First Steps
What The Guide Says
By opening this guide, you have already begun your journey to being prepared. Well done!
Finding a safe place for it, where it won't be forgotten is an excellent first step.
Following reading this, you might like to begin by discussing it with your family or whoever you live with. If you live alone, discuss it with your friends or neighbours. Whether you live with others or on your own, begin by creating your household emergency plan
The central pages of this handbook can be filled in and torn out, so that you can pin them up somewhere easily visible to everyone during an emergency. Make sure everyone knows the plan for your household and knows where to find the plan.
The contents of this handbook have been written in order of priority, in particular, you should start by thinking about water.
If you do one thing to prepare yourself for a crisis, it should be to create a store of at least three days of safe drinking water.
See the following section on water (pages 9-10)[*1] for more detail on this. Storing water can seem daunting, as it takes up a lot of space, but we have advice to help you see how this can be done cheaply and using minimal space. Following this you can turn your attention to food and other things that will help you feel safe, comfortable and ready to weather any storm.
A common survival rule, the "rule of three," says a person can survive:
- 3 minutes without oxygen
- 3 hours without shelter
- 3 days without water
- 3 weeks without food
However, hold your breath for a moment and think about this. You will start feeling pretty desperate for a breath long before three minutes are up. These survival timeframes are based on life-or-death, but discomfort and weakness kicks in long before these 'threes' are up.
The advice in this guide is intended to help you get ahead of these timeframes, so that you are feeling strong and capable to fend for yourself and others in case of limited or interrupted access to these basic needs.
Survival experts give us tried-and-tested rules for survival, such as the core four.
The core four represents your top four survival priorities:
SHELTER, WATER, FIRE and FOOD
As this guide is intended for household use, not for outdoor survival situations, shelter is an assumed given. Therefore, our next priorities are water, fire and food - however! Take 'fire' here to mean light. The last thing you want to create in your home at any time, let alone a time of emergency, is fire! What you need in your home is a source of light.
Do not use candles during a power cut, they are a fire hazard. Use torches and battery-powered lights instead.
Ensure you have a torch and batteries ready in an easy-to-access place in case of power outage. Camping lights are also a good idea (make sure they are battery and/or solar powered).
To summarise, your first three steps are:
- Complete your household emergency plan
- Get a supply of drinking water (see water pages for more info)
- Get a torch, batteries and camping lights - keep them together with this handbook somewhere easy to access in the dark
Rationale, background and more
Whilst tedious and possibly difficult to arrange, until you have experienced living with restricted water availability it's hard to comprehend how serious this is. There's a great temptation to stock up on other things because water seems so mundane but every serious preparedness guide emphasises how important water is and how bad things will be if you run dry.
The "rule of threes" is commonly quoted in multiple survival guides. Whilst many of those may be of doubtful provenance The Wilderness Medical Society[1] takes the concept and makes it more general, whilst Wikipedia provides nuanced discussion on the subject[2].
Many guides talk about candles as sources of light and they seem easy and appealing. The fire hazard they present makes them a poor choice in many circumstances.
It is also worth noting that whilst the popular imagination tends to see hand-held 'flashlight' devices as an obvious choice, seasoned outdoor types tend to prefer a head torch as it points where you look and keeps your hands free. You may prefer to copy their approach.
References
- ^ The Wilderness Medical Society survival rule of threes
- ^ Wikipedia entry on survival rule of threes
Footnote
- ^ Actually pages 8/9