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5 Emergency Items to You Should ALWAYS Have on Hand
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May 21, 2024
When it comes to Emergency Preparedness, everyone has their list of preferred supplies. But how do you narrow down the essentials to just 5 items? In this video, we'll talk about 5 items I always have near me so they'll be available in an emergency. Here's my updated Leatherman recommendation for everyday carry. It's a little longer but an upgrade in a lot of ways. https://amzn.to/3OW2Cxy Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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0:00
You know it's tough to make a list of the most important survival items or the most
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important preparedness items for emergencies and to limit the list to only five is extremely difficult
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I sat down with some, um, some friends and just kind of talked through this to figure
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out what do we all think was the most important stuff and I think I've come up with a pretty
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decent list. These are five things that you should definitely always have on hand
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That means like available to you, not just in your home, not just, but like you could
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get to them pretty quickly no matter where you are. So you might have one of these in a few different places, your place of work, you might have
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one of these in your car, you might have one of these at your home, places that you're going to be
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For me, my car is a pretty good place for most things because it's usually with me
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I'm going to, I'm going to be in my car most places that I go, but that's because of the
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lifestyle I live and where I live. People are spread out, people are suburban, so you drive pretty much everywhere
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But I don't necessarily always drive to work because it's pretty close. So keeping one of these in my office is also not a bad idea
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So here are the five things that you should always have on hand in case of an emergency
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Now I want to note one thing real quick. There are a lot of different kinds of emergencies and depending on the kind of emergency, there
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are a lot of other things you're going to want to potentially have on hand
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In this case, I wanted to come up with a list that would be universally important, but also
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important for in the case you need to leave, you need to evacuate wherever you are
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So you need to quickly get out of the area. Because of that, some of the things on this list are not the kinds of things you would
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need for, let's say you had a power outage and it was a temporary type of emergency situation
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but you could get home, right? This is if you needed to be able to pick up and leave and take these things with you
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For the first item, I wanted to go to most fundamental necessity and that is water
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We need to be able to have water no matter what we do. Now, does that mean we need to store water bottles in our car
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That's not a bad idea, but you're not necessarily going to be able to have a bunch of water
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bottles at your office and in a situation that you're not able to just quickly fill
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up a water container. I highly recommend that you have a way to be able to store water and a way to be able
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to clean water. This here is actually made by LifeStraw. It's upside down
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This is a LifeStraw. It's basically just a big bladder, right? Just like a lot of other types that we would have, but then with it is this tubing, the
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hose, essentially kind of like a LifeStraw, big filter on the end
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I use this when I go camping in a place that doesn't have potable water readily available
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so I can literally just go down to ... In fact, the last time I went, I took this down
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to the river, got out on a little rock, filled it up in a matter of seconds, you kind of
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roll it over and then you can clip it shut. You can hang it up
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You can do whatever you want with it. I can put it in a backpack. I did that and use it as a camelback for the rest of my ... For actually a whole day hike
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The suction on it, you have to suck a bit harder than you'd have to if it were just
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a regular camelback because you got to get it through the filter, but it's kind of like
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sucking through a LifeStraw. It's not too bad. This might seem kind of silly to kind of have with you all the time
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It seems kind of bulky, but the reality is I could roll it all up and it doesn't take
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up a lot of space. I could easily keep one of these in my car
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I could easily keep one of these maybe in my desk at work, and then if some sort of
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emergency did happen and I needed to be able to get out quickly, I could just grab it and
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take it with me. If you had a chance, you could fill it with water and maybe you don't need to have that
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water filtered, but it stores a whole gallon, which is great, depending on who you talk
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to, a couple of days worth of water to drink. So it's a fantastic way to go
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If that seems like a little bit much or you can't have one of these in every place, some
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at home, some in your car, some at your office, I'm definitely a fan of the LifeStraw straw itself
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I actually have a bunch of these. I buy the four packs at Costco. They have five packs on Amazon
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I have at least one in my car. I have several at home in like 72 hour emergency kits and I have one in my office
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And so no matter what happens, I could easily filter water if I needed to, but that doesn't
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help me with the whole carrying it with me situation. So I'm definitely going to want one of these
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Now as another little caveat, it's handy to always have something you could carry things in
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I have a backpack I like to use. I carry camera gear in it. I carry a laptop in it
