The Obsolete Three-Day Kit
For as long as I can remember, the recommendation from official emergency preparedness types, e.g. DHS, Red Cross, was to have a kit with three days of emergency supplies for your whole family. The logic behind this recommendation was that official rescue efforts might take as much as three days to get to you. You needed to be able to survive long enough to get rescued.
This made a lot of sense to me, until things started going wrong that took a lot longer than three days to complete rescues and get everyone to safety. The first such disaster to penetrate with me was 9/11/01. Most of the deaths occurred with the collapse of the buildings, but the mess was not something from which rescues could be made within three days, albeit if you were in the buildings when they fell, survival was very unlikely.
Eye Openers & Experience
The tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 was another eye opener, followed the next year by Hurricane Katrina. By the time these two events were behind us, it was apparent to many individuals that the three-day recommendation was inadequate for the disasters we were actually experiencing, let alone events that had not yet occurred, e.g. an EMP, nuclear war, zombie apocalypse, etc. These events caused the ranks of preppers to grow by leaps and bounds, but the official recommendation for a three-day kit remained in place.
Subsequently, I experienced Hurricane Sandy. Power was out at my location for eight days, with some other areas power was out much longer. Leaving the area was impossible due to all the downed trees. I was relatively comfortable because of all the prepping I had done beforehand, including a standby generator, but the experience again confirmed that while a three-day kit might be better than nothing, to really be prepared for stuff that was actually happening, not just might happen, a three-day kit was not going to be adequate.
Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the powers that be (TPTB) finally got the memo, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now recommends a 14 day kit. Considering the bad press DHS took during and after Katrina, you would think they would have figured this out in less than a decade, but better late than never. 😊 As I write this, the television news is saying that TPTB in Hawaii are telling people to stock a 14 day supply of food prior to an approaching Hurricane.
Unfortunately for Hawaii, they are a series of islands with logistical challenges reminiscent of Puerto Rico, with a volcano thrown in for good measure.
Three-Day Kit Contents
Throughout the time three-day kits were recommended, I recall seeing lots of advice on what to put in a three-day emergency kit. The advice on the contents varied, but never was the time frame of three days questioned, other than by preppers. The contents recommended were limited, as the time frame was relatively short.
For a three-day kit, what was recommended was not much different than what one might take on a three-day camping trip. The entire kit for one person could go into a modest back pack. Many vendors sold pre-packaged three-day kits, so someone could just buy a small, modestly priced, kit and their preparations in response to the official recommendation were complete. Unfortunately, many of these kits were junk. ☹
I believe the new 14 day recommendation will cause a rethink all around, but it hasn’t happened yet. The new recommendation is just making its way into the public consciousness. Contents need to be higher quality and more durable, capable of being reused. Consumable supplies like food will need to be much more voluminous. You won’t fit a realistic 14 day kit in a three-day backpack.
If you have a three-day bag, consider upgrading. Start with a larger bag. 😊 Add food and water (toilet paper!), then upgrade the quality of items in the bag. Do this for all members of the family capable of carrying a larger bag.
Timeframe
On prepper forums, three days was considered insufficient preparation for TEOTWAWKI, which was the kind of event that conversation focused on. With the “official” recommendation obviously inadequate, I believe continuing to recommend three-day kits, despite disasters where that wasn’t working, gave a push to the whole prepper trend. When official recommendations were so far off the mark in events like Katrina, why listen to anything coming from that source?
This raises the question of whether the new 14 day recommendation is realistic. Preppers, with their focus on very long-term events will almost certainly say it is not. On the other hand, a 14 day kit would have been much more helpful than a three day kit to those caught in any of the 2017 hurricanes, Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
The major question in my mind is whether it will discourage the folks who previously would have set aside a three-day kit from doing anything? If that group moves to the longer kit, with a few deciding not to bother, the overall level of preparations in society will be better. If many of those same people decide that a 14 day kit is more than they can are willing set aside, then conceivably the overall privately held supply situation will be reduced, and supplies will certainly not be located as favorably for the overall population.
Transition
Despite the fact this new recommendation has been out for a little while, I don’t think most of the population is aware of it. The three-day recommendation had been in place for decades. As a result, we now face a transition period as the word gets out and folks adjust.
