Prepping

The spare room has a tent, a radio you have not tested, and food you would not eat. You still cannot say how many gallons are in the house.

About 20% of a basic kit covers 80% of the first few days. The rest is often shiny gear or catalog items bought for a dramatic scenario, not the essentials that get you through the first days. That split is a rule of thumb. Nobody has measured an 80/20 of disasters.

Put water and daily medicines in one bag. Add a way to hear a warning. Then stop buying until those three are real.

Water, and do not ration it

Ready.gov's kit list starts with water. One gallon per person per day, for several days, for drinking and sanitation. Food is next: a several-day supply that does not need a working kitchen (Build a kit). FEMA's older food-and-water booklet is stricter about the difference. A normally active person needs at least two quarts to drink each day, and you will want more for heat, children, nursing, and illness. Store at least a gallon per person per day. Healthy adults can cut food for a while. Do not ration water. Drink what you need today, and look for more tomorrow (FEMA food and water booklet).

20/80 pattern: the gallons decide the first days. The taste of the emergency meal does not.

What fills the cart: a six-month menu, a filter you have never used, cases of food that still need water to cook.

Warning sign: you can describe the food and you cannot name the number of gallons.

A gallon of water weighs about eight pounds. Three days for four people is twelve gallons, close to a hundred pounds. That weight is why the food bucket wins the shopping trip. Food is lighter, and it looks like a plan. The booklet's rule still puts the heavy item first.

Ready.gov's list is not only for a healthy adult at home. It names infant formula, bottles, diapers, and extra water and food for a pet. A generic bin that ignores the baby or the dog is the same mistake as a generic hazard. Write those needs on the card as extra gallons and the food you cannot substitute. A neighbor's kit will not have your child's formula.

The same booklet also says to consider two weeks of water if you can, and to store less if you cannot. Ready.gov's public list is the shorter floor: several days, often taught as 72 hours. Do not let the two-week ambition cancel the three-day bin. A house with no gallons does not need a lecture about day fourteen. Fill day one, day two, and day three. Then, if the bin is honest, add more. Children and pregnant people are the exception on food rationing in that booklet. They are not an exception on water.

Do this: people in the house, times three gallons. Write the number on the bin. If the bin is short, that is the only purchase. Date the jugs. Store them where you can lift them on the way out, not on a shelf you will not reach in the dark.

The medicines you already take

Ready.gov notes that about half of Americans take a prescription medicine every day. A closed pharmacy is then not a side problem. It is the outage. The same page tells you to keep prescriptions, the ordinary over-the-counter drugs you use, and a list, where you can grab them.

20/80 pattern: the bottle you cannot skip beats a cabinet of supplements you bought for the scenario.

What fills the cart: a tactical medical pouch for injuries you have not trained for, while the blood-pressure pills sit in a bathroom you might leave.

Warning sign: the kit has bandages and no names of the daily drugs.

Do this: copy the names, doses, and the pharmacy onto one card. Put several days of the drugs you must not miss in the same bin as the water, if they can be stored that way. Ask the prescriber before you invent a stockpile.

Hear the warning before you own the gadget

The kit list includes a battery or hand-crank radio, and a NOAA weather radio with a tone alert. A phone with a charger and a battery pack is on it too. The point is the message, not the brand of the radio.

NOAA's hazard tables are easy to misread, and the agency says so. Deaths it files under hurricane or tropical cyclone are the wind deaths. Storm surge, rain floods, and tornadoes from the same storm are counted in other rows (weather fatality statistics). A person who preps for "a hurricane" as one blob can buy wind gear and still be hit by the water. This page does not turn those tables into an 80/20 of American deaths. The split is the lesson. Name the hazard that reaches your street.

What fills the cart: a scanner, a drone, a second tent, before anyone has checked that alerts arrive.

Warning sign: the radio is in the box, and the phone's emergency alerts are off.

Do this: turn the alerts on. Put batteries in the weather radio. Once, this month, confirm you can hear a test or a forecast without the house power.

Papers, shoes, and a way to leave

Ready.gov also wants copies of identification, some cash, a map, a whistle, and a plan for home, work, and the car. Work means you might stay there a day, so the desk needs water, food, and the medicines, plus shoes you can walk in. The car means you might be stuck away from the closet where the good kit lives. A perfect bin at home does not help a highway shoulder. Split a little of the water and a copy of the medicine card into the car. Leave the tent at home.

This sits next to home security only in one way. Both fail in a few boring spots, not in a complete collapse of everything at once. The risk version of the same idea is: do not score the nineteenth feature. Score the thing that strands you.

What fills the cart: a binder system you will not carry, and a plan that assumes you are always at the house.

Warning sign: the only copies of the lease, the insurance card, and the prescriptions are on a dead phone.

Do this: one envelope. IDs, insurance, a little cash, the medicine card. Shoes you can walk in, next to it. Tell the other adult where it is.

Three lines, then no new gadget

Illustrative: two adults, one child. Nine gallons for three days. The bin had two. The blood-pressure pills were in a bathroom drawer. The radio was new and silent. The tent was not the problem.

• How many people.
• Gallons for three days, at one gallon each per day.
• The prescriptions that cannot be skipped, and where those pills are tonight.

Three days is not a lifestyle. It is the gap between the outage and the road, the store, or a relative. People who prep for six months of isolation are answering a different question, and they still die of thirst on day two if the gallons were never counted. Keep the long project if you want it. It does not get a dollar until the three lines on the card are true, including the car copy and the baby's formula or the dog's water if those lives are in the house.

Sanitation is the quiet fourth item, and Ready.gov already lists it: bags, ties, towelettes, soap. Toilets fail when the water fails. A house that stored drinking water and has no way to deal with waste will pour that drinking water into the wrong job. A small bag of those items belongs in the same bin. It is not a reason to open a new catalog.

8020 move: if any line is blank or short, that line is the only prep this month. The catalog is the ignored majority.

Misreads that grow the pile

"Food is the same problem as water." FEMA says healthy adults can cut food. It says not to ration water.

"One disaster kit covers the hurricane." Wind, flood, and tornado are not one row in the weather tables. Water and a way to leave still sit under most of them.

"More tools means more ready." A tool you have not tested is weight. Gallons, pills, and a radio that turns on are the test.