Gear-Ready Emergency Checklist

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Live public data from the National Weather Service and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, refreshed every 10 minutes. When a warning is posted for your area, this is the kit to have within reach.

Print it: Gear-Ready Emergency Checklist (PDF, v1.0 — October 30, 2026) — free direct download, no sign-up. Print it and put it inside a cupboard door.

Scenario version: Get-Home Bag Checklist: The Car Bag — also as a printable PDF (v1.0 — October 30, 2026).

A prepared house runs on gear you can put your hands on. When the power is out for the third day — or the word comes down to leave — what matters is light you can wear, a way to make fire and boil water, something dry to sleep under, and a bag you can actually carry. This page is the check for all of it: one list, in roughly the order you would reach for things.

Pick how many people you are gearing for and the amounts below adjust. Tick off what is already in the house — most of it will be, scattered across drawers and the garage. Whatever stays unticked is the short list, and most of the short list is cheap. Run the check once a season: readiness rots quietly in the dark between checks.

Emergency gear laid out on a wooden table outdoors: a headlamp, a folded tarp, a backpack, a two-way radio, a ferro rod with paracord, and a steel water bottle.

Gearing for

0 of 39 sortedStart with light — everything else on this list gets done after dark at least once.

Light

One light per person, worn on the head. A single flashlight shared by a whole household is how batteries die — and tempers go with them.

Headlamp for every person 2 headlampsHands free for cooking, carrying, and finding the breaker panel in the dark. Our headlamps compared scores four of them on specs, price, and owner feedback.
A lantern for the room or the tentOne soft, steady light for the space everyone is living in — cooking, cards, and calming people down. It does more for morale than any gadget on this page.
Spare batteries — one full swap for every lightStored with the lights in a labeled bag, with the purchase date on it. Standardize on one battery family across your lights where you can, so the spares stay simple.
A flashlight that lives in the go-bagSeparate from the house lights, so leaving never means un-clipping the headlamp you wear at home. Check what your lights really deliver with the Headlamp Reality Check.

Choosing lights? The Lights hub covers output, runtime, and battery sense in full — and if the light has to work in the woods too, the hunting headlamp comparison weighs the red and green modes most roundups skip.

Fire & cooking

Fire is heat, hot food, and boiled water from one skill. Carry two ways to make it — the night you need it is not the night to learn the second one.

Two ways to start a fireA lighter plus a ferro rod, kept together in a dry bag. Lighters run dry and sulk in the cold; a ferro rod does neither, but it asks for practice on a calm weekend first.
Dry tinder you packed yourselfCotton balls worked with petroleum jelly, in a sealed bag. Wet wood is the usual case, not the unlucky one.
A stove that needs no gridCanister, alcohol, or twig — plus enough fuel to boil water twice a day for three days.
One pot for the group, a cup and spoon each 2 setsMetal, so the cup can sit on the fire you just made. Plastic melts into a story you tell later.

The Fire & Cooking hub is where the stove and ferro-rod comparisons live as they publish.

Shelter & sleep

You don’t need a tent to sleep dry. You need a roof layer, a warm layer, and something between you and the ground.

A tarp big enough for your groupSize it before you need it: the Tarp Size & Cordage Calculator turns people and pitch into a tarp size and the cord to hang it with.
Cordage to pitch itFifty feet of paracord, coiled and kept with the tarp. A tarp without cord is a blanket with ambitions.
A sleep setup for every person 2 sleep setupsA bag or blankets rated for colder than your worst night, not your average one. The Sleep System Temperature Calculator shows what a printed rating really means with your pad counted.
Insulation from the ground 2 padsA pad, or folded blankets if that is what the house has. The ground steals more heat than the air does — this is the layer people skip and regret at 3 a.m.

Safety & communication

When the phones have no signal, information and a way to reach each other are gear, not apps.

A battery or hand-crank weather radioNOAA broadcasts keep running when cell towers don’t. Tune it to your local station today, while checking is easy.
Two-way radios for the householdA pair covers the house and the car; one per adult covers more. Buy FCC-certified GMRS radios — certification is what makes a radio a legal GMRS radio — and know the license: $35, no test, covers your immediate family for ten years. Box range numbers are a best-day story; the Two-Way Radio Reality Check runs your terrain instead.
A power bank and the cables that fit your phones 10,000 mAh or moreCharged, stored with its cables, topped off every few months. The good cable always migrates to the car at the worst moment; this one doesn’t.
A paper map and a written contact listOne out-of-town contact the whole household calls — local lines jam, a text two states away gets through. Paper works at zero percent battery.
A whistle in every bag 2 whistlesThree blasts is the oldest distress signal there is, and it carries farther than a tired voice.

The Safety & Communication hub goes deeper on certification, licensing, and honest range.

