1-Person Survival Kits

One-person kits are the easiest thing we sell and the easiest thing to skip. Nobody calls a family meeting about it. Nobody asks whether it's handled. It just sits on the someday list, quietly.

Which is a shame, because this is the version that takes ten minutes. One kit, one shelf, done. Whether it's for you, a kid heading to a dorm, or a mom three states away who keeps insisting she's fine.

Same categories as the bigger kits: food, water, first aid, light, and shelter, scaled down to one. Some are built to sit at home and wait. Others fit in a glove box and get forgotten until the day they don't.

One thing worth checking before you pick: how each kit handles water. That varies more at this size than anywhere else.

Pick one. Put it somewhere you'd find it in the dark. That's the whole project.

A woman sits at a wooden table in a home setting, looking down at a red, white, and black emergency preparedness kit bag. She holds a red packet of ReadyWise Apple Cinnamon Energy.

What One Person Actually Needs

What should a 1 person emergency kit include?


The same seven categories as any other kit: food, water, first aid, light, communication, shelter and warmth, and hygiene. Nothing gets dropped because you're one person. It just gets smaller.

What does change is that there's no one to split the weight with, and no one to notice if you skipped it. Both of those are arguments for buying the kit already packed.



How much water does one person need?


FEMA's guideline is a gallon per person per day. Three days is three gallons, which is about twenty-five pounds. That's a case of bottled water on a closet floor, and it's the single most useful thing you can put next to any kit.

Check how each kit handles water before you pick one. Some carry ready-to-drink water for the first hours. Some include meals that need water you add. That difference matters more when you're covering one person than it does anywhere else, because there's no second bag with the extra.


Is a compact home survival kit enough on its own?


Depends where it's going to live. A compact kit in a desk drawer at work, a glove box, or a bag you carry every day is doing a job nothing else does. It's there when you're not home, which is where you are most of the day.

A kit that stays home can be bigger, because nothing has to carry it. If you're only buying one, buy for the place you're most likely to be.



What about an emergency kit for seniors at home?


This is the one most people are actually shopping for when they land here. A parent who lives alone, three states away, who says she's fine and probably is.

Two things make a kit work for her. It has to be light enough to move without help, and it has to live somewhere on the floor she actually uses. A kit in a basement is a kit that doesn't exist.

Add a week of her prescriptions and copies of her insurance cards yourself, in a waterproof bag. That's the Red Cross recommendation, and it's the part no kit can pack for you.



What to add yourself:

  • A week of prescriptions.
  • Copies of ID and insurance, in a waterproof bag.
  • Extra water stored nearby.
  • One person who knows where the kit is.
Where to Keep a Kit So You'll Actually Find It