How To Keep Your Kids Entertained During An Emergency?

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with children knows that it can be extremely challenging to keep them entertained, especially in times of stress. One great way to prepare for an emergency with children is to practice. Practice entertaining them without the power on, with few or little toys, and with disrupted schedules. Although this may create temporary stress, it can lead to greater flexibility and creativity for times that it matters most. If in an emergency situation with little or no toys, use your environment. Play the “I Spy” game with things around you, or count how many leaves on a tree, or say the colors of the cars that go by. Teaching kids to be aware and entertained by their surroundings is a form of entertainment that is not specific to any schedule or location. Another way to keep kids entertained with no toys is to play pretend. This can be easily tailored to the specific ages of your children and can entertain for hours on end. In cases when you would need your children to be quiet, practice playing “quiet games.” This could include challenging children to stay in the same pose for as long as possible or making no noise for as long as possible.

What Are Some Fun Outdoor Survival Games For Kids?

There are literally hundreds of games that you could play outside with your kids, either in times of emergency or calm. The list of a few favorites below should get you started. Consider printing out this list to work through with your children, and then help them play more and more independently from adults depending on their age and development.

1. Mother, May I: In this game, an adult or older child with their back turned grants or denies requests of the younger children in a line to move forward. In turn, the children ask one by one if they can move forward with the questions “Mother, May I _____.” The winner of the game is the one who reaches the “mother” first.
2. Sidewalk Chalk Art
3. Digging for bones: Buy fake bones at the dollar store, bury them, and let your children dig them out.
4. Bubbles
5. Simon says: In this classic game, one picked as Simon commands all the other children to do things. If “Simon” starts the phrase with “Simon says ___” everyone must do it and will be disqualified if not. If “Simon” does not start the phrase with “Simon says ____” but instead commands something directly, any children who do this task will be disqualified. The winner is the last one who has perfectly obeyed the respective commands.
6. Bocce Ball: One small ball is thrown as the goal or marker. The other children have two similarly colored balls to throw as close to the “marker” ball as possible. Whoever gets the closest wins the round.
7. Capture the Flag: A large group of children divide into two teams and try to capture the other’s flag without being caught. Read more on the official rules here.
8. Hide and Seek
9. Races, relays, and obstacle courses
10. Tug of War: For this classic game of strength, divide the children into two teams and have each team hold on to one side of a long rope. Both teams pull the rope as hard as they can to pull the other team over a line drawn between them.
11. Kick Ball: Set up three bases and a home plate in the shape of a large diamond. Divide children into two teams. Follow similar rules as baseball, except allow the pitcher to roll the ball to the “kicker” at home plate. The kicker at home plate will kick the ball and try to run the bases strategically. If the ball is caught straight from the air, this counts as one “out.” Three outs mean the defensive team changes to the offense and visa versa.
12. Soccer: All you need is a few sticks or rocks to outline a goal and a soccer ball of any kind!
13. Tennis
14. Four Square: Divide a massive large square into four medium-sized smaller squares. Find the rules on specifically how to play here.
15. Jumping rope
16. Climbing Trees
17. Limbo: You (or an older child) will hold a stick at a chest level, and all the children will walk under it. Every round, you lower the stick an inch or two until the children have to bend backward (without losing balance or using their hands) to walk under the limbo stick. The one who walks under the limbo stick when it is the lowest is the winner.
18. Water Fight
19. Kick the Can: This game can literally last for hours. The person who is IT tries to guard a can while those hiding throughout the yard try to race to kick the can. If the one who is IT sees any of the hiding children or beats those trying to kick the can to the can first, he/she says “Over the can on _____(the child’s name)!” and the child goes to “jail.” Read up on the official rules here.
20. Cloud Watching

This is a good list to start with, but the trick to entertaining kids during any disaster scenario is to help them stay positive and use their imagination.

What Is a Family Plan For Emergency Preparedness?

A family plan for emergency preparedness outlines what you and your family members will do to survive and stay safe in an emergency. Specifically, the plan should include details on communication, shelter, and evacuation. The plan, once written, should be practiced and reviewed often.

How Do You Prepare A Family Emergency Preparedness Plan?

