Transcript:

Today we going to talk a little bit about 72 hour kits. You might also refer to them as Emergency kits.
I have 3 emergency kits in front of me.  Two of these have been purchased in a store, which you could do.  The third one I made home made.   I'm going to talk about the difference, very briefly.

Right now, as I talk about this, I want you to know that I am talking about kits in general.
This is a very basic kit.  I am going to open this up and talk very briefly about the types of things that you should put in them.
Now refer to the website and I will actually have a list there of the things that you would want to include, if you are going to build your own, as we did in this one.

First of all, this is a kit built for two.  You noticed that everything comes in two.  There are two containers for water.  This is very important, and you should have water in it.  If you decide to put this together on your own, make sure that the containers don't leak.  The worse thing is to have this all moldy and that type of thing...so, that is an important concept.

Number two. In this container there are two separate bags that will be used for any personal hygiene items, which includes an emergency blanket, but it also has your towel, your comb, your toothbrush and all of the things you'll have for an emergency for your personal hygiene.  They have two so that each person has a separate bag.  Then inside they have the materials that you would have for your first aid supplies and the things that would be used as a whole for a group.  So consider that as you are putting together your own or you are purchasing it.

Things that are personnal should be put in separate plastic bags.  Notice that everything is in a ziplock bag.  That keeps things sealed, so that if by chance you have water, if you are outside, which is likely if you are in any type of disaster, that you'll have those available and they'll still be dried.  

And of course, the final thing.  Don't forget your food.  In this case, this particular one, has emergency food rations.  Now these are purchased.  You might also consider Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food. You can purchase these from a number of websites.

Check our Stores and we'll have recommendations to where you should go to purchase these types of things, but these food rations are very healthy. They are built to have the nutrition and the energy that you will need in a disaster type of situation. Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food is lighter and more delicious, in my experience.  

And course finally you have these two flashlights--each person will have one flashlight.  Now these particular ones are somewhat inexpensive, and can be charged by simply shaking them like this.  If you watch our presentation on lighting you'll see that this is one alternative of a flashlight that you can use.

One other thing you'll need to remember when putting an emergency kit together--if you decide to purchase a kit, it will not include your clothing, so go through the website it will talk about the things that you'll need to include. Make sure you'll get your clothing, your hat...things that are important are listed on the website on emergency kit list, so you can add those to your kit.  Make sure that your kit is big enough to include your clothing in there.

That is what is in this particular bag.
If you come over to this one, it will be similar but it will be a little bit larger and it will be a little bit more expensive. I want to show you that there are a number of differnet variety, and I will show a picture of these on the website as well.

Finally, if you choose to make your own.  I am going to personally recommend that you buy it, if you can.
We chose to make our own and it takes a lot of time to track down all of the pieces that you need in it.  As a matter of fact.  I think probably there are some things in this purchased bag that we still don't have because we decided we wanted to get them all on our own. And frankly, I don't think we saved a whole lot of money.

It is important to get an Emergency Kit.  I recommend that you get them.  If you decide to make your own, follow some of the advice about how to package them from what I just talked about.  But go to the website, and it should tell you what you should put into them, because if you already have those, you might as well use what you have.  But, if you don't really have those or if it is part of your camping equipment, don't use that.  Keep that for camping because otherwise you will be pulling them out of your camping pack, and vice versa, and won't have them when you need them.  So I recommend a separate back pack or small pack.  If you have questions please go to the Forum under the category "Community" in the website, if there are things you have concern about, and ask your questions there.