My emergency kit
I recently moved in to a new apartment. As I get set up, one of the things I’ve done is set up an emergency kit. Y’know, a box of things that might be useful in the case of something crazy like a nuke, biological attack, pandemic, or earthquake.
Honestly, I’m not sure how worthwhile it is to build one of these kits. It wasn’t that time consuming or expensive and having it makes me feel a bit more at ease, so I just did it.
I didn’t put much effort into it. I googled, prompted, skimmed through this LW post, and skimmed through some government resources. Despite being far from the most knowledgeable person here, I figure it still could be helpful to share what I’ve got. Largely in the spirit of discussion posts.
First, here’s some pictures:
Stuff laid out on the counter
Stuff in the box
Plastic sheeting that didn’t fit in the box
Water
Ok, and here’s a list of things that I have, in rough order of importance, along with some comments and links for purchasing.
Water. If nuked the water supply likely wouldn’t be safe, so water is needed. Biological attacks could also make the water unsafe, maybe even if boiled. It’s also possible that there are natural disasters that make it hard to access water for some time. Plus some other scenarios.
Plastic sheets. Useful for sealing my apartment off in the case of a nuclear attack.
Duct tape. Used along with plastic sheets to seal apartment. Also notoriously handy to have around for various purposes.
Portable radio. Useful for receiving communications from authorities about things like how long to shelter in place. It’s possible that other communications are down and a radio is needed.
Goggles, P100 mask. Biological attack? Volcano? I’ve had the P100 since Covid because I’m cool.
First aid kid, bandages, gauze sponges, athletic tape. Useful if I’m hurt.
Batteries, portable charger. Keeping my cell phone charged seems pretty important. The only thing in my box I’d need batteries for are the flash lights, which seem marginally useful, but then again, batteries seem like they could come in handy.
Swiss army knife, flash lights. Not sure, but seems handy.
Survival tabs. Unlike water, humans can go a long time without food. Then again, things like morale, energy and focus are important.
Pen and paper. I dunno. Sharing notes with people? Taking important notes? Keep myself occupied?
Matches. Not quite sure. Igniting gas stove?
Whistle. Call for attention at a distance.
Potassium iodide. To take if nuked. After digging a bit more closely the usefulness seems very marginal. Something about only protecting your thyroid and only protective against one isotope when in reality there’s many isotopes. I dunno.
Cash. Maybe there’d be some scenario where I want to buy something but credit cards don’t work. Idk.
Change of clothes. Meh. Could be nice to have as a morale boost. May as well.
Maps. Maybe there’d be some sort of instructions from officials to relocate somewhere. Somewhere far. And my phone doesn’t work. And… it’s hard to really paint a picture where these maps would be useful, but they were quick and easy to print out.
Part of my calculus here is that some of these things are potentially useful in the case of non-emergencies as well.
it sounds funny, but floods often cause this. You have access to water, but it’s contaminated. A water filter is nice to have for these situations, and also useful in general—I don’t bother taking a bottle of water with me when going on hikes, as a mini sawyer + bag hardly weighs anything
Oh, interesting. Thanks for mentioning that. I lean towards grabbing a cheap, small water filter then.
What use cases do you think I should aim to cover?
I suppose no water filter would help in the event of a nuke.
Biological attack, I’m not sure but that also seems unlikely.
In the event of a flood, I guess the scenario would be that I’m trapped, have used up my three gallons of water, the sink doesn’t work, authorities haven’t been able to reach me, and the water filter gives me access to water that I wouldn’t otherwise have? Seems kinda implausible, but not impossible.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are the two natural disasters that seem plausible where I live in Portland, OR. I don’t envision water filters being useful in either of those scenarios, but maybe I’m wrong.
Despite it seeming implausible, I still lean towards buying a water filter. My threshold for plausibility is very low, and the fact that I have trouble imagining scenarios where it proves useful isn’t very strong evidence that those scenarios in fact are implausible.
A big part of where I’m coming from with my questions is that I find it fun and interesting to discuss. Part of it though is genuinely wanting to know what type of water filter would make sense for me to get.
Earthquakes could disrupt water pipes, but at that point you’d probably have bigger problems… Those filters in theory should protect you from a biological attack, but not necessarily chemical/nuclear. They’re designed so you can drink from puddles without getting infected with who knows what.
I just got a filter that people who go hiking for days use. That should handle most cases where you don’t have access to trusted clean water
Do you have a GPS device? Or offline downloaded maps? If not, then any situation where there’s a lack of network/internet and you want to get away. If the situation is so bad that there’s no communication, then I’d assume that most people will want to escape, which means massive traffic jams. In the case of a kinetic attack, bridges are very nice targets, so you’d want to be able to find alternative routes. Ditto for bad floods—it’s good to see where higher ground is. I appreciate that in low lying areas of Tokyo, there are signs telling you how high above sea level a given place is
No GPS. I hadn’t had offline downloaded maps but just downloaded them. Thanks for the idea!
Hm, so you’re saying that maps are useful for situations where you’re trying to escape. A few things here.
Personally I don’t have a car. I suppose maybe I’d somehow gain access to one, or be in a car with someone else and need to go somewhere though.