To prepare a family emergency plan, first, consider which types of disasters are most likely to strike in your area. Ready.gov lists the following disasters as ones to consider. Choose a few initially from the list below that you feel are most likely to happen in your area or your home, and begin your plan there:

• Active Shooter
• Attacks in Public Places
• Avalanche
• Bioterrorism
• Chemical Emergencies
• Cybersecurity
• Drought
• Earthquake
• Explosion
• Extreme Heat
• Floods
• Hazardous Materials Incidents
• Home Fires
• Household Chemical Emergencies
• Hurricanes
• Landslides and Debris Flow
• Nuclear Explosion
• Nuclear Power Plants
• Pandemic
• Power Outages
• Radiological Dispersion Device
• Severe Weather
• Snowstorms and Extreme Cold
• Space Weather
• Thunderstorms and Lightning
• Tornadoes
• Tsunamis
• Volcanoes
• Wildfires

After choosing a few in this list that you feel are the most likely, discuss with your family how you will communicate, how you will evacuate, and how you will find shelter in each of these different emergency scenarios. When considering communication, make sure to discuss how you will communicate with each other in the case that phone services are down. In addition, a plan for receiving emergency alerts and updates. As you plan for evacuation, choose an emergency meeting place both inside and outside of your neighborhood, map out primary and secondary emergency evacuation routes, and pack a bag full of three days worth of necessary supplies to grab as you evacuate. When discussing and planning for shelter, familiarize yourself with different shelters recommended for different disasters–sheltering-in-place vs mass sheltering, for instance. Plan for each of these events.

What Are The Four Phases Of Emergency Preparedness?

The four phases of emergency preparedness planning include questioning, personalizing, writing, and practicing. Step one of emergency preparedness planning consists of discussing with your family, friends, or household members four major questions:

1. How will I receive emergency alerts and warnings?
2. What is my shelter plan?
3. What is my evacuation plan?
4. What is my household’s communication plan?

Write down and discuss the answers to these questions, and incorporate them into each of your specific preparedness plans for different disasters. Step two of emergency preparedness is to take into account the specific needs of your family. You will want to consider family size and ages of members, dietary needs, pets, medical needs, disabilities, unique challenges, and cultural considerations. This discussion will help assist you in the next step, which is writing a family emergency plan. Step three is to actually sit down and fill out your family emergency plan. You can use this one as a guide, or create your own from scratch. This plan will consist initially of emergency meeting places, taking into account if you are indoors, outdoors, outside of your town or community, or in your neighborhood. Even further than this, this family emergency plan will include a family emergency communication plan, which is critical in every emergency. Step four of our emergency preparedness plan is to practice your plan with your family. Although we would all like to think that we will react calmly, collectively, and with generosity in moments of great stress, we really have no idea until we practice.  Practicing is critical in emergency preparedness because it gives us the opportunity to do a real-time run through so that we can perform well and with greater intentionality in the face of an emergency. The more that we practice, the more consciously we can react when emotions are high.

Why Do You Need To Have A Plan In Place In Case Of An Emergency? 

A pre-outlined plan in an emergency is absolutely critical. This plan is essential because so many resources could be cut off in an emergency. We need to know beforehand how we will communicate, where we will meet, what we will do, and how we will react before it is too late. Even more than this, in the moment of panic, it will be nearly impossible to act with reason if you have not thought through situations beforehand. As we work through with our families our own personalized plan, we can become empowered to respond in ways that are safe, smart, and aligned with our values. And for all those who are parents: we will not always have direct access to our kids in an emergency. Perhaps they will be in a different room during an earthquake, or there will be an active shooter at their school, or they will get lost while camping with friends. The best thing that we can do as parents in a world where we cannot control risk for our kids is to prepare them. We can do this through writing plans with them, keeping open communication, and practicing, practicing, practicing. Although it can be terrifying to consider our kids being in danger, communicating and preparing them is critical.

Who Should Be Involved In Making The Plan?

Those within our household, or those whom we are responsible for, should be included in making our emergency preparedness plan. Involve your kids at all ages, tailoring the discussions to their level of understanding.

Why Is It Important To Practice An Emergency Plan With Your Family?

The “practice” part of the plan, although often overlooked, is just as important as all of the other parts. Preparedness is only as good as your practicing. For example, you can read 100 books on how to start an effective fire. But the moment that you are lost in the wilderness, the book knowledge is hardly as important as the actual practice of building the fire. The same is true with any emergency. Practicing for each part of an emergency with your family or household members will help you be able to actually execute the necessary steps towards survival and safety in the emergency situation.

