, whose epicenter was in a metropolitan area, the majority of injuries were caused by people leaping out of bed in the dark and walking or running across broken glass.

Even if you don’t live in an area prone to earthquakes, this under-bed treasure trove will prove useful if an emergency strikes in the middle of the night. Many disasters knock out electricity, which would leave you without light. If you have to leave the house, you’ll appreciate the ability to grab a set of clothing and shoes in a hurry (especially if your sleeping attire is skimpy).

In short, if disaster strikes in the middle of the night, you’ll greatly appreciate your under-bed treasure trove.