Prepping

What they have in common is not drama, it is isolation. Power down, water unreliable, roads closed, phone towers out, and emergency services fully committed somewhere else. You are on your own for a while, at home, with whatever you already had.

The SURVIVAL Family First Aid KIT PLUS and the SURVIVAL First Aid KIT - Large both carry the depth to treat three or more people and keep going when one dressing is never enough. That depth is the whole point of a preparedness kit.

DEPTH BEATS BREADTH

The common mistake is a wide kit with one of everything. The failure that actually happens is running out halfway through.

Buy more of the things that get used: dressings, bandages, tape, gloves. One large wound will go through more dressings than most kits hold, and you cannot pop out for more.

THE THINGS YOU CANNOT IMPROVISE

Most first aid can be bodged with clean cloth and common sense. Three things cannot.

Stopping a major bleed, which is what the SURVIVAL Trauma First Aid KIT and a tourniquet are for. Treating snake or funnel-web bite, which needs a pressure bandage applied at the right tension. And CPR without hesitating, which is what a resuscitation shield removes, and the SURVIVAL Pocket CPR KIT carries one.

The SURVIVAL Snake Bite KIT uses a SMART Bandage with a pictogram that changes from a rectangle to a square when the tension is correct, developed with snake safety experts SSSafe.

GRAB AND GO VERSUS STAY PUT

Two different plans and you need both, because the decision is usually made for you.

Staying put means depth at home: the big KIT, water, and enough of everything to last. Leaving means one bag by the door that you can pick up without thinking. The Outdoor Bundle (Gen 8) covers the mobile half.

Decide now which room the KIT lives in and tell the household. A plan nobody else knows is not a plan.

WHAT PEOPLE OVER-BUY AND UNDER-BUY

Over-bought: gadgets, multi-tools, and anything that needs a manual.

Under-bought: water, medication for the conditions people in the house actually have, and first aid consumables in the quantity a real injury uses.

A water filter covers the first of those without stockpiling bottles that get shuffled around the garage for years. See Water Filtration.

TRAINING IS THE PART YOU CANNOT BUY

Equipment without training is a box of things you hope somebody else knows how to use.

Do a course. Then check the KIT twice a year so it is complete when it matters. SURVIVAL recommends proper first aid training alongside any KIT.

Also see Home, Rural and Bags.