Fortunately, the folks that matter are limited. Think of the population as being in three groups: Preppers go beyond the recommendations, so their lives are unchanged. The masses haven’t even put together three-day kits, so we can safely assume they won’t put together 14 day kits either. In between are those who follow the government’s advice, and currently have a three-day kit. How long will it take to get them to upgrade, and how many will make the upgrade? I think we will know the answer in about . . . a decade. 😊
Summary
The 14 day kit recommendation is more realistic, and is still doable by the typical non-prepper citizen who wants to listens to official advice on such matters. Serious preppers will still not consider such a bag adequate, but preppers are never going to be limited in our thinking to an amount of time that others will consider realistic. However, the change is worth noting. When you are discussing disaster response with a non-prepper, you can now point to “official” recommendations to have 14 days of supplies, rather than just three days of supplies.
Paranoid Prepper: Evacuations = Bugging Out – Been There, Done That, Here’s What I Learned
I’ve seen some really cruddy 72-hr kits out there. Total junk.
How about an article that spells out exactly what a good base kit for one adult for 14-days?
Salty and I have just been discussing making a kit like this, OkieDokie. We have all the stuff, but not in one easy-grab bag. We’ll publish on it once we figure out what all’s going in. Thanks for the suggestion!
People have been writing about 3 day kits for ages. I am sure once the word gets around there will be plenty of advice on this too. For the moment I am thinking, pretty much the same list as a 3 day kit, but everything must be much higher quality, both lighter and more durable, and a lot more food, water purification, etc.
A backpack works for 3 days’ worth of supplies. Not so much for 14 days’ worth (for the average citizen). The new advice from TPTB presumes ‘sheltering in place’ it would seem?
I agree. I think they assume sheltering in place, or evacuating by car, not backpacking. If you want the kit to be packable, then you probably think in terms of quality, lightweight camping gear.
I for one am not giving up my 3-day kit that I keep in the car. That’s a very useful length for the type of minor disasters I encounter pretty much every year: travel halted by bad weather, car trouble in a remote area where getting service is not immediate, life drama requiring overnight road trip without advance warning. I promote those to people whenever I can; and as everybody ‘gets’ those kinds of needs it doesn’t even throw up ‘prepper!’ flags.
Honestly, neither am I. That kit is really a Get Home Bag (GHB). The 14 day kit is something else. Perhaps all the prepper names for various types of bags, which I have ended to call “BOB”s regardless of use, really need to be talked about separately more than I have been willing to do in the past.
If y’all have a way to get 14 days worth of food in a backpack, please let me know. Freeze dried and or dehydrated won’t add much weight, but they still add bulk. Water is easy with a filter and chemical treatments. The other supplies won’t really change. There is no way to get 14 days worth of clean clothes in a backpack. I keep one set of clothes in the bag, plus the one I’m wearing. Wear one while the other dries, so there is not much change there, except maybe some soap for cleaning. Food, and potentially medicines (for some folks), will be the big issue for a BOB.
It can be done. The Boy Scouts run a camp called Philmont which runs 2-3 week “treks”. Many of these are planned with stops for additional food, but many aren’t. You need a large pack with a frame and should try to equip yourself with lightweight gear. You can then handle the weight of the dehydrated or freeze dried foods, especially if you aren’t going to cover the ground that the scouts do. They are generally covering 12-20 miles per day.
Thanks for the reply. I will admit I have never actually tried to stuff 14 days worth of food in a bag. I guess I will have to give that a try. If anyone has a grocery list, it would be greatly appreciated.
Look for another post in a few weeks.
We’re going to give it a try too. We plan to use a lot of backpacker-type dehydrated foods, as they can all be cooked using just a Kelly Kettle and are actually pretty pleasant to eat and nutritious.
I have a 3 day kit to get me home if I am caught somewhere away from home, 2 bags one for the wife one for me. if you are trying to survive something longer term that’s where your home prepping happens, that is if your not in one of those hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunami, or nuclear event, then you can settle down with your home preps arming up to repel those who haven’t prepped and are seeking easy prey. either way you look at the situation the one prep you need is repentance and prayer to God to protect you till he will takes you home.
While here at 3BY we are definitely pro-2A, I don’t think a whole lot of “arming up” will be necessary for a 14 day event outside of Chicago, but if the event looks to run much longer, I’ll definitely open up the 900lb. jewelry box. 🙂 That sort of problem will take a bit longer to unfold in most places.