I think you bring up an interesting problem PC2K.
I find a lot of people think about emergency preparations in terms of the whole "End Of The World As We Know It" situation.
But real world emergencies are more likely to be accidents that result from a chain of small events.

I try to get people to think about being prepared for the little emergencies.
Stuff like getting a bad cut at work, having a flat tire on a seldom traveled road, and all that kind of stuff.
It seems like a good place to start people off and if you can get the attitude about being prepared at that level it becomes easy to expand it to cover having a weeks groceries, water and a way to cook food in case the power goes out and other preparations for larger emergencies.

One thing I have seen are schools getting the children to do inventories on their own homes. They look for things like escape routes if there is a fire, muster points where they go to if they have to evacuate, first aid kits, first aid training.
The school also taught them how to do a hazard assessment as part of it.
The odd part of doing this was that the parents learned from their children because it was a homework assignment the children needed help with to complete.