I’m a bit overzealous about first aid kits considering that I have a kid with hemophilia, but you should all be equally zealous because you really never know what might happen. If you recall from my Armory Life Saver post you need to have several smaller first aid kits in your home but you need a couple trauma style kits in your safe room or armory.

Rudy’s Tip: Make sure you have first aid kits at minimum on every floor of your house. In the bathroom and kitchen is a good spot. If you have power tools that you use a first aid kit and maybe even a trauma kit is a must have in the shop. Don’t forget.

What’s the difference between a first aid kit and a trauma kit?

I thought you’d never ask! In my definition a first aid kit doesn’t have as much good stuff in it and is oriented towards dealing with minor injuries, cuts and scrapes, burns, that sort of thing. It’s basically your Band-Aid box with a bunch of other awesome stuff in it.

Trauma kits are targeted at dealing with more major injuries up to and including gunshot wounds, power tool accidents, and the like. This is the kit you use to try to stabilize someone until emergency services arrives, or if the situation is grid-down, this may be all you have to treat them.

Wait a minute. I have no idea how to treat a gunshot wound.

Nobody does until they learn. In all seriousness, you should get some decent training on dealing with more serious injuries. You can get basic EMT style training for free in most major cities and while it won’t make you an expert it gets you farther along than most.

While you probably won’t ever have to deal with a gunshot wound you need to know how to deal with major injuries no matter what the cause. The chances of you freezing up and not knowing how to react in a life threatening situation are significantly increased if you haven’t gotten training or practiced being responsive. Get training. Yesterday.

Ok. I’ll go sign up. Tell me what should be in a first aid kit!

Band-Aids. Lots of them. Different sizes too! Now that the obvious is behind us, recall that the purpose of a first aid kit is to treat minor cuts and scrapes. I like to include stuff to stop or slow bleeding as well. It’s always handy to be able to start treating a more major injury while someone else runs for the trauma kit.

First Aid kits should contain:

Gauze and Bandages

• A good size supply of Band-Aids of varying sizes. I’d say at least 30-40 of the larger ones while 20 or so of the smaller sizes will suffice.
• 10 each – Large and Medium Band-Aid adhesive pads (the square-ish gauze pads with adhesive around them)
• 10 each – Large and Medium gauze pads
• 2 rolls – 2″ Gauze
• 2 rolls – 1″ ‘Hurt Free Wrap’ (the soft elastic tape that sticks to itself)
• 2 rolls – 1″ Medical Paper Tape
• 10 Steri Strips

Medicinal

• Neosporin
• One small bottle each:
  • Ibuprofen
  • Acetaminophen
  • Aspiron
  • Immodium
  • Benadryl
• Hydrocortisone cream
• Vaseline

Equipment

• Alcohol pads
• Five chemical cold packs
• A small bottle of saline for irrigating wounds
• Small scissors – child safe craft scissors work good here
• A lighter
• A small package of sewing pins
• A good pair of tweezers – Don’t skimp here, you want a good set that line up properly
• A small bottle of alcohol based hand sanitizer
• Six pairs of examination gloves
• A CPR shield
• Celox or an equivalent hemostatic agent
• A mini-sharpie pen

Needless to say your over the counter kit here doesn’t have all this stuff in it. This will also seem like overkill and you may want to adjust the amounts of things based on how many folks are in your family. We go through band-aids like a knife through butter so it makes sense for us to have plenty, for example.

I’ve also added extra because I’m paranoid about not having enough and I’d rather have too much than not enough. So consider my amounts as guidelines, not the rule!

Great, now what about the Trauma Kit?

It’s basically an overpowered first aid kit. It should contain:

Gauze and Bandages

• The same stuff as in the first aid kit, just two or three times as much.
• Additional rolls of gauze bandage and tape in wider widths
• Several ACE bandages
• Four triangle bandages
• A dozen large Trauma Dressings
• A dozen feminine sanitary pads

Medicinal

Same as the first aid kit

Equipment

Same as the first aid kit with the addition of:

• A box of examination gloves (you will need more than one box to cover different sizes)
• A large bottle of saline irrigation
• A large bottle of hand sanitizer
• EMT Shears
• Two thermometers (I like the instant read ones, but keep a few ‘basic’ ones too)
• Splinting material of various sizes
• More Celox
• Two more CPR shields
• I also think it’s a good idea to have at least one pair of crutches lying around in a closet somewhere, but certainly not in your trauma bag.

