I would have to look up what the formal weapons policy is for the Red Cross, but mostly its guns and knives, and those are 99% of the weapons encountered at registration. Other forms of weaponry is rightly in the eye of the beholder and a practical decision is made - if a person came in carrying a scythe or a sickle, you'd probably ask him to keep them in their car. I imagine we'd do the same for pepper spray as well. Like the TSA, a Leatherman with an edged blade option would probably be prohibited as well. Like I said, we deal with practicalities, and no weapons means nothing that can be used to harm another shelter client or yourself.

To me, entering a shelter to sleep is highly situational. I travel a lot domestically and internationally, and I don't pretend I can make it home from Munich to Seattle in a short period, short of an embassy evacuation; or from St Louis for that matter. My resources are occasionally more scarce than I want them to be. My best bet is to exploit my employer resources, which are pretty darn good in terms of getting me out of strange places. But I don't worry about entering a shelter either, maybe because I've run enough of them to know what to expect. Shelters are populated by the community of people displaced by a disaster, and they bring every bit of character and problems in with them. At one end there are alcoholics and drug addicts, people with mental health issues. There are a lot of good people who are thoroughly displaced, with no place else to go. We see a lot of families and elderly, and people with functional needs that must be addressed. We see a fair number from immigrant populations as well, because despite having friends and family, they lack the resources for self-sufficiency due to poverty. Poverty is a great equalizer no matter where you're from or who you know. Bottom line, everyone deserves shelter, that what the Red Cross does - you can be denied shelter or services only if you act out and violate the rules. And most often I see that as the rare exception.

Even if you never would sleep in a shelter, I would consider it as a preparedness resource - Red Cross distributes food and water and showers and laundry and counseling and communication beyond the scope of the disaster and all sorts of stuff, both to those in the shelter and also to those who would never step foot inside. Don't rule them out - you never know when you may be in the path of the tornado.

Always having family and friends to bond together with to ride out a disaster aftermath is a worthy goal for everyone on this list, because it seems to be an order of magnitude more difficult on your own.