A survival kit is the grab-and-go bag that could literally save your life. Whether it's a bag near your front door, a duffel in the trunk of your car, or a case in your workplace, a survival kit is a key piece of equipment containing all the supplies you'll need to carry you and your family through a crisis. Disasters can be fast and unpredictable, so emergency preparedness is crucial to your survival. If a rough patch of extreme weather is approaching, a natural disaster strikes or an attack occurs, you'll need a well-prepared plan and some supplies to keep you safe. Following advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the US Coast Guard, Survivalist Gear has created a selection of compact kits that can help you survive for at least three days after a disaster occurs. Here's a one-stop guide to survival kits, why you need them, what supplies you should pack, and how to choose the best emergency kits for any situation.

What Are Survival Kits?

Survival kits are packs of essential equipment such as food, water, tools, and medical supplies designed to help a person or group of people to survive an emergency situation. These emergency survival kits are created to provide you with the basic necessities of life (food, water, air, and shelter) when your regular access to these is interrupted. The right survival kit can help you and your family get through any kind of emergency situation, whether it's an attack or lockdown situation or a natural disaster such as an earthquake, hurricane, wildfire, or tornado. You might store a survival kit at home, in your vehicle, at school, or in your workplace to be prepared for any possible emergency. You might also carry a survival kit with you if going on a long hike or when camping for a few nights in the wild.

Why You Should Buy an Emergency Survival Kit

No one is immune to disaster, so emergency preparedness is essential to keeping you and your family safe. Aside from insurance policies and evacuation plans, an emergency survival kit is the best way to ensure that you have the right supplies to survive whatever situation comes your way. What would you do if there was a major power outage that lasted for days? How would you cope if a natural disaster required you to evacuate your home? These aren't the kinds of scenarios we enjoy thinking about, but with a little consideration in advance and the right supplies at the ready, you can be prepared for almost anything. If disaster strikes, an emergency kit containing your basic food, water, shelter, hygiene supplies, a first aid kit, and other essentials could be a literal life-saver.

Why Choose Survivalist Gear for Your Survivalist Kit?

Survivalist Gear creates U.S. Coast Guard approved kits that help you survive the 72 hours it takes for most disasters to finish. Every survival kit from Survivalist Gear has been designed using advice from experts in the field of emergency preparedness, following guidelines offered by government agencies and nonprofit preparedness organizations. Here's why Survivalist Gear survival kits are the best choice for you and your family members:

Practical

The most important thing that any survival kit should be is practical. When preparing for an emergency, it can be tempting to throw everything you might possibly need into a bag, but the reality is that your survival kit needs to be lightweight and compact. For this reason, you'll need to have specialist supplies designed with this in mind. Survivalist Gear's selection of pre-packed kits can cover all of your basic needs in an emergency situation, without any unnecessary baggage. Each survival kit is ergonomically designed to be compact, easy to store, and easy to carry. Our best emergency survival kits are packed in a Multi-Pocket Hikers Backpack, with well-balanced weight and secure hip and sternum straps that ensure your kit is easy to carry without bringing about unnecessary fatigue. The well-organized pockets and compartments ensure that your supplies are easy to access, so no time is wasted digging through your bag in a stressful situation.

Range of Uses

Survival kits are never a one-size-fits-all solution, so you'll find that there are different types of kits for different kinds of emergencies. Survivalist Gear offers a wide range of survival kits to suit your needs. With multiple kits designed for natural disasters, car breakdowns, and classroom lockdowns, you can be ready for anything. When it comes to basic survival, all of our kits contain the right assortment of food, water purifying tablets, first aid kits, hygiene supplies, multi-tools, and sources of light, warmth, and shelter. These essentials can help you survive the 72 hours it takes for most kinds of disasters to end.

Suitable for All Experience Levels

You don't have to be an expert survivalist to use our survival kits. Every kit is lightweight and easy to use, providing you and your family with essential items to guide you through an emergency. In fact, the lower your skills are in survival techniques, the more advantages you will need in a crisis. All of our emergency survival kits are packed with this in mind, offering the highest advantages possible to get you through any stressful situation. Those with higher skill levels in bushcraft will also find everything they need in our deluxe survival kits.