These trauma bags seem a bit like overkill of course, but I’d rather be safe than sorry and most of this stuff doesn’t really go bad. I will use the trauma kit to stock the first aid kits as things get used up and then I refill the trauma kit before it gets too low.

I usually split the bandage and gauze amounts above into two bags with a set of medicinal supplies and equipment in each bag and get my two trauma bags that way. Same amounts total but easier to carry and sometimes you just don’t need to haul everything along with you!

What should I put these in?

That’s up to you.  You can buy purpose built bags for first aid kits and use those.  You can buy smaller plastic boxes and put them in duffel bags.  You could raid the local surplus store and see what they have.  It’s really up to you!  I personally use smaller purpose built bags for first aid kits and bandages inside the trauma kit and the trauma kits are in duffel bags.

Wrapping it up

I hope this helps. Don’t view this as gospel but as a starting point. Modify amounts appropriately and keep up your rotation for things that can expire. And like I said … GO GET TRAINING.

How much water do I need to survive?

Don’t worry!  Everyone knows how wasteful we are.  Our federal government has come to our rescue once again and relieved preppers and home owners insurance carriers everywhere.  FEMA and the red cross say that in a “Survival Situation” we only need one gallon per person per day.  Far more doable!

I personally think that the bare minimum isn’t good enough, and that we should plan for at least two gallons per day.  The engineer in me says that in addition to that, we need to have a failsafe, so I add another 50% on top of that, for a total of three gallons per day.
For my family, two adults and six pets … err kids, that’s 24 gallons a day, 720 gallons a month, or 8,640 gallons for a year.  Since you are smart enough to know that you should read my blog, I am confident you can do the math for your own family.

So where does this water come from?

Well, there’s really two ways you can get clean water.  From a tap and from the store.  Problem solved!  Until the water stops flowing out of the taps, or comes out smelling like the neighbor’s dog, and the store is fresh out of drinking water.  So all you have to do is dip into your stored water and you’re sitting pretty!  You did store water, right?

Maybe you still have the Wet Dog scented water and don’t want to dip into your stored water yet.  You need a way to purify the water you have, whether it’s from a bad municipal supply or the stream that runs through your neighborhood, rainwater, whatever.

Bottom line, you need to have two bases covered.  Water storage for ready access, and purification because no matter how much you store, you’ll eventually run out.

So how do I store all this water?

Well, I would advise against the 5 gallon bucket route.  Personally speaking, that seems like a disaster in the making.  Most people use glorified 55 gallon barrels and those generally seem to work pretty well.  Some people like to reuse 2L soda bottles or milk cartons.  I’m frugal, sure, but the thought of cleaning that stuff out is just baffling to me.  I’d rather spend a little bit of money on something else.

Personally, I’d recommend storing it in two ways.  Go down to the store and get your regular water bottles (500ml is a good size) and store those for drinking water.  Makes portioning easy, it’s far easier to deal with than a hose and a barrel, and it’s easy to rotate.  For cooking, cleaning, and the rest of your drinking water, use a commercial storage system that fits your home.  That may be water storage barrels, or a cistern, or a fiberglass tank, whatever works for your home and your lifestyle.

Some key points to consider:

1. Water is HEAVY. One gallon weighs 8.35 lbs.  Don’t store your water stash in your attic.
2. Store water in food safe containers. Storing it in an old oil barrel is a pretty bad idea, no matter how much soap you use and how hard you scrub.
3. Water gets boring. Think of ways to make it interesting.  We like those little Crystal Light individual packets.
4. Water can taste flat. This is just because the oxygen has escaped the water.  Shake it up a bit, or aerate it by pouring it between containers a few times and it’ll taste fine.
5. Water can get skunky. Store it in a cool dark place to inhibit anything funky.  If you’re storing well water, you should probably treat it a bit with some bleach.  More on that later.  City water’s generally fine.
6. Rotate your water! See above … you should consider rotating once every six months or so.

Great.  How do I purify water when Wet Dog is all that’s available?

Brita. Pur.  Berkey.  There’s a ton of products out there.  I’ll talk about this in a detailed post all on it’s own, but there’s a couple of key things here I’ll cover now.  You have portable filters that you can use on the go.  Camping filters, etc.  And you have stationary filters whether it’s a Big Berkey which has a huge filtering capacity or a jug style filter like a Brita pitcher.  You need some way to treat your water.  You need to make sure it can filter chemicals, bacteria, viruses, etc.  Again, more on that later but keep filtration in the back of your head as a ‘should have’ for your plans.