The American Red Cross, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA all recommend that we prepare survival kits for our homes to weather the storm in the event of a disaster.
They’re not just whistling Dixie here folks, they’re telling you right now that emergency preparedness is something you really need to be thinking about.
Do they know something we don’t? Yes, they know that in the event of a major disaster you CAN NOT EXPECT HELP from the government for at least 3 days or 72 hours.
The possibility of a disaster is something most people don’t want to think about. Many don’t believe bad things can happen to them. To some, the thought of creating an emergency preparedness(AKA prepping) plan can be a daunting task.
Creating a plan doesn’t have to be a major task, and gearing up doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Take baby steps, start small and go from there. The important thing is to get started today. These low-cost items are by no means all you’ll need to weather the storm, they are however a low-cost ticket into the prepping game.
Basic Shelter
1.Emergency Fire Starter
When you find yourself up poop creek with wet matches and a dry Bic, you’re not going to freeze, in addition to your other basic shelter equipment, you’re coming 
prepared with one of the most primitive forms of fire creation known to man, flint and steel in the form of an emergency fire starter. This thing never gets wet and it never runs out of fluid and can save your hide. Your fire starter does ask one favor of you. It wants you to take it out of the package and practice with it.
Your fire starter and other gear for that matter know they’re worthless to you unless you train with them. That’s the reason I won’t like my grill with anything other than this little baby. An unused skill is a wasted skill.
2. Relfective Emergency Tube Tent Shelter
A reflective emergency tube tent isn’t my first choice for shelter but in an emergency, it sure as heck beat nothing. Combined with your paracord (I actually prefer the para-cords to the rope the tent comes with) a quick visible shelter can be erected in no time.
3.Rothco 550 Paracord
What can you do with paracord? Hell, what can’t you do with it? 550 cord. Paracord can be used to create bows and other primitive weapons, build or reinforce a shelter
or raft or first aid tourniquets. There are more than 101 uses for this must-have low-cost survival item.
550 paracord or parachute cord is nothing more than a lightweight rope that was used to suspend parachutes. This rope consists of a nylon sheath over 7 interwoven strands. The 550 refers to the amount of weight the cord will hold before breaking. While strong as all get out, this cord isn’t meant for climbing
What is a Mylar Thermal Blanket or NASA Space Blanket is a very flexible piece of plastic with a reflective coating applied, this coating allows your thermal blanket to hold in valuable heat that would simply radiate away from your body.
An emergency blanket can be used as a personal body wrap or to wrap around someone who has gone into shock due to a traumatic injury. A space blanket can also be used to create a shelter that reflects more heat in that it allows to exit.
The space blanket was just one of many life enhancing items we received from our space program. On average, for each R&D dollar invested in NASA produced nearly a seven dollar return.
Water
Depending on who you talk to, clean drinking water and the ability to acquire it come before everything else including shelter. Without a potable or drinkable source of 
water, it’s game over. You can go without food for quite some time but you’re toast in about 3 days without water.
How to treat water? There are several ways to treat water, boiling, of course, is first in my mind (see how important that fire starter can be?) however my friend, their ways of water purification available to the modern prepper beyond the flames
5.Potable Aqua Water Treatment Tablets
Water purification tablets have been with us for quite some time, these low-cost pills turn once crappy tasting dangerous to drink water into crappy-tasting safe drinking water. Let’s face it, this is a survival situation, taste isn’t everything, and keeping hydrated is.
Potable Aqua Water Treatment Tablets are probably one of the easiest ways to clean water. Simply drop a couple of tabs into your newly found water source, the tablet which contains iodine dissolve to create safe drinking water.
6.Seychelles Pure Water Straw Advanced
A modern means of water purification can be had through “water straws.” These water straws are basically a tube with some sort of water filter media inside. These straws can be used to drink directly from a water source such as a creek, rain barrel or anywhere else you’ll find water that won’t wash you away. These filter straws unfortunately don’t work with salt water.
The added benefit of the Seychelles Advanced Pure Water Straw is the handy key chain clip allowing you to carry a filter everywhere your keys go. This can come in handy in emergencies for some reason don’t send you an Outlook message inviting you to a disaster.