I have been into emergency preparedness for over a decade. More than ever before, the one thing I continue learning over and over again is that when the time for decision comes, the time for preparation has passed. Procrastination is simply not an option when it comes to being prepared for an emergency. When we think of emergency preparedness, we usually consider having food storage and supplies on hand. This is important, and it is a great first step if you are just getting started. But equally as important to this is creating proper protocols for specific situations that are practiced often with you and your household members. To more fully understand how important this is, let’s talk a little bit about how the human brain works. The decision-making part of the brain is called the frontal lobe. When the frontal lobe is filled with adrenaline, you no longer have the ability to make decisions. So when we feel the adrenaline from life-threatening or high-stress situations, our ability to clearly make decisions is impaired. You have probably experienced this in your life at some moment. If a dog is charging you with teeth bared, you do not have a clear and distinct thought process of exactly what you should do. You react almost unconsciously in a way that you hope will protect you. This reaction is not our fault. It is how we are biologically wired. Because we understand that it is difficult to make clear decisions in the moment of peer pressure or high stress, we start practicing with our elementary-aged children on how to prepare beforehand. For example, the well-known DARE program implemented in fifth-grade classes throughout American teaches kids to “Just Say No to Drugs.” The creators of DARE know that practice is essential to preparedness, and so they ask children to practice over and over again saying “no.”  They do this in the hopes that in the moment of facing crucial decisions, these students have practiced enough to be able to make decisions aligned with their values and what is best for them.  The examples, even from elementary school-aged children, are endless. Consider fire drills, lockdown drills, evacuations, and many other “practicing” type scenarios. These, along with the DARE program, are designed to push children’s decision making into the medial temporal lobe. Because our decision-making is impaired in stress and our frontal lobe is no longer able to function well, we hope through these drills that these students will use the medial temporal lobe. This part of the brain is designed for processing memory. Importantly, it is not affected by adrenaline in the same way the frontal lobe will be affected by adrenaline. This means that if you practice what you plan to do during an earthquake, you will have an easier time making the smartest decisions when that time comes because your practice is stored in your memory. Your brain is able to access memory, but not because you know what to do. Only because you have practiced what to do. The decisions that we make in these critical moments could be the decisions that end up saving our lives. 

What Is An Emergency Protocol?

Just like the drills talked about above for school-aged children, we need to prepare for any emergency situation by doing our own type of “drills” as adults. These drills are called emergency procedure protocols. To create and practice an emergency protocol, pick an emergency that you or a loved one could possibly face. Next, consider what you would need in the case of this emergency and plan accordingly. (Often, this is in the form of food storage, first-aid kits, “ready to grab” bags, and drinking water.) After this, ask yourself basic questions about how you will communicate in the face of this emergency, how you will receive alerts and warnings, how you will evacuate, and how you will seek shelter. Consider writing the plan in a document, or drawing pictures for young children. Finally, practice the plan through your procedural protocol.

This Protocol Should Be Practiced Often

To walk through an example of this, let’s consider a home fire. In the case of a home fire, we would want to make sure we have insurance in place, we would want to create a meeting place for our family members outside of our home, inform each child about primary and secondary evacuation routes, and discuss the best ways to avoid inhaling smoke. To follow through this protocol, you could have one night every few months where you spend an hour practicing. You could blow a whistle that signifies the start of the fire and have each family member follow their evacuation route. You could progressively make this more difficult by creating scenarios where the fire was more invasive and the evacuation more complicated. This emergency procedural protocol, specifically created by you and your family, will greatly increase the chances that in the case of a home fire, you and your loved ones would be safe. Many protocols for disasters will have overlap once you start diving into specifics. However, it is important to practice for specific situations even with this overlap, as our brains will have a higher chance of reacting to memory instead of reacting unconsciously.

What Is An Emergency Action Plan?

An emergency action plan includes every part of your own specific emergency preparedness. To read more about what to include in your emergency action plan, read here. (Link to the previous article.)

Who Needs An Emergency Action Plan?

Everyone needs an emergency action plan and emergency protocols, specific to their area and the risks they are most likely to face. As a starting point, pick a few disasters that could happen anywhere and to anyone, such as active shooters, home fires, and a pandemic. From here, start preparing for natural disasters that are most likely to happen in your area. Continue building your emergency action plan to be as all-encompassing and thoughtful as you can.

When Is The Best Time To Practice Your Emergency Protocol?

Emergency protocols should be practiced often. If you have children, practice your emergency protocols every few months to keep their growing memories fresh. As your children age, practice once or twice yearly to refresh their memories. In addition, practicing emergency protocols when those in your household do not expect it can be extremely beneficial. Similarly to how the school will do fire drills that students know about and fire drills that students are unaware of, parents can best prepare for disasters by routinely practicing their emergency protocol before their children have had a chance to prepare.  This way, parents can check for understanding and adjust their teaching accordingly.

BEFORE THE PANDEMIC

How Should I Plan For a Pandemic?

In order to properly prepare for a pandemic, you will want to have both a knowledge of skills and the resources necessary to sustain yourself, your family, and anyone else you have close to you. Although it can seem overwhelming to know where to begin, the good news is that a lot of preparing for a pandemic can also overlap with other forms of emergency preparation. 

What Can I Do Personally To Prepare For a Pandemic?

