72-hour kit: the list, item by item

Tick it off, one person at a time

The list is for one person and three days, the least that most official lists ask a household to cover, from the UK’s Be Ready campaign to Canada’s.¹¹² Multiply the water and the food by the people at home; the rest is mostly one of each. It prints, so it can live on the inside of a cupboard door.

How much cash, and which papers to copy, is worked out in how much cash to keep at home; and when the water is off, the rubbish bags and wipes turn into a toilet, as emergency toilet and hygiene when the water’s off explains.

This list is for sitting it out at home. A bag to grab when you have to leave is a shorter list of its own, and fifteen official ones, from Ready.gov to Mexico’s CENAPRED, agree on less than you’d think: only cash and hygiene items are on all of them. Water, food, your own medicines, and ID or copies of documents are each on 14 of the 15. A radio, a phone charger, and clothes with sturdy shoes follow on 13, a torch on 12, spare batteries and a first-aid kit on 11, and rain gear on 10. The full comparison is the go bag list, and a wildfire evacuation bag packs one for a fire in Spain; Protección Civil, the Spanish government’s civil protection directorate, frames its 72-hour kit for that case, a family that has to spend several days away from home.⁵

Water is the line that needs a number

The official figures run from 1.5 litres a person a day to 3.8 litres (1 US gallon), partly because some count cooking and washing in it and some don’t. Plan towards the top of the range: it costs only shelf space. Water is the one item you can’t improvise when the taps stop.

The list above goes by the British 3 litres, which is drinking water only. More countries, and the sums for a week or two, are in how much water to store per person.

The food, worked out for three days

The food line is the one most lists leave vague. Here’s one way to fill it: the 72-Hour Food Reserve, a breakfast and two main meals a day.

The pouches in it can also be made with cold water, 20–30 minutes depending on the meal, so the menu doesn’t depend on a flame. Chicken & Rice takes 370 ml and about 20 minutes that way; Porridge & Fruit takes 250 ml and about 20 minutes. Made cold, meat and potato stay a little firmer and a little liquid may be left; stir it in. One of the mains, Lentil & Vegetable Stew, is vegan; the box isn’t.

Add something to eat between meals: the list’s nuts and dried fruit do that job. Tins, bars and rations fill the same line at other prices and weights, set side by side in emergency food compared, and the whole kit is priced in what a 72-hour kit costs in Spain. Once water goes into a pouch it’s prepared food, and you eat it then. Don’t use a barbecue or a camping stove indoors, says the NHS;¹⁶ what each authority allows you to cook on is in how to cook without power.

Keep it where everyone can find it

The Spanish Red Cross asks for the kit to sit somewhere easy to reach that everyone at home knows about.³ In a flat that’s usually the bottom of the hall cupboard, not the storeroom two floors down.

Then let it turn over. Eroski Consumer, the food pages of a Spanish consumer foundation, describes first in, first out: new stock behind, older stock in front.⁷ Germany’s civil protection office suggests checking the dates once a year on a fixed day.⁶ Pick a date you won’t forget, swap the batteries, recharge the power bank, and eat the oldest food in an ordinary week. For a larder that lasts longer than three days, start from the non-perishable food list; where the three days come from is in what the EU and Spain ask for in an emergency kit.

From our range

72-Hour Food Reserve

The food line of the list, sorted: 9 pouches for 3 days.

€112.90Hear from us before the shop opensSee the box