The container sounds like a good idea. There are shortcomings, but it would be a very approachable way for many to people to start to think about survival. Even those who are already prepared could benefit from an off-site storage location.

Of course you would need to secure the container, you don’t want it getting washed away or destroyed during a disaster, or robbed!

You would need a way to ensure everyone gets their own stuff back and the container doesn’t get ransacked when it is opened; that makes me think that a community owned and communally stocked container may be more manageable ?

However offering people a $5 bucket to store personal items could be a nice idea – backup the family photos etc and may raise some cash too for the rest of the project ?