Packs & bags — if you have to leave

The section this site exists for. A bag per person, packed now, at a weight that person can carry for miles — not just across the driveway.

A packed bag for every person 2 bags packedClothes, water, food, light, and the small comfort item that matters to each kid, already in it. Our bug-out bag comparison scores four bags on specs, price, and owner feedback.
The loaded weight, checked on a scaleWeigh it, don’t guess it: the Bug-Out Bag Weight Checker puts the total against body weight — the number that decides how far the bag really goes.
A change of clothes in each bag — dry socks above allSocks first. Dry socks are morale you can pack.
Sturdy shoes by the bedDebris and broken glass are not barefoot-friendly, on any night of the year.
Plan for petsCarriers where you can reach them fast, a spare leash in the bag, and three days of their food packed next to yours. They’re part of the family — the plan isn’t finished until they’re in it.
The car above half a tank in storm seasonStations can’t pump without power, and the lines form before the storm, not after. Half a tank is a habit, not a purchase.

Sizing and fit live in the Packs & Bags hub.

Knives & tools

One good blade and a pocketful of repair basics fix most of what breaks away from home.

A fixed-blade knife in the kitThe tool that gets used for food, fire, and shelter inside the same hour. Our Garberg vs ESEE-4 head-to-head pits two kit standards against each other, and the fixed-blade comparison scores six more.
A multi-tool or a folding sawThe one you’ll reach for daily at camp, not once in a crisis.
Repair basics: duct tape, zip ties, safety pinsDuct tape wrapped flat around an old card takes no room and patches tarps, packs, and plans.
Work glovesBroken glass, splintered wood, hot pots. Your hands are the main tools you own — glove them.

The Knives & Tools hub covers steels, sheaths, and what owners break first.

Water — carrying and treating

Stored water covers the stay-put days. This section is water you can carry, and water you can make safe anywhere.

Stored water at home 6 gallonsOne gallon per person per day for three days, per Ready.gov — drinking first, a little for cooking. Jugs live somewhere cool and out of sunlight, with the month and year written on the cap.
A filled bottle in every bag 2 filled bottlesThe first day’s water rides with you, not in the trunk.
A filter or treatment you can carryA squeeze filter or treatment tablets turns a creek or a questionable tap into a refill instead of a problem.
A collapsible container for campFills at the source, folds away empty. Hauling water in a cook pot gets old by the second trip.

Food — the carry-weight kind

Bag food is a weight problem in a menu costume: calories per ounce, no fridge, and nothing that needs a kitchen.

Three days of food per person 18 mealsFood you already eat, that opens cold: bars, pouches, pull-tab cans. Rotate it through normal meals so nothing ages out forgotten in the bag.
Calorie-dense bars in every bag 6 barsA day of bars per bag at minimum — the layer that still works if the main food stays home.
Electrolyte drink mixSweat and stress spend salts. A few packets weigh nothing and keep the headache away.
A manual can opener, if your cans need onePull tabs need nothing. Everything else needs this — and the electric one is furniture right now.

Health — the basics

Small problems stay small when you can clean them, cover them, and close them. This is the obvious kit, not a medic’s bag.

A basic first aid kitBandages, gauze, antiseptic, medical tape, tweezers. Cuts from working by headlamp are the usual case.
A few days’ buffer of any prescription you rely onKept in its labeled bottles and rotated like food. Ask your pharmacist how to build the buffer — many will help ahead of a forecast storm.
Backup glasses or contactsA spare pair in the kit. Not being able to see turns every other line on this list into guesswork.
Soap, hand sanitizer, and wipesClean hands before eating, and after everything else. The cheapest health item on the page.

Run it again each season

Gear checks rot quietly: batteries fade, food ages out, and kids outgrow the bag that was packed for them. Run this list when the clocks change — swap the stored water, eat the oldest bag food into normal meals, top off the power bank, re-tick. Fifteen minutes twice a year is the whole maintenance plan. And when a checkmark says you own something but not whether you own enough of it, three sections have their own math on this site: the bag weight checker, the tarp sizer, and the radio reality check.

Questions people ask

How is this different from a bug-out bag list? A bug-out bag is one section of this list — the leaving part. Most bad weeks are stay-put weeks: the power is out, the water is off, the roads are closed, and the gear that matters is the light, fire, and sleep gear already in the house. This check covers both kinds of week.

Do I have to buy all of this? No — tick first. Most households already own the majority of it, scattered across drawers, closets, and the garage. The list’s job is finding what’s missing, and what’s missing is usually cheap: batteries, cordage, a can opener, a whistle.

Where do the amounts come from? The quantities follow the public guidance at Ready.gov and in FEMA’s preparedness publications — a gallon of water per person per day, a several-day food supply, a few days’ buffer on prescriptions where you can manage it. Those agencies publish their guidance for anyone to use.

Three picks that anchor this list

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