Survival Kit List: The Complete Checklist for the First 72 Hours

Water is the first thing that runs out and the hardest thing to improvise. Ready.gov's baseline is one gallon per person per day, half for drinking and half for sanitation, for a minimum of three days in anything you might carry. For a two-person household that is six gallons in the kit, plus whatever you store at home.

Storage alone is not a plan. A three-day supply becomes a one-day supply the moment you share it, so the kit also needs a way to make more water safe. A filter rated to one micron absolute handles bacteria and protozoa; chemical treatment tablets handle the rest as a backup that weighs almost nothing.

Kit food has one job: calories you can eat cold, tired and stressed, with no cooking and no water to prepare. Aim for roughly 2,000 kcal per person per day. Three days of no-cook food for two people is about 12,000 kcal, which fits in one small dry bag.

Rotate kit food every six months. The easiest method is to eat the kit on a camping trip twice a year and restock the next day — this also teaches you what your household will actually eat when the good options are gone.

Light is a safety tool, not a comfort: most household injuries during blackouts come from falls and improvised flames. Every person gets a headlamp so both hands stay free, and the kit gets one lantern for a room. Standardise on one battery size so spares work in everything.

A small power bank keeps a phone alive for days if you ration it — aeroplane mode, low brightness, short checks. Phones are your map, your contacts and your news source until they die, so treat their battery as a supply item, not an afterthought.

In the first 72 hours you are your own ambulance. A pre-made kit is a start, not a finish: add the items pre-made kits consistently skimp on — proper trauma dressing, a tourniquet you have actually practised with, and a week of every prescription medication each person depends on.

Hygiene is what keeps a bad week from becoming a medical event. The Red Cross checklist is blunt about it: hand sanitiser, moist towelettes, bin bags and ties for sanitation, and a way to manage toilet needs if the water stops.

The tool list is short because weight is real. A multi-tool, a fixed-blade or strong folding knife, 30 metres of paracord, duct tape wrapped around a card, and a ferro rod cover the overwhelming majority of improvised repairs and fire-starting.

Documents are the section everyone skips and everyone regrets. In an evacuation you may need to prove identity, residency, insurance and prescriptions to people with no reason to trust you. Copies in a waterproof bag weigh a few grams.

Shelter failure kills faster than hunger in almost every climate. The kit does not need a tent; it needs the ability to keep each person dry and warm for a night in a car, a shelter or a room with broken windows. Emergency blankets are nearly free and work — carry two per person because they tear.

Add one full change of warm clothing per person, stored in the bag rather than assumed. Cotton kills in the cold: wool or synthetic layers, warm socks, a hat and gloves.

When networks congest, texts get through where calls fail. Write a paper contact card for every person: one out-of-area contact everyone reports to, two meeting points (one near home, one out of the neighbourhood), and the numbers nobody memorises any more.

The hand-crank NOAA radio from the power section doubles as your information lifeline. Add paper maps of your county and state — when you need to reroute around a closed highway, a phone with no signal is a torch.

Everything above fits in one 40–50 litre pack per adult, and it should: if you cannot carry it, it is a pantry, not a kit. Stage kits where you actually leave the house — by the main door or in the car boot — not in the basement behind the Christmas decorations.

Set two calendar reminders a year. On each one: rotate food and medication, charge the power bank, test every light, and re-check the fit of the clothing as children grow. Ten minutes, twice a year, is the entire maintenance burden of being ready. For the next step, read Home Food Preservation Without Electricity: 6 Methods That Actually Work.