Ken has written up a thought provoking article on what's wrong with FEMA's preparedness kit list. Take a look and let the discussion begin:

http://www.onlyknives.com/fema-survival-kit-gone-wrong

I'll go along with the criticism, since the writer seems to admit that list making is Hard, or Tricky Business as he sees it. FEMA faces a host of competing challenges, so anything they produce is a compromise. I do wonder about the 6 lists angle, and would agree, its better to work from an all hazards perspective and maintain a common inventory of emergency supplies in one's kit.

I've had this discussion with sellers of basic emergency kits - why include a flashlight with an incadescent bulb? Why include a battery-operated incadescent bulb flashlight at all? Odds are if you don't use it, the batteries will drain, the bulb may break from simple jiggling in the kit, and the light won't work when you really need it. The answer so far has been cost - incadescent bulbs and battery driven lights are cheap. And if they provide 1 hour of light 50% of the time they're pulled from the kit after a year or more, that's one more hour than a non-prepared person would have. You or I find that minimal and unacceptable, we probably have solar recharged Crees in our kits (or Crees with a good supply of recharegable batteries) - but the battery operated incadescent is a baseline for preparedness. One that I think should be changed, but if you have to factor in a $9-15 flashlight into a $49.95 kit bill of materials, that changes the economics of who will buy the kits and ultimately begin to prepare themselves.

I think the Make a List issue is akin to the same issues that befall outdoor preparedness people, constructing lists of Ten Essentials. Times change, what's essential for one generation is deemed less essential for another - and when a whiz bang technology (usually battery powered) comes along, a contingent emerges to put it on the list. That debate of course is limited by the premise - Ten Essentials. Why Ten? Why not 12, or 14, or 22 as I've seen on at least one Essentials List. How many can even name the 10 Essentials? Is your list the same as taught to today's Boy Scouts, or the Mountaineers? How many can actually name the Ten Commandments for that matter - apart from those who had their catechisms drilled into their backsides as youngsters. My point is we are no more generally aware of what the Essentials are than we are the Commandments for or against Sin, unless someone took an especial interest in our learning them (or their version of them). But I digress -

Have a plan, make a kit - simple instructions. If you have even 20% of the population follow those instructions, you see a tremendous benefit in the event of a disaster, which saves lives and billions of dollars. If you can push up that percentage higher still, more lives and more billions saved - even in the face of the most dire disasters, as we see in Japan. Either way, the actual number of Americans who currently prepare beyond the have a plan, make a kit stage is vanishingly small. You can't show me a more prepared nation than Japan, and still they suffer. Were the US to experience the same disaster, I fear we would suffer more still for our general lack of preparation. But maybe the largest source of casualties and loss will come not from the failure to be prepared (by having a kit, or really comprehensive kits that can sustain your family for a week or more), but from basic decisions on where we live, whether our houses are earth-quake retrofitted, whether we keep heavy or fragile things over our bed steds, whether we are prepared to shut off the gas at the risk of fire, etc. Having at least a malformed FEMA kit - or one of them - might make the difference of life or death in the first hour after a disaster, when turning off one's gas can save your home and your neighbor's too.

The article makes some well reasoned criticisms of the very generic, extremely basic FEMA lists which above all must not arouse (political) controversy. An important point, which cannot be overemphasized, is that your survival supplies and preparations ideally should be tailor made to your circumstances and your capabilities.

It is interesting, in view of recent large scale disasters, how little emphasis there is on community and neighborhood preparation. Perhaps it is the American ethos of rugged individualism. We are all Gary Cooper striding down an empty Main Street, solving problems with decisive individual action. In reality, it may well be your neighbors that will help dig you out from the wreckage.

While the FEMA lists have definite, and well identified deficiencies, they are far better than nothing, which is what most of our fair citizenry possesses. If we could only get q fair fraction of the populace up to the FEMA level, we could set higher, and more useful, standards.

He's got a point about FEMA having too many lists, all in different formats. However, the lists do specify "at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food". Some folks will always go with the minimum; OTOH, my truck kit alone will go four days as it sits right now in the garage.

That said, I mostly agree with what he's saying, real tents vs tube tents, sanitation, camping gear and appropriate tools. That said, Ken should really avoid making knife recommendations. He recommends the Gerber AR 3.0 and Bear Grylls Survival Knife? I think there are many better options even in the Gerber line -- LMF II ASEK Survival Knife

The FEMA lists are good for getting folks thinking, but the lists themselves fall short.

Too many people are living with their heads in the sand with no sense of personal responsibility.

"If I'm not a camper and I expect nothing bad to happen. If anything ever really does happen, the govn't has to take care of me. Why would I buy extra stuff, especially the best of the best, to sit and collect dust?"

The FEMA lists aren't for us. I did start there though. The FEMA lists, like Red Cross, Get Prepared Canada, and most store-bought survival kits, provide a good basic starting point for preparedness. They aren't the be all and end all, but are better than nothing. Even though we ETSers have fun making it that way, preparedness doesn't have to be rocket science. If FEMA makes it too complicated, or if they are viewed as too expensive, the general population won't buy-in. If FEMA could somehow simplfy, and consolidate their lists, more people might buy-into the basics.

To my mind, the other crucial thing that's missing is the next step - an acknowledgment that even though their goal is to get to people within three days, they won't always be able to do that and every citizen needs to be prepared for that. Too many people seem to expect FEMA, the RED CROSS, somebody or anybody to do everything for everyone during an emergency. I'm not sure the FEMA site, Get Prepared Canada or the Red Cross, go far enough to dispell that thinking.

EDIT: Here's our Canadian equivalent: http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx

I think one of the major things that prevents them from listing certain things is to cover their own butts. They also seem to be relying on majorly outdated things with lack of care to update.

I would hazard to guess the vast majority of people have nothing to help them in a crisis. They wait on the government to provide for them, not unlike everday life. They will find countless excuses for not doing "the right thing" and then blame everyone else when something happens to them. Forget the brands the guy mentioned. Think of the concept in total. If some people red the article, go see the list, make a kit, so much the better.

But, I would be willing to bet a shiny nickle that unlike the people on this forum, the vast unwashed have about nothing assembled for an emergency.

"I would hazard to guess the vast majority of people have nothing to help them in a crisis."

Our government has been working toward producing a non-thinking, non-responsible, help-me-help-me population for many years.

Well, now they've got it, they've apparently changed what passes for their minds. The bozos haven't figured out yet that you just can't have it both ways, and you're not going to change them overnight.

Sue

Nobody should know anything above punching keys into Microsoft Office, putting things on shelves or banging out numbers on cash registers <3

Many people believe FEMA's lists are not really ready for prime time:

http://www.fas.org/reallyready/analysis.html

has a lengthy analysis of the many faults. Shrug - everybody has their opinion, and I think it's helpful to have a number of different views on the topic of survival. With some thought, we can pick the items that are appropriate in our personal situations and not end up with a generic kit with snake bite kits and down sleeping bags when we don't live in areas with poisonous snakes and winter weather.

From my point of view, everyone who recommends a survival kit is going to get it wrong for me, since I don't have the problems and needs that the recommender has and visualizes everyone else to have.