Designed for Every Eventuality

Survivalist Gear is your go-to for the best survival kits thanks to our extensive range of kits providing the basic necessities for any emergency. Whether you choose a disaster survival kit, a first aid kit, a lockdown kit, or a vehicle emergency kit, you can rest assured that it will contain the essentials for getting through a crisis. If a natural disaster occurs or your vehicle breaks down in a remote area, you'll be covered with an emergency kit from Survivalist Gear.

How to Choose the Best Emergency Kit

The right survival kit could save the lives of you and your family, so it's important to choose carefully. It's worth investing in a high-quality kit, with strong items that are built to last. Do your research and consider all eventualities that could befall your day-to-day life. The best emergency preparation will ensure that you have a good emergency kit for your home, workplace, school, and vehicle. Here are some of the choices you will have to make when choosing the best survival kits for you and your family:

Natural Disasters Emergency Kits

The best survival kits for a natural disaster will help you survive a few days after an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, or wildfire. In these scenarios, you may need to evacuate your home and leave most of your belongings and your shelter behind. The best natural disaster kits should include the basics supplies of long-shelf-life food, water, and warmth, while also offering some crucial extras. These include supplies like N95 safety masks, waterproof matches, emergency sleeping bags, personal hygiene items, a flashlight, extra batteries, and a whistle. You should also look for natural disaster kits with supplies that are well-packed inside a backpack or case that's easy to carry, with space for some of your personal items such as your documents, birth certificates, and extra clothing.

Lockdown Family Emergency Kits

To prepare for a tough situation like a classroom lockdown, you'll need a kit that provides safe drinking water, food, and shelter for a large group of people, mostly children. These kits should be compact and easily portable, in case of an emergency evacuation or relocation to safer classroom or hallway. Our classroom survival kits are designed to get 30 people through an emergency lockdown situation. They are contained in compact buckets that double as emergency toilets. Each kit contains water purifying tablets, calorie-dense food bars, hygiene and sanitation supplies, duct tape, a radio, a flashlight, a whistle, and a comprehensive first aid kit. This is the best evacuation kit for a group of students and teachers in a school lockdown scenario.

Home Emergency Kits

At home, your basic emergency kit should prepare you in the event of prolonged power outages, severe weather incidents, and sudden injuries. The best emergency kits for the home will ideally also prepare you and your family in the event of a natural disaster, too. Aside from the essential food and water supplies, home kits will also contain extensive first aid kits to prepare you and your family for any eventuality. Ideally, you would also stock a portable survival kit to prepare for potential evacuation scenarios.

Vehicle Emergency Kits

A survival kit in the trunk of your car will help prepare you for any potential emergencies you might face while on the road. This could range from a vehicle breakdown to a crash to a severe weather event that leaves you stranded. The best survival kits for your car will contain supplies like food, water, shelter, light, communication devices, and a multi-tool or tool kit for repairs.

What's Included in a Survival Kit?

The best survival kits will contain the right supplies to get you through the 72 hours (three days) after a disaster or emergency event. Here are the main items you'll find in a good survival kit:

Water

Clean drinking water is essential to survival, but an emergency situation can often compromise your main water sources. A survival kit will contain enough water to keep you hydrated for a few days. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, you'll need one gallon per person per day. 1 Water itself can be heavy and weigh your survival kit down, which is why most kits will contain some kind of water filter. Our kits contain individual water pouches as well as water purification tablets, which are a lightweight and extremely effective way to purify water for drinking. Each small tablet will purify one liter of water, offering you safe drinking water without carrying heavy gallons with you. Our disaster kits also contain 1-liter hydration bags with a straw, so you can easily carry and drink your water while moving towards safety.