• You will first want to start by training your mind to handle stress healthily. One of the most important things you can do for yourself in times of collective, global unrest is to personally be in a space to be able to keep calm and manage your emotions and stress. With this, you will be able to think clearly, create plans, be resourceful, and make good decisions. In order to do this, try to increase your coping skills. Practice in your daily life with small stressors. Identify things that increase and decrease your anxiety. Altogether, work daily for your mental health.
• Next, prepare yourself physically. Exercise often, eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and learn to be flexible with what you eat and drink.
• Next, you will want to have enough water and food to sustain you and your family in the case that stores did close during a pandemic. Since water is a precious commodity in a time of any emergency, have clean water stored. In addition, have a water filter on hand. In case your water supply was to run out, you will want to be able to access water in any number of ways, including through filtration or purification. From here, build your food supply. You will want to have stored enough food for everyone in your family for at least one month, and more if you have the resources and space. Store nutrient-dense food that can give energy to everyone in your family.
• Next, prepare yourself financially. Create a savings account specifically for “a rainy day,” putting 5-10% of all of your earnings. Start now and decide not to dip into this fund unless there is truly an emergency, like a pandemic. In times of global upheaval, you may be out of a job. It may become difficult to make house payments. You may not be able to keep your business afloat. In addition to this saving account, you will want to have a few hundred dollars worth of small bills in a safe place in your home.
• Have toiletries, soap, hand sanitizer, a hearty first-aid kit, medical masks, and other preventive measures on hand.
• Find a local doctor who you know and trust. In times of a pandemic, there will be massive amounts of information in the media. Knowing where to find information and from what sources can save you headaches and stress.
• Finally, check the CDC website often for up-to-date information.

READ MORE: What Can I Do To Prevent The Coronavirus Disease At Home?

What Can I Do For My Neighbors During A Pandemic?

The best thing that you can do for those around you in a pandemic is to follow the guidelines of the CDC. If the CDC requests that you stay away from others, please do so. There are still ways to connect and help, such as sharing your food and supplies, offering financial support, and offering whatever unique talents and skills you have. Just make sure that whatever you do, you do it from a safe distance. Sometimes we miss the point of preparedness in the midst of stress and fatigue. The point is not every-man-for-himself. The point is that we do everything in our power to prepare for ourselves and those around us so that we can be in a position to assist the most vulnerable in our communities.

Why Should I Practice Good Health Habits Now?

The health of our bodies and minds are strongly linked. Being able to think clearly and calmly, stay on top of your mental health, and fight disease can be linked to the healthy habits you have created for yourself. To begin, incorporate movement into your day for 30 minutes a day, 5 times per week. This has been proven to help fight mental and physical diseases. Next, increase eating foods that boost your immunity and help you feel clear, energized, and happy. Incorporate healthy mental habits, such as meditation in any form, spirituality, and stress-management.

READ MORE: Should I Wash My Hands Or Use Hand Sanitizer?

How Can I Help When I Can’t Physically Be There?

Start by asking yourself what skills you have. Are you a painter? You can paint something for someone. Are you a writer? Write encouraging notes to friends. Are you a medical professional? Offer information to those around you. Can you create music? Sing from a distance or online to people who are lonely. You can make goals to send encouragement, Facetime, offer your skills or product for a reduced price if possible, and spread hope in any number of creative ways.

How Do I Create An Emergency Pandemic Plan?

As mentioned above, during a pandemic, the best plan that you can have is to be mentally, emotionally, financially, and physically in a place to stay calm and hopeful. From here, listen to the guidelines by officials in your country. From here, have a family-wide plan, often called a protocol, that has been pre-discussed and decided upon, on what you will collectively do to get through the pandemic. Answer questions for yourself and your family like: How will we get groceries? What will we do to sustain ourselves financially? What should we do if stores close down? Where will we meet if we are out of power? Once you have these decisions made and written down on paper, practice them with your family. Get it into their heads so everyone knows exactly what to do, even if they don’t have that paper next to them when the time comes to follow the plan.

How Can I Prepare For Temporary School Closures?

Although nothing can fully prepare us for this, a few things can help.

• Be involved in what your child is learning at school. Help with homework, or at the very least, take note of what your child is covering in each class.
• Continue your own learning, alongside your child. The new form of long division may be hard, but you can learn it together!
• Have a relationship with your child’s teachers and administrators.
• Know specifically where to find streamlined information for your child’s school.
• If at all possible, make sure you have a computer at home. Chances are, schools will be taught using Google Classroom or some other form of a digital platform that allows teachers to communicate with their students.

READ MORE: What I Wish I’d Known Before The Coronavirus

How Can I Prepare for Changes at The Workplace?

The best thing to do to prepare for changes in the workplace is to have a small emergency fund because your work will likely be affected during a pandemic. The next best thing is to simply think ahead. Ask yourself the question: what will I do if I were to suddenly have no income by my traditional job? Be creative with your answers. What could you do to support yourself? How would you handle the stress? What are the ways that you could offer your services virtually? If a pandemic happens, there will be hundreds of thousands of businesses that won’t be able to sustain themselves during a lockdown. If that happens, millions of people will lose their jobs You either need to have a side-hustle with a decent amount of income that won’t be affected by e-commerce shutting down a good savings account or some other plan to take care of your family in case this emergency becomes reality. 