Food
It goes without saying, keeping a full belly or at least a full calorie count is important during an emergency. Without the energy food provides, our minds and bodies go to mush helping us to make crazy, silly choices with regard to our survival. Modern preppers tend to supplement their emergency food supplies with options such as food ration bars or freeze-dried take-and-go food pouches.
7.Datrex 3600 Calorie Emergency Food Bar
The Datrex 3600 calorie food bar provides, well 3600 calories per day in the form of little calories bars. These low-cost food bars come vacuum sealed and ready to. These packs provide enough calories for about 3 days assuming you’re not clearing forests or engaging in other strenuous constant activities.
The downside to these bars is their ability to produce dry mouth. In my experience, these bars make excellent sources of emergency nutrition that taste like coconut with the consistency of pie crust, but my first choice for grab-and-go food would be the freeze-dried food pouches.
8.Mountain House Pro-Pak Freeze Dried Pouch
Freeze-Dried Food of today isn’t the tasteless wonder of yesteryear. I know, the taste isn’t everything but when it comes to food, given a choice, I’m going to want something warm and tasty as the world on the outside is in a state of chaos.
Mountain House Pro-Pak Freeze Dried pouches provide the taste and portability any prepper will love. These babies come in flavors that are a far cry above the coconut-flavored pie crust food bars offer. Stuff like Beef Stroganoff, Lasagna and Turkey Tetrazzini are just what the doctor ordered after a day of disaster.
Just add hot clean water provided by your flint and steel water and you’re eating high on the hog in now time. A 2-serving Pro-Pak will provide you with an average of 500 calories per meal depending on the flavors you choose.
While the Pro-Paks taste better than the Datrex Food Bars, the food bars take up less space and don’t require water to eat.
First Aid
9.American Red Cross First Aid Only
First Aid after a disaster can come in the form of little boo-boos, puncture wounds caused by stepping on nails or massive trauma. The American Red Cross First Aid Only kit address less severe injuries one may come across after the storm.
Combined with a little training, this low-cost kit is packed with enough stuff to get you over but cheap enough to buy two, one for your kit to be used in the event of a disaster and one for everyday use.
Emergency Lighting
Nothing strikes fear in the heart of just about anyone more than the lights going down during a storm or other wild natural event. Loss of power isn’t restricted to storms
or earthquakes, the lights can go off for other reasons including a power grid that involve a possible cyber attack or something as mundane as a drunk driver knocking down a transmission line to your town.
Emergency lighting when the power has failed brings great comfort to just about anyone.
10.Cyalume Light Sticks
Cyalume light sticks, a chem light or glows stick are nothing more than tubes that contains two chemicals separated by a brittle barrier. These easy-to-use light sources provide several hours of cold light by simply bending the tube and shaking it.
Lightweight and portable, I keep these things all over the place including work.
11.100 Hour Emergency Candle
The 100-Hour Emergency Candle is a smokeless, odorless paraffin-burning candle that will last up to four days of continuous use. In an emergency, chances are you won’t need to use your candle more than a few hours a day, say just after dark but before going to bed thus extending the life of the candle.
Unlike other candles, you can’t cook over it or expect it to provide any measurable warmth but when it comes to light, these candles can be your best friend with the light switches stop working.
Basic Tool
12.P-38/P-51Can Opener
“Boy, let me see your key chain, how do you plan to open a can in an emergency, with your teeth?”
These words which echo from my past came from an old(It’s funny what the young consider old, this person was a couple of years younger than I am now) Viet Nam vet 
back in the day. That day I learned why a man never goes anywhere without his handy P-38 Can Opener. Before the day of the MRE, a soldier’s ration usually consisted of C-rations. Unlike the rations of today, these canned or tinned rations were not easy to open. The easiest way to open these rations was your trusty P-38 can opener.
To this day, I keep one on my key chain and another in my wallet as part of the EDC thing.
Another great non-survival P-38 can opener use is probably one of my favorites, beer can ventilation, take your low-tech survival tool to an open can of beer, carve out a notch on the end opposite to that of the opening, and you now have unrestricted, access to your brew.
I created my low-cost 12 Low-Cost Survival Gifts For Preppers to show you just how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to begin putting together a budget-minded emergency kit. Each of these items can be stored in a backpack tucked away ready to go at a moment’s notice or on you as part of your EDC(every day carry plan) as I do.
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