Food

The best survival kit worth its salt will contain a supply of non-perishable food that can sustain you for at least 72 hours. This food should not need refrigeration and have a long shelf life to survive in your store cupboard for a number of years, so you won't have to worry about it going bad. This may be in the form of food bars, vacuum-sealed snacks, freeze-dried meals, or canned food. For a survival kit for home, you might want to store additional canned food that will see you through up to two weeks. For survival kits that will need to be transported, it's better to keep things lightweight and stock three days' worth of meals instead. Survivalist Gear's survival kits all contain high-calorie food bars (400 calories per bar) to provide essential nutrition in an emergency, without adding too much bulk or weight to your kit.

First Aid Kit

When preparing for an emergency, one of the most crucial things to include in your survival kit is a well-stocked first aid kit. The best survival kit will contain a combination of bandages, gauze, topical ointments, medicine, and other first aid supplies to assist with a variety of injuries. These supplies will help keep you safe in the event of scrapes, wounds, burns, and insect stings, preventing infections and keeping you healthy until you can receive further medical attention.

A Battery-Powered Radio

Having a device with which you can communicate is key to survival in many scenarios, so a battery-powered radio is a useful feature in any good survival kit. With AM/FM radio, you can keep up to date on current events and make sure you are tuned in to important updates in a crisis scenario. Make sure your survival kit has extra batteries, too, in case your radio goes dead. Even better, many of Survivalist Gear's survival kits contain an emergency 4-in-1 radio flashlight that never needs batteries. This saves any worry about your radio going dead and avoids you having to carry extra batteries which add unnecessary weight to your pack.

Knives

Knives are extremely useful tools to have on hand in a crisis. You might need something sharp to open packaging, cut food, gather branches for a fire, unscrew door hinges, cut through a broken seatbelt, or cut bandages for emergency first aid. A multi-function pocket knife is a compact tool to keep in your kit, which may combine a knife with other useful tools such as a screwdriver, scissors, hacksaw, bottle opener, and more.

A Light

A proper light source is one of the best survival kit supplies, proving useful in a wide range of emergency scenarios. Make sure your kit contains a flashlight, emergency candle, or bright stick that will light your way or attract attention to your group in an emergency. Lights that don't require a power source are essential supplies should you experience a home power outage, car trouble, or other emergencies.

Fire Starter Kit

In situations where you need to survive outdoors for a few days, you'll certainly need some supplies to help you start a fire. Creating a fire will be essential to help you stay warm, cook food, and see at night. Our survival kits contain waterproof matches, which are extremely helpful in a camping scenario. The matches are contained in a sealed waterproof box that prevents water from damaging your matches and rendering them useless. If you happen to forget your matchbox outside or something in your pack leaks, you can still start a fire. The box's waterproof properties will prevent water, rain, and dew from sticking to the matches and sides.

Personal Hygiene Items

Even the most basic survival kits will contain some kind of personal hygiene supplies, to keep you clean and prevent the spread of germs as you wait out an emergency. Small kits should still contain antiseptic supplies, pocket tissues, and wet wipes. Larger survival kits will contain a better array of personal cleanliness supplies including a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo and conditioner, a razor, sanitary towels, and deodorant. You may find these along with other hygiene supplies like toilet paper, infectious waste bags, a compact shovel, and an air freshener.

Duct Tape

One of the most essential supplies in an emergency kit bag is duct tape, which is a surprisingly multi-functional item that can really help you out of a tough situation. You can use duct tape in an emergency to help close up wounds, make a temporary sling for broken bones, repair leaking water containers, secure shelters, seal windows and doors, protect pipes from freezing, create a makeshift rope, and much more.

Emergency Blanket

In a survival kit, you'll need supplies that will help you stay warm, especially at night or in cold weather conditions. An emergency blanket is key, and you might also find items such as hand warmers or bodywarmers. In Survivalist Gear's kits, you'll find an all-weather blanket contained in innovative book-like packaging. This design is compact and easily carried. In fact, you can carry an entire all-weather blanket inside a pocket of your cargo pants, making your bag lighter and giving yourself a huge advantage when on the move.