How Do I Plan For a Potential Quarantine?

This, more than anything, is where mental practice, strength, and stress-management comes in. You will need to not only have the resources and skills necessary for survival, but you will also need the mental strength and stamina to survive isolation. This is not easy. Specifically, if you struggle with mental illness, this can be particularly dangerous and challenging. Give yourself permission to just survive, if that’s what you need to do. You don’t need to be creative or resourceful if your mental health is suffering. If it helps you to make goals, increase creativity, exercise indoors, and watch movies with your family, do so. Make sure to take time each day to practice mindfulness, through apps such as Headspace and Ten Percent Happier. As humans, we are hard-wired for connection, and quarantine can make this difficult. Recognize this, give yourself space to struggle, and do what is in your power to manage your stress.

DURING THE PANDEMIC

First and foremost, do your part to take action, helping to slow the spread of the illness. Follow the guidelines set out by medical professionals. It is their job to study and understand the virus, and it is your job to trust their research. Check the new, updated guidelines every day and adjust your activities accordingly. If the CDC asks us not to attend large gatherings, do not attend large gatherings. Do your best to make considerate, conscious decisions. Next, put your emergency plan into action, if it reaches that point. Stay calm. Know that you have planned for this. Finally, adjust accordingly as you may need. Perhaps you planned to go to the grocery store every week, but different stores are doing pick-up. Perhaps you need to order off of Amazon. Perhaps Amazon isn’t functioning and you need to eat your food storage. Every situation can be different, and your emergency plan needs to be flexible enough to account for those differences. 

AFTER THE PANDEMIC

After the pandemic passes, evaluate the effectiveness of your emergency plan.  Ask yourself and your family what went well and what you would do differently next time. Adjust your future pandemic emergency-plan with what you have learned, and carry on. *This site does not provide medical advice. I am not a doctor and all content on this site is of my own opinion. Please refer to your doctor or the official CDC website for more accurate information about this topic. 

FEMA Strongly Encourages Everyone To Be Prepared

One of my favorite articles on the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) website is called:

Emergency Preparedness Is A Year-Round Responsibility

“Everyone should have an emergency kit with enough supplies to survive for 10 days, including water, non-perishable food, non-electric can openers, flashlights, batteries, cash, and important family documents. Children also should be allowed to include favorite small toys or games.”

According to Dictionary.com

A prepper is “a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.”

What Is A Prepper?

I believe the word prepper has evolved over the years. Even though there are still some people that think a “catastrophic” event is coming, most preppers are people that just want to protect themselves and their families from any rough times that might come their way. Now, that could be a natural disaster, but it could also be a job loss or even something as simple as a short power outage. Your level of preparedness is up to you. What concerns me is that the word prepper has a kind of negative, “crazy person” type connotation around it. This pushes people away from any level of preparedness. If you buy insurance, you’re a prepper. If you have food in your cupboards, you’re a prepper. If you do anything to be a little more prepared for the eventualities of life, you are by definition a prepper. If you’re just getting into “New Aged Prepping” and don’t really know where to start, this helpful guide will walk you through the beginning steps and put you on the right path, no matter what level of preparedness you want to achieve.

How do I Become a Prepper?

There are 10 easy steps that will help you start your preparedness journey. There is no time limit or quantity set behind each step, but according to FEMA, it is recommended that you have at least 10 days of supplies on hand. I think you should have more like 3 weeks or 3 months of supplies if your finances and situation permits. If you survive through a tornado, hurricane, or an earthquake, it could take up to 3 weeks to get your power and or gas back on. If that’s the case for you, it’s also the case for your neighbors. If you store 3 weeks or 3 months worth of supplies, you can come to the aid of your neighbors that might need additional help.  

An 8 Step Guide To Preparedness For Beginners

1- Ideation Period

What Areas Are You Most Concerned About?  Depending on what area of the country (or the world) you live in, you might be more prone to certain types of natural disasters, terror attacks, sickness, and more. You also have to consider the uniqueness of your family. You might have a lot of kids, or no kids, or have your parents living with you. Consider the specific types of medication you’ll need to have on hand. What about an extra pair of glasses or some extra contact solution? Think about all areas of your life and what you will need over the 3 week period when your power is out. You should build your preparedness plan around your specific location and situation. Create A Plan And A Budget And Stick To It. **Don’t get overwhelmed** Use the steps below to help you build out your full preparedness plan. After you have a plan written down, create a budget for the plan. DO NOT GET OVERWHELMED. You should plan a budget that is suitable for you and your current situation. If that means $25 per month, then stick with $25 per month. You do not need to go into debt for this. Prioritize your plan and buy what you can with your allotted budget each month.

