Preparedness Basics
The 72-Hour Home Guide
How to prepare your household for the first three days of an emergency, room by room.
10 min read
Why three days
Most disruptions resolve inside 72 hours. Power comes back, roads reopen, the water main is repaired. Preparing for three days covers the overwhelming majority of what will actually happen to you.
Kitchen
Start where you already keep things.
- Three days of food that needs no cooking
- A manual can opener you can find in the dark
- Refrigerator and freezer thermometers
- One gallon of water per person per day
Hall closet
- A rechargeable lantern and two headlamps
- A power bank, charged
- A NOAA weather radio
- A first aid kit and a week of prescriptions
Bedroom
The things you would want if you had to leave in the middle of the night.
- Shoes and a jacket you can find without lights
- A flashlight within arm's reach of the bed
- Copies of ID and insurance in a pouch
The plan
Write one page: where you meet, who you call, where the shutoffs are, and which neighbor has a spare key. Put a copy on the fridge and a photo of it on every phone in the house.