My mind goes back to ~2007 when I first searched on preparedness and hit on Doug Ritter's site, and his approach to lists was as thorough as it was informative. I built my first organized supplies (car, home, office etc) based on his lists. Worth a read now if you haven't in a while. But Doug's lists have explanations for many of the items - an element of education - which is not typical on many other lists. I think that FEMA authors fear the average reader's eyes may glaze over by page 2, or may only succeed in collecting the first page's contents, and never get to other of life's necessities (water, first aid etc). And maybe so, we're in the age of FaceBook and twitter where the thought process is sub-haiku, just 144 characters.

Also I think Doug's treatment of firearms in kits is logical and reasonable and pretty much settles the issue for me.