“All you can do is all you can do. But, all you can do is enough”. – Art Williams

2- Water Storage

Buy And Store Plenty of Water (And Water Filters) You can survive 3 weeks without food, but only 3 days without water. This is by far your most important purchase in this process. It’s pretty simple to stock up on a few weeks of water if you get creative. Ready.gov recommends that you store one gallon per day per person. The more you can store the better.

“Store at least one gallon of water per person per day…, for drinking and sanitation. A normally active person needs about three-quarters of a gallon of fluid daily, from water and other beverages. However, individual needs vary, depending on age, health, physical condition, activity, diet and climate.

  Option 1: I would start out buying a few cases of water bottles. As long as they’re stored out of direct sunlight, and not on the concrete, they should last you a few years. Option 2: I would then purchase a few 5-gallon food-grade water containers. Fill these up with house water (already filtered and treated) and put one in each closet of the house. Trust me, you’ll forget they’re even there. Option 3: Buy a few 15-gallon drums and fill them with house water (already filtered and treated). You can either put these in closets, under the stairs or in the garage. Remember, do not store any water containers directly on the cement. The chemicals in the cement can seep up into the water through the plastic. This is not safe. You can store them on a palate or any other type of wood. Option 4: Get your hands on some blue 55-gallon water drums. You can usually find these for pretty cheap on your local classifieds website. They will come used, but as long as you make sure they have only been filled with unharmful liquids, you will be fine. Most of the time I find them filled with soda pop syrup. Buy them and give them a good rinse. After that, you should be fine to fill them up with water. If you can fill them with the already filters and treated water, that would be better. Most water spouts coming directly from the house offer this kind of water. If not, then you’ll want to treat them with some bleach. *See bleach to water calculation below. Option 5: Get your hands on a bigger food-grade water container and fill that sucker up. They do make these containers that fit well in your basement, but I find that they don’t work for everyone. Option 6: Buy some water filters to help just in case you run out of your stored water and you need to clean the water from a nearby lake or stream. I recommend the Sawyer Water Filter. It cleans up to 100,000 gallons of water. The formula is: “To use household bleach for disinfecting water: Add two drops of bleach per quart or liter of water. Stir it well. Let the mixture stand for a half hour before drinking.”  

3- Food Storage

Buy and Store Plenty of Long-term Food Storage You’ll find all sorts of different opinions online around how much food storage you should have on hand. Read.gov says at least 3 days. FEMA says at least 10 days. And everyone else ranges between 3 months and as much as you can possibly store.  I am of the opinion that you should have as somewhere in between the 3 months and as much as you can possibly store. As I mentioned above, you need to evaluate your family and your current situation. If there is a natural disaster that takes out the power and gas for 3 weeks, do you have enough food on hand to take care of your family? What if you get let go from your job and can’t find another job for 3+ months? Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about feeding your kids?  How much food you store is totally up to you. Also, there is nothing wrong with storing up 3 weeks worth of food and then evaluating to see if you’d like to continue growing that storage to 3+ months. You might think differently after you’ve taken the time to build up your 3 week supply. What Kind of Food Storage Should I Buy?  There are a few different levels of food storage buying. Phase 1: Short term food storage (3 weeks to 3-months worth) Phase 2: Long term food storage (3 to 12 months+ worth)  The short term food storage should be foods that you like eating right now. You don’t need to go crazy and buy buckets of wheat for phase 1. As long as you enjoy eating the food, I would start by buying foods that won’t expire soon and that are easy to make. Examples:

• Mac and cheese
• Romen noodles
• Soups in a can
• Pasta and sauces
• Rice and beans
• Canned meats
• Canned veggies
• Crackers and chips
• Pancake mix
• Peanut butter and jelly/honey
• Granola bars
• Cereal
• Beef Jerky

*Please note that you will also want to store a few things for your sweet tooth. Especially if you have kids. If you’re used to having treats throughout the day or deserts each night, it would be wise to store some hard candy’s so you can get a bit of sugar during the harder times.  After you have your short term food supply on hand, you will want to begin phase 2. This is where you will buy food that is packaged for longer shelf life. You often see this food in the #10 cans or the white 5-gallon buckets.  Long term food storage can still taste good and be healthy for your family. It just lasts longer so you don’t have to rotate through it as often. We’re talking about a 15 to 20-year shelf life. Examples:

• Mountain House Food
• Wise Food
• Eden Valley Farms
• Thrive Life
• Daily Bread
• Emergency Essentials

You don’t have to choose from just one place, but I would recommend you buy a few types from each location and test them out. See what your family prefers the most. Most of these places have an email list sign up where they send out weekly and monthly deals. There’s no reason you couldn’t sign up for each email list and wait for the right deal to make your bigger purchases.

