In the event of earthquake or race riot at the office, first I'd have to decide whether to try to get home at all. I might be better off staying in the office til things calmed down.

The stuff about catching park squirrels and pond fish for survival is silly. It takes several days for starvation to even remotely become an issue. By then, if there aren't relief supplies, we have a much bigger problem than just some earthquake or riot. I'd rather go for 2-3 days with no food, than risk poisoning by eating those park squirrels. As for fire starters, I'm much more likely to be trying to get AWAY from a fire than trying to start one. And if I really need to start a fire in a city, I can find someone who's smoking and ask them for a light.

Water is more of an issue but the office has a refrigerator full of soft drinks. If they get warm because the power is out, that's no big deal. You do make a good point in that I should try to remember to take a few cans if I do leave the office in some disaster. Come to think of it, there's usually some junk food there too. Also, the office (as required by OSHA) has a first aid kit on the wall, along with fire extinguishers. If I can't get the office soft drinks and there's rioting outside, the rioters may be looting the stores for jewelry and consumer electronics, but they'll probably leave the bottled water alone.

Knife and flashlight: they're on my keychain (Spyderco Jester and matching Photon II, and sometimes an Arc AAA). Even without the flashlight, the screen of my cell phone gives off enough light for walking around once I'm dark adapted (it still lights even if the phone service is out).

Shoes and stuff: yes I wear comfortable shoes (hiking boots actually) almost all the time. Fortunately I don't work in a suit-and-tie environment. In cold weather the most important thing is probably warm clothing, and I do usually have plenty of that. In fact sometimes I have a sleeping bag at the office for those occasional all-nighter deadline crunches.

I just don't imagine needing any of the stuff like signal mirrors and spark wheels that's in a typical outdoor survival kit.

Remember that if I'm trying to do my absolute utmost to survive every fantasized contingency, my best bet is to move out of the city and into a fully equipped underground bunker and never venture outside. I take a calculated risk by going to work at all. The idea of a PSK is to have options in scenarios that are actually plausible. I might be able to concoct some imagined urban disaster where the stuff in (say) the ETS PSK might have helped someone, but I don't know of any real-life urban disasters that have actually happened, where it would have had much chance of helping.

Finally we'e left with the gadget appeal. There's nothing wrong with that (i have dozens of flashlights for basically that reason), but we should not confuse it with practicality.