72 hr Kit Supply List

UPDATED 5/4/12 - Something prompted me to relook at this post today - and I discovered that the 2nd half is missing!  How did that happen?  I apologize!  I have redone the second half this post now.

I have a goal for May to get our 72 hr kits updated.  And I'm going to have you tag along with me on this journey to help push me to actually get it done!

The first step is to identify what we need in our 72 hr kits.  And that's what I'm going to highlight today.

You have to personalize your 72 hr kit to fit the disasters you are most likely to face.  If you live in Missouri, like I do, I don't need to be prepared for a hurricane.  But it is highly probable that I will face a tornado warning, or two or three, this Spring.  So that's the disaster I focus on being prepared for.  We also have a low probability of earthquakes so I keep that in the back of my head.  I have friends and family who live in Maryland and last year, they went through an earthquake, a hurricane (reduced to Tropical Storm at that point) and tornadoes in a very short time frame.  They had barely recovered from the first to be hit by the next storm.  So look at what situations you are likely to be facing and spend your efforts on the most likely first.

Remember that a 72 hr kit needs to be portable so you need to be able to lift it.  That's where I'm looking forward to replacing the canned foods in our 72 hr kits with THRIVE freeze-dried Foods which are healthy AND lightweight!  Over the next few weeks, I'll prep a menu for our 72 hr kit and share it with you.  For now, my list of supplies is just going to say 3 day supply of food and water.

There are many sources for a list of 72 hr kit supplies.
The Texas Trainer's List from NOAA
Ready.gov
How to Make a 72 Hour Kit for Emergency Preparedness


My newest resource is the Emergency Kit Planner from Shelf Reliance.  I'm going to walk through it with you today.  When you click on the Kit Planner, you'll see the page below.  You can enter in your last name or leave it blank and then hit Continue.  It will then ask how many members there are in your family.

Step 2 is entering in the members of your family. For my family's privacy, I did the screen shot before entering ages.

After clicking Continue, the Kit Planner asks for Plan Settings - how many days (choose from 1 to 14 days), the strength of your kit (basic to supreme), the type of kit - traditional, for at school or for in the car, and any specific disasters you want to plan for.  I'm selecting 3 days, traditional and Tornado because that is our family's biggest threat.

The Kit Planner generates our family's plan with a grand total of $485.96, with $211.62 of that for food and water.

I can edit this list to remove those items I already have or add other items that I want.  Which means I need to take an inventory of what we already have.  That will be my project for next week (hold me accountable please).
When I click Purchase My Kit, it moves everything into my Shopping Cart and the price becomes $401.09 because we're going through my Consultant Website.

Now, when I log in, it recognizes that I am a Q Club member and the price drops to $383.14.

Of course, if you are overwhelmed with figuring out what you want/need in your 72 hr kits, Shelf Reliance offers a wide variety of Pre-Assembled 72 hr kits from survival packs to supreme for 1 to 4 people.  We'll go through the different Pre-Assembled options later this month.

Don't forget to submit your entry into the Dreaming Big Giveaway by posting a comment on the Giveaway's post!