4- None Food Essentials

Buying These None Food Items to Stockpile (Trust me. You’ll thank me later) Food and water are by far the most important items to stock up on, but once you start to feel good about the amount of food and water you have stored, you need to consider other items that will make your life easier after whatever you just lived through that is now making you use your supplies. Think about it. There a lot of luxury items you probably wouldn’t want to run out of, but my guess is that running out of toilet paper would be one of the worst things to live without. Am I right? Buy more feminine products than you think you’ll ever need. Not only will the females in your life thank you, but these can also be used in first aid situations. Keeping up on your personal hygiene is very important as well. You will feel better about yourself and you will also have less risk of getting any sicknesses, infections, and cavities. Buy stuff like extra toothbrushes and toothpaste, floss, soap, deodorant, and Q-tips. Along with toiletries, personal hygiene items, and medicines, I’d also recommend stocking up on the following.

• Baby Products
  • Binkies (pacifiers)
  • Blankets
  • Diapers
  • Wipes
  • Rash cream
  • Food and formula
  • Warm clothing for the babies

• First aid supplies
  • Basic first aid kits
  • Trauma kits

• Shelter and Sleeping
  • Tents
  • Sleeping bags
  • Cots
  • Blankets

• Around The House Items
  • Garbage bags
  • Cleaning/sanitary supplies
  • Ziplock bags

• Items Your Grandma Used
  • Clothespins
  • Rope to make a clothesline
  • Equipment (buckets, soap, scrubbers) to help wash clothing

• Navigation Instruments and Logistics
  • Compass
  • Paper maps of your area

• Weapons For Protection and Hunting
  • Bow and arrow
  • Slingshot
  • Knives

• Tools For Repair and To Clean Up Debris
  • Shovel and rakes
  • Chain saw
  • Other types of saws
  • Hammer and nails

• Fuel For Cooking and Keeping Warm
  • Wood
  • Charcoal
  • Butane
  • Propane
  • Kerosene

• Indoor and Outdoor Cooking Gear
  • Butane tripod
  • Propane stove
  • Wood burning stove
  • Dutch oven
  • Solar oven

• Seeds For The Garden and Seeds For Sprouting
  • Sprouting Seeds
    • Beans
    • Alfalfa
    • Barley
    • Basil
    • Beets
    • Broccoli
  • Garden Seeds
    • Radish
    • Broccoli
    • Onions
    • Lettuce
    • Kale
    • Tomatoes
    • Peppers
    • Cabbage
    • Corn
    • Carrots
    • Beets
    • Swiss chard
    • Pumpkin
    • Beans
    • Peas
    • Soy
    • Peanuts
    • Sunflower
    • Eggplant

• Clothing For All Seasons And All Weather
  • Jackets
  • Socks
  • Hats
  • Pants
  • Shirts
  • Shoes
  • Towles

• Tools to Help Start a Fire For Cooking, Cleaning, and Heating
  • Matches
  • Lighter
  • Flint and steel
  • Glass lens
  • Friction sticks
  • Reflective tools
  • 9-volt battery and steel wool

5- Education and Skills

Learning how to use all of these tools is almost just as important as actually owning them. Just remember, if you do survive through a disaster and end up using your food storage and tools, you are going to want to know HOW to use them in the most efficient way. Chances are you will not have Google or Pinterest to help you out. It would be almost impossible to learn every possible skill that could benefit you in a situation like this, so I recommend you buy these physical books to have on hand. You can always reflect back on them when the time comes to help you get through almost any situation.

Learn Valuable Survival Skills Through Reading

• Recommended Outdoor Survival Skills Books

• Recommended Emergency Preparedness Books

 

6- Disaster Planning, Drills, and Protocols

Have you ever wondered why we do fire drills while at school? Ever wonder why we teach kids to practice saying no to drugs before the time comes when they have to think about it? The human brain is an amazing thing. If we tell it to do something, it usually does it. The problem is that we have so many other chemical and hormones going on in our bodies, and sometimes our brains are affected by those other chemicals and hormones in a way that we kind of go brain dead. The human brain has 6 different sections.

1. Frontal Lobe
2. Temporal Lobe
3. Brainstem
4. Cerebellum
5. Occipital Lobe
6. Parietal Lobe

Most of the time we use the frontal lobe which helps with motor control, problem-solving, and speech production. The problem is that when something major happens like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, our frontal lobe is filled with a hormone called adrenaline. This basically shuts down motor control, problem-solving, and speech production. Think about it. Have you ever seen someone get into a car accident and then just sit there speechless? It’s because of this adrenaline. When our brains are filled with adrenaline we literally have zero ability to make decisions. Unfortunately, these are the times where we need to be able to make tough choices. The good news is that our temporal lobe is there for back up. Our temporal lobe helps us with auditory processing, language comprehension, and memory and information retrieval. Having these drills set to where we practice them over and over again is called a protocol. Every time we practice going through a protocol, it trains the temporal lobe to take over when the going gets tough. Stop looking at these drills as a waste of time. Start looking at them as a temporal lobe training. This simple act just might save your life someday.

