In the event of an emergency, you should have a bag of supplies and foodstuffs readily available that you can grab and run with; your life can (literally) depend on your being prepared before a disaster strikes.

A Personal  Emergency Readiness Kit (PERK) bag contains necessary (and optional) supplies, portable foods and potable water to keep you going for a week or more should  you find yourself away from home or caught by surprise while home. Personal  Emergency Readiness Kit (PERK) bag contains necessary (and optional) supplies, portable foods and potable water to keep you going for a week or more should  you find yourself away from home or caught by surprise while home.

The Primal-Scream  shop at this web site offers a detailed list of supplies,  light  weight and easily prepared dried food products, and instructions and suggestions on how to assemble a PERK bag for use during an emergency.  These lists are provided for folks who don't  have time to sit down and generate a list of supplies and foodstuffs, and for those who are not good at planning such things.

A foremost consideration in putting together a PERK bag is to make it reasonably lightweight for those who do not drive or when the usual modes of transportation are disrupted by the emergency.  If you ever have to carry the bag by hand, you will appreciate a lightweight bag.

A second consideration was to keep the cost of assembling the PERK bag as low as possible so anyone can afford to assemble one.  Some of the supplies are optional or 'nice to have', if affordable for you.  Lists have links to a few internet suppliers for items that might not be available in your area, and/or web sites offering items at reasonable prices.

Ideally, your PERK bag should be located where you spend the most time any given day; at work, at home or at play.  If you drive, your vehicle would likely be a good place to store the bag.  At home, a basement would be a likely place to store the PERK bag (a basement is usually a safe place, depending on what kind of emergency that could manifest).  

Depending on the emergency, your home might not be safe and you may have to evacuate.  If driving to a safe place is hampered by heavy traffic, vehicle breakdowns, or local transportation not in service, you may have to carry the PERK bag to a safe place to take or make shelter.  The PERK bag should have provisions for a week or more,  as public shelters may not be in place, or might be filled to capacity; the same goes for medical aid. Your individualized PERK bag would provide an option to avert shelters or aid stations, or to provide some help if none exists.    

If you do not have the upper body strength, or if your PERK is too heavy to hand carry or to carry on your back, you might consider buying an inexpensive hand truck with tie-down straps to make handling much easier.

This Primal-Scream shop offers this information as a MicroSoft Word 2000^TM document (.doc extension), or this same document compressed with WinZip^TM (.zip extension) for faster downloading.  If you do not have Winzip to uncompress the  file, you can download and try WinZip for free.   Instructions for downloading, installing, and using WinZip with your computer are accessed from the three WinZip links below. 

Similarly, If you do not have MicroSoft Word 2000^TM or later installed on your computer,  you can download the MicroSoft's WordView^TM program for free , and use it to view or print hardcopies of the PERK checklists.  Instructions for downloading, installing, and using WordView with your computer can be accessed by clicking the down arrow at the bottom of this box to take you to the three Wordview links below:

                                                                   WinZip   WordView