What goes in a go-bag
Build one bag per person. The live go-bag checklist is 29 items for one person: 3 liters of water, a backpacking filter, 6,000 ready-to-eat calories, and the small kit that covers 72 hours away from home. Check items off there. This page is why those things are in the bag.
The home 3-day checklist is jugs in a closet and a heater you cannot carry. How we calculate quantities builds the go-bag for one person, not for the whole house. Same FEMA and Red Cross starting numbers, packed so you can walk.
Water and food you can lift
A family of four stores 12 gallons for three days, or 18 in the heat. That math is on how much water to store. You cannot carry those jugs. The bag holds 3 liters in bottles or a bladder, plus a backpacking filter. Carry weight caps water. The filter covers the rest.
Food in the bag is 6,000 ready-to-eat calories, about 2,000 a day for three days. Bars, pouches, MREs. If it needs a pot, it belongs at home.
Meds, light, and a few odd tools
Pack a compact first aid kit and seven days of your own pills. That kit is the thing people leave on the bathroom shelf.
Potassium iodide (KI) is a 14-tablet course. It only helps after a specific public-health order about radiation, and it only helps if it is already packed. It does nothing for weather. We are not writing a dosing chart.
A USB power bank keeps the phone alive. A headlamp with spare batteries keeps your hands free. Three blasts on a whistle means distress. Printed maps and written rally points still work when the phone is dead. A compact hand-crank NOAA radio is how you hear official broadcasts without a cell tower.
Two mylar blankets and a rain poncho weigh almost nothing. Pack a change of clothes and walking shoes that are already broken in, and swap that set each season, because new boots will wreck your feet.
A 4-way sillcock key opens the spigots on the side of a strip mall. Document copies and $100 or more in small bills go in one adult's bag, with the radio and the maps. Copies only; originals stay home. Adults can carry compact pepper spray. A pocket survival guide, a thin SAS edition or laminated cards, weighs ounces.
Fit a 30 to 45 liter pack to each person, including kids. A kid cannot wear your 45 liter hiking bag.
Shared gear stays in one adult bag
The 29-item list is the contents of one bag. Documents, cash, the radio, and maps go in one adult's bag so you are not carrying four radios. Everyone else still gets their own water, food, meds, light, and clothes.
Some people keep a smaller get-home bag at work: shoes, water, a snack, a charger. Same idea, fewer items. That is not a second checklist on this site.
When you would grab it
A Gulf Coast hurricane is often a leave-by-car. Extra household water can ride in the trunk. The backpack still holds the 3 liters and the filter.
A California wildfire can give you an hour. Stage the bags by the door in fire season. The N95s in the list are for smoke.
In the Pacific Northwest, a tsunami warning means you walk uphill now, with the same 29 items and no extra gallons you cannot carry.
FEMA (opens in a new tab) and the Red Cross (opens in a new tab) both publish kit lists in this range. The Red Cross splits a go-kit you carry from a stay-at-home kit. That is the split we use.
When you are ready to check boxes, use the go-bag checklist.