7- Building A Survival Kit

I won’t go into a lot of detail on this section because I’ve already written a blog about this in detail. It’s called “What Should Be Included In a Natural Disaster Kit?” What I will say is that every basic kit should at least have water and water filters, some sort of food storage, equipment and fuel for cooking, a light source, a portable crank radio, your important personal documents, and a first aid kit. You should prepare your survival kits with a lot more than that, but I want you to customize it based on your specific situation. You’ll need to prepare differently if you have a family of 6 verses a family of 2. You’ll need to prepare differently if you’re preparing for hurricane season verses a potential earthquake. Take the basic items mentioned above and build a custom survival kit that works for you and your family.

8- Reevaluate And Adjust As Necessary

There’s not a lot I can guarantee in life, but the one thing I do know is that change is inevitable. Families grow and family shrink. People move to different parts of the country to follow their career path. You need to be flexible and willing to change your survival plans according to your situation at any given moment. I like to evaluate my situation about every 6 months. I don’t see major changes every six months, but I do see changes. I have 4 small children so I have to update their clothing in the emergency kits. The bigger my kids get the more food I need to pack away. Things change, so I adjust. You should too.

Conclusion

If there is one thing I would like you to take away from this, it would be that you need to have a plan, create a budget, and stick to it. Too many people don’t prepare because they get overwhelmed in the planning stages. Too many people don’t prepare because they have information paralysis. Too many people don’t prepare because they don’t know where to start. I have laid out this basic 8 step guide to help you get from zero to where you need to be.  No matter where you are in your preparedness journey, just keep doing a little bit each day. You’ll get there. One day you will look back and be amazed at how prepared you are. That’s when you take it to the next level and start preparing for your family, friends, and loved one. You should also be educating them along the way, but if they don’t jump on board, you should put a little aside to help them out just in case.

There are many resources produced by FEMA and ready.gov for creating a personalized family emergency plan for your family. If your family includes children, it can be best to download and fill in an emergency plan template and then discuss the plan with your children once all the decisions have been made.

Once your plan is in place, it’s important to go over it regularly—at least two times a year—especially if you have small children. On that note, be sensitive to the developmental capacities of your children as you explain what they should do. Some children may be upset that such a thing as a fire could ever happen in their own home.

It may be useful to explain how infrequent such occurrences are and focus on the fact that you love them and want to keep them safe. Keep in mind that doing practice runs for emergencies will help children who are especially sensitive to feel more secure if an emergency does ever happen. It’s also important to include a plan for your pets as well.

Once you’ve got your family emergency plan squared away, check into the plan for your office, your daycare, or school as well. There are a few major areas that need to be addressed when making any emergency plan. They are emergency communications, escape routes and utility shut-offs.

Emergency Communications

It’s important for everyone in your household to have a plan for communication in case they are separated during an emergency. It’s important to create a contact card for each child in your household and have them keep it in their backpack or wallet. Make sure everyone knows their address and phone number.

Use a close friend or relative who lives out of state as a mutual contact for all your family members in the event of an emergency. In certain situations, it’s easier to contact someone long distance than locally.

Escape Routes

You will want to discuss two escape routes from each room. If your house has multiple stories, plan to use an escape ladder to get out. Make sure all members of your family are familiar with and know how to use it.

Designate a meeting place for when you are at home and away from home. For example, if you are home during an emergency, the meeting place might be the mailbox at the end of your yard. If you are away from home it could be a nearby park or store.

Utility Shut-off

It is important that every member of your household knows how to shut off the natural gas, water, and electricity for your home. This will prevent fires that frequently happen after a disaster. Keep instructions for the shutoff of these utilities close to where the utilities are themselves.

Depending on the age of your children, you may have to start talking about emergency preparedness by defining what an emergency is. Children of all ages benefit from honest and direct information. Making your children aware of your family’s emergency plan helps them to respond more calmly to an emergency—and most importantly—it will help keep them safe.

Give Simple Definitions

A good way to explain the concept of “emergency” to children is simply by telling them that it is something unexpected where we must respond quickly to stay safe. It’s important to help your child know where to turn in an emergency. Let them know that there are people all around us who help keep us safe. These include police officers, firefighters, teachers, daycare providers, etc.

Familiarize Your Children with Emergency Personnel

Take your children on a field trip to the fire station and let them see what the firefighters look like with all their gear on. Try to see things from a child’s perspective. For example, firefighters in full gear might look scary to a frightened child and he or she might hide from them in an emergency.

Letting them know what to look for when they need help—whether they need a policeman, a nurse, their babysitter, or a firefighter—will help them know what to do if you aren’t there during an emergency.

Enlist Your Kids’ Help

Have your children help make your family emergency plan. Make a contact card for your kids and have them keep it with them in their backpacks. This card should include their contact info and the information for their emergency contacts as well. Once your plan is set, practice the different parts of your plan at least twice a year.