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And then if an emergency happened, I might dump all that stuff out and throw these things
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into it. That way I could easily carry a whole gallon of water with me no matter where I go
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Now I'm not stuck on just the LifeStraw brand. Sawyer has this one that's very similar to that LifeStraw
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I just showed you it's got their filter on the end of it. Works great too
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The bag, it's this plasticky material, whereas the LifeStraw is, I mean it's like a nylon
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or something, but it's just a little bit more substantial and the inside is lined with a
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waterproof material. So kind of like this for the bag itself, but for filtration purposes and stuff, they're
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both awesome. Don't really care which one you choose to use. The second thing that I'm always going to have available with me, no matter what I do
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is some kind of food. I've heard people ask this question a lot. What should I have with me that I could store maybe in my car so it can get hot, it can
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get cold, and not just get ruined? And a lot of people recommended emergency ration bars
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Those I don't have a problem with from a survival standpoint. Maybe they do cover your nutrition a little bit better and give you enough calories if
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you can stomach it all. But in a recent video, I actually spent a whole week eating only ration bars
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And I'll tell you what, by the end of the first day, I was more than sick of them. Some are better than others
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If you've just bought a bunch to have on hand and you've never tried them, I recommend trying
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them and determine if that's something that you could actually eat for a whole day's worth
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of calories. What I prefer to do is have types of food that one, are easy to carry around, that last
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a long time, can handle the temperature swing so it could stay in my car or be in my office
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but that I actually enjoy eating. You know what? Some beef jerky
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That's just cheap, great value beef jerky. This thing's got a shelf life of at least a couple of years
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The best if used by date is still more than a year out. And I've been eating on this one for a while now
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Another really good thing to have on hand, I do like freeze dried food
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It's great. I like to keep some freeze dried fruit. A lot of people kind of miss that in their diet when they're planning for emergency stuff
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But freeze dried strawberries, pineapples, like candy, I gotta tell you, coconuts good
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Just freeze dried fruit is a great one. Keeping that in a Mylar bag as well
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And again, keep some in your car, keep some in your office. If an emergency happens, just grab it and go
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Maybe have a little food bag. Another fantastic one to make sure you get kind of lots of quick energy calories is hard candies
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Jolly Ranchers are one of my favorites. They're, it can be a great way if you are having to survive on like emergency rations
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especially, or if you're just kind of like eating some of the same stuff over and over
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and over again, and your body craves something a little bit tastier
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It's a nice treat, but it also packs a whole bunch of energy into just a little bit of space
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You can just suck on it for a while and it will give you that kind of ongoing energy
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and tastes good. So hard candies, Jolly Ranchers are a favorite of mine
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It's a great thing to have on hand. Okay, two down. The next one, this is basically always in my pocket
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I would say a knife or a multi-tool. I definitely prefer a multi-tool to just a pocket knife because there are a lot of
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times where I tell you what, the pliers come in extremely handy
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I've used the screwdriver so many times, even the scissors. That's a can opener that, by the way, if you don't know how to use one of these can openers
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you should learn. They're really handy. They're on like all these different multi-tools and a lot of people have no idea how to use
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one, but even the scissors can be pretty handy. Make sure you keep it all sharpened and good and ready to use
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But this thing's in my pocket and I basically use it every single day. This is the Leatherman Juice S2
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I can't even give you a link to go buy one of these for yourself because it's a discontinued
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product unfortunately, which is really sad. What I like about it is its size
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It fits just perfectly in that sort of fifth pocket in your jeans
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So it's not kind of mixed in with all my keys and stuff down below in my pocket
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So I love the size of it, but it still has the full pliers and really all the tools I
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use on most Leathermans without the ones I don't really use very often
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So it's a good one. I'm going to have to look for a replacement
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If I find a good comparable Leatherman that's similar in size, I'll link to it in the description below
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In fact, I'll link to really all of these products that I've tested and personally used. The next thing I like to keep on hand is some sort of lighter or fire starter
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Now I'm kind of old school. I think it's important to have the skills to be able to start a fire
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I'd love to keep a flint. I can use this flint with like any knife or whatever, even with the multi-tool
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Now I'll usually use the back of like a fixed knife blade
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That's obviously not going to work with this. If I use the front, I'm going to really dull the blade really fast
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I tried this out a little bit ago. I just took the pliers. I don't usually do this because I usually use my like a fixed blade knife and just use
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the back of it. But I just literally took the, you know, rough part of the plier and put it on here and I