Maps only seem useful if there’s a specific location I’d need to get to. If it’s just generally that I need to “get away”, following the roads and winging it seem good enough. And even if it is a specific location, if it’s local enough I very well might be able to figure it out without a map.
There’d be people around who I can ask for directions. Yes, things would be hectic and crazy, but I dunno, if everyone needs to evacuate to some area, I feel like people would be relaying messages amongst each other.
What do you think?
A local map is even more useful then, as it opens up paths that aren’t available to people with cars. Though mainly you’d want to use it to get away from your current place to one that is safer. That usually is higher ground, though in the case of earthquakes maybe it’s open spaces? Earthquakes aren’t really a thing here, so I haven’t checked them
Following the roads and winging it is probably what most people would do. If you have a map, you can take non intuitive paths which lead to better places. I’m guessing if you’re trying to escape, you care more about “a safe place”, “a place with water/food”, “a friendly place” as opposed to a specific address. A map lets you locate multiple such locations, which otherwise you would have no idea exist.
That assumes they know where to go. I’d expect most people to be in the same boat
Feels pretty meh. For higher ground I know my area well enough to know where that is. Same with open space. And if I didn’t I don’t think a map would be of much help.
Hm, maybe. I have this map of my city printed out and it does list places like schools and hospitals.
Yeah but my model is that if, say, out of 100 people 5 know where they’re going, those 5 will tell another 5, and then those 10 will relay to another 10, until the group as a whole has enough of a sense. Do you not expect something like that to happen?
I’m not sure that modeling people as rational agents in this kind of situation is correct. I’d assume that for every 5 people who know, there are 5 who are certain they know but are incorrect, 5 who have no idea but sound authoritative and another 20 who heard something from someone and are pretty sure it was over there, maybe? It should sort itself out after a while, but depending on the circumstances the sooner you have accurate information, the better.
The ideal approach, of course, is to just ask Claude to come up with some example situations and then research where to go (with backups) - spend 10min on it once every now and then, to make sure you’re up to date, and just have the places marked somewhere.
Stavros wrote up a good version of this a couple of years ago. I made 2 versions of this back then (one for each person), with one in the apartment, the other in the car. The car one turns out to be in general useful. The only bit I haven’t used over that time period are the spare clothes.
The most useful thing are first aid kits. It’s worth having a little one with you wherever you go. I ordered like 10-15 of these bags (I searched “mini portable first aid kit” on aliexpress), got some basic first aid stuff (bandages, plasters, painkillers) and gave them out to family and friends. Most people assume they won’t need anything like that, so it often comes in handy to help others.
This seems to be the flash light link again. I’m curious what these are.
Ah thanks for the catch. Fixed.
They’re these little tabs that provide some basic macro and micro nutrients. They only provide 240 calories per day which isn’t great, but I like the fact that they have a super long shelf life (25 years?) and don’t take up a lot of space.
these are really handy. A knife is one of the most versatile tools there are, and light sources are indispensable when there’s no power. A headlamp is maybe the way to go, as it frees up your hands
Hm. I have a hard time evaluating how handy it is without concrete examples, and I struggle to think of concrete examples of where either would be particularly handy. I guess that’s why I went with “seems”.
Are there concrete examples that come to your mind? For light, the thing is that I am able to get light from the windows and from my phone, so the time that a flashlight would be useful is if I’m not able to get light from either of those sources. Which does seem possible, but doesn’t seem plausible and consequential enough to be “really handy”, although my intuition here isn’t particularly refined.
Light from your windows depends on time of day/year etc. It also assumes you’ll be looking at/for things in places where that light reaches. I doubt this would be likely, and if so you’d have bigger problems, but I’m guessing a cloud of volcanic ash would massively limit the available light?
A little headband type light can last for weeks if you’re careful. A phone will probably die after a day or two. Probably fine, but it limits your options. I don’t really use my phone for anything, so I’m biased.
Growing up we used to often get power cuts (e.g. the neighbors would steal the power lines for copper...). So we’d always have candles and matches in an easily accessible place. In summer this was mainly used for going to the toilet (often can have small or no windows) or into cellars/pantries. In winter this meant that you could still do things after 3pm.
A portable light is very useful if you have to fix things (like sinks, cupboards etc.), as those places tend to not have good lighting.
A knife can be used to cut things, which is the obvious usage, but also can be used as a screwdriver, a level, to open cans, open bottles, pry things out, etc. If I had to choose one thing to have with me in an unspecified emergency, I’d want a sharp knife, as you can use it to bootstrap basic versions of most of the other tools
Good points. Volcanic ash, and I suppose other natural disasters could screw with light. Personally I have a battery pack for my phone so I imagine that’d last for some time—enough time to get me through a large majority of disasters—but it’s possible my phone breaks or doesn’t work, so the redundancy that flashlights provide is good.
Fire, strictly speaking smoke, is a lot more likely. Depends where you live etc.
A couple of these links seem to accidentally lead to your choice of portable radio, including “plastic sheets” and “swiss army knife”.
You’re right! Sorry about that. Fixed.