Beau of The Fifth Column

One is to pack up each category of item, like all of the food into something easy to move, like a Rubbermaid or a clothes hamper, something with handles is best, a duffel bag.

This allows you to stay more organized during the day-to-day during the emergency.

The other method is to pre-divide the supplies into bags for each person in your circle.

If something happens and you have to evacuate quickly, everybody grabs their bag.

This method is a pain when it comes to daily activities and pulling stuff out for meals.

But in the event of an emergency, it's faster and it lessens the risk of losing all of your food in some kind of accident.

It also helps if you get separated.

Speaking of which, the other thing is to pre-plan where you would meet back up if your current location goes bad and you get separated.

It's just like a natural disaster.

Making sure everybody knows the plan ahead of time is important once communications go down.

If you're bugging in, stay in.

Remember, the idea behind holding up somewhere is to ride out the emergency, disturbance, or zombie horde.

Stay inside and wait for the situation to stabilize.

For a lot of people in more extreme scenarios, the best thing is to stay out of it.

The first rule of disaster relief or rescue is to not create a second victim.

If you aren't going to be actively combating whatever the situation is, the best thing you can do is to make sure you don't become the first victim.

As long as it's safe, stay where you are.

During long-term events, an FM radio is critical for getting information about how things are developing while the situation progresses.

Take a moment and think about how you'd make it possible to stay in your current location with no electricity or running water for a couple of weeks.

If there's an item you need, get it now before you need it.