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just went and I got the biggest spark I have ever had on a flint
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Now you'll notice that this is like really big. Probably I've never bought a flint and steel set with a flint that big
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The bigger, the longer, first of all, the better because you get more contact for more
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time and you can get a much bigger spark. Also the bigger around, again, the more contact you can make at any point in time
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So you can just get a really, really nice solid spark. You can sit there with a tiny little flint and just go at it and go at it and go at it
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and get sparks every single time and really struggle to start a fire
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Whereas when you're able to get much bigger sparks, you can really throw them a lot farther
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and they're a lot hotter and they burn longer. But I actually do recommend having some sort of a lighter, whether that's a regular standard
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lighter fluid, lighter, a little Bic lighter, something like that, or a Zippo
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I got one of these. This is electric and you're going to see in a second why I'm okay with this also being
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my emergency lighter. This one came with a little whistle too. It's this one on Amazon
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But it's electric and it creates a little arc. There's not a big flame or anything
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It's just a little electric arc right there. But it's super hot, it lights fires really well
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I don't even know how many hundreds of times you can light it before the battery runs out
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It does also have a little built in flashlight, which I guess is kind of cool
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There's your flashlight right there. You'll notice flashlight hasn't been on this list so far and that's just because honestly
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like everything has a flashlight in it so far. You've got things like this that add a flashlight to it, right
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Most of us have, here's mine. Most of us have a cell phone, right
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Cell phone, it's got a flashlight in it. Nice. And it works pretty well
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So for an emergency situation, if I had to pick five items, flashlight's probably not
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one of my top five, although I love a good headlamp. And so in an emergency like go bag, absolutely going to have that
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So there's kind of an assumption built into this list too, that you may have a smartphone
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Now I know in a lot of emergencies we can't trust that the cell network's going to work, right
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We may not want it to for one reason or another, right? But I like to have access to maps and I like to have access to information
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I have apps on here that have all sorts of survival information stored on the phone
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So even if there's no network, it doesn't need to be able to access the internet for me to get access to all that information
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More than I can just keep on hand in my head, which is pretty cool
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Likewise, I have maps on Google Maps. You can save an area to your phone so that you can get detailed maps of the city that
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you live in or cities that you're traveling to. For the mountains, I use Onyx
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That's an app that I can use for hiking, hunting, trail riding, that kind of stuff
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And I can save maps. And so areas that I go to, I save the big area on kind of a low definition map, right
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And then if there's specific areas I use a lot, I'll zoom way in and save those maps
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so I can get all the detail. I can get topographical information. I can save waypoints, all sorts of stuff
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So all of that I have on my phone. And so I didn't include this as one of the survival items because I'm assuming it's probably
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just going to be in your pocket. But what happens when your phone suddenly dies
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For that reason, and because we assumed the phone would be a tool that a lot of us would
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have, I included a portable battery bank. Now this one in particular, and there are lots of others like it, is more than just
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the battery bank. It does have a little bit of a flashlight on the back, but more than that is it has
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built in actually not just one, but four solar panels. And because of that, I can keep it charged no matter what's going on, which is pretty cool
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I guess as long as there's sunshine. So during the day, I can hang it on the back of a backpack and just let it soak up the
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sun while I'm walking along. I can set it out if I'm in a location where I'm stopped
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I can set it out and let it charge. And so it'll allow me to keep my phone and my lighter charged at least enough for me
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to continue to have good access to the information that I need
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Now if there's an emergency, there's no network, I'm probably going to put my phone in airplane
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mode, just to make sure that it doesn't waste its battery searching for a network
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But with that being the case and just not using it more than I need to, this is going
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to be more than enough to keep that and the lighter completely charged, making sure that
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I'm able to start a fire to keep myself warm and making sure that I'm able to get access
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to maps and other important information. So my question for you, what's on your list
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What would be the top five most important things that you think you should have on hand
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for an emergency and different types of emergencies? I'd love to hear the details from you
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Where you live, what are the types of emergencies you face, and so how does your list differ from mine
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What did I miss? Comment below. Tell me what would you change about this list
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And I hope to see you in the next video here on Pranty Preparedness
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