Extra Clothing

Our survival kits contain emergency ponchos made from tough plastic. These fit like a huge robe in order to keep your clothes dry while working in the rain, helping you to keep warm and healthy. These ponchos are long enough to cover most of your body, so they can keep you dry in case you need to wade through water to reach safety – simply remove your shoes and roll up your trousers, and the waterproof poncho will keep everything else out of harm's way. You may also find it helpful to use the extra pockets in your survival bag to pack some extra items of your own clothing, such as a change of underwear or some extra pairs of socks.

Sleeping Essentials

Many survival kits will contain sleeping bags, which can protect you from the elements at night. Mylar sleeping bags are made from a stretched polyester film, which can retain 90% of your body heat and can protect you from hypothermia in an emergency survival situation. These can offer excellent protection even in freezing cold weather.

Shelter

You'll need a form of shelter in any survival kit, which could take a number of forms. A tarpaulin or plastic sheeting can be used to create a makeshift shelter, in combination with your duct tape and other emergency tools. Plastic sheeting can also be beneficial for shelter-in-place scenarios, as you can use it to cover windows and doors. Emergency tube tents are key pieces of safety equipment designed to increase your chances of survival in a crisis. Our survival kits contain tube tents that can be set up in less than 10 minutes. They’re highly waterproof to prevent rain or morning dew from seeping inside, and they're tough to prevent wild animals from ripping holes using sharp claws or teeth.

Sewing Kit

A sewing kit is an unexpected essential item that can help repair tears in your plastic sheeting, tents, and other shelters. You may also need to repair your clothing and shoes in order to stay safe and dry, especially in extreme weather conditions.

Essential Items You Shouldn't Overlook

Although the best survival kit will contain almost everything you need to get through a crisis, it's important that you personalize your pack with your own unique essentials. Alongside your survival kit, you should be prepared to pack and carry some other personal items. Here are some top items that you shouldn't forget:

Prescription Medications

In a crisis, you don't want to add a medical emergency to your list of problems, if you can help it. That's why it's so important that you make sure you have any medications you need, along with the prescription information, dosage, and your prescribing physician's details. These items and details could be life-saving!

Personal Documents

To prepare for any eventuality, it's also crucial that you keep your most important personal documents close by. Make copies of your and your family's personal documents including your identification cards or passports, driver's licenses, birth certificates, proof of address, the deed/lease to your home, and all important medical information. That way, if disaster strikes and your original documents are destroyed, you'll always have a version of your most important identifications and assets with you.

Insurance Policies

After an emergency, you're pretty likely to need to contact your insurance company to claim whatever you have covered in your policies. Make photocopies of all of your insurance policies and proof of purchase, including your home, car, and health insurance details.

Keys

If you can, make an extra set of keys to your home, car, office, and any other properties or vehicles you may need urgent access to, and keep these in your survival kit. You don't want to be left stranded in a crisis!

Chargers

A working phone and/or access to the internet could be really important in an emergency, so make sure you have a way to keep your most important devices alive. Pack a portable phone charger and extra batteries in your kit to stay connected as long as possible.

Consider All Family Members

You may need to add additional supplies to tailor your kit for the whole family, making it a family survival kit. If you have young children, don't forget to include baby supplies. These baby supplies should be as lightweight as possible without forgetting the bare essentials like formula, bottles, diapers, blankets, and medications. If you have pets, you'll need to create a survival kit that also covers their needs. In an evacuation situation, you'll need to have your pet's collar, leash, food, drinking water, bowl, identification, and a pet carrier with you.

Check Out Survival Kits Today!

Are you looking for the ideal survival home kit for you, your partner, or your kids? Do you need to prepare your vehicle or your workplace for an emergency? At Survivalist Gear, we have everything you need in one place. You won't have to search around to find extra essentials to add to or sort in your kit. Our home survival kits are neatly arranged in weatherproof packaging to make sure you can survive and access what you need as fast as you can. They are ergonomic and lightweight, allowing you to keep your essential supplies while on the move towards safety. Our survival kits can provide urgent support when you need navigation, transport, personal protection, or shelter in a tough situation. Contact us by email or visit our website today and choose your survival kit from our vast range of products. We’re always ready to serve you. References:

1. https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf