Disaster Scenario Days

Disaster scenario days are practice session where you can safely try out your emergency kits and disaster survival skills. Because you are learning these skills in a controlled environment you can make necessary adjustments to your kits and plans before a real disaster strikes!

Practice your emergency scenario by following these few simple steps. (Make sure you scroll down to the examples after the bullets!)

First figure out which aspect of your emergency plan you want to practice. Keep it simple at first. For example, practice cooking over your camp stove in the back yard for dinner one evening or turn off the power over night.
Then set a date and stick with it. This is important because practicing for disaster situations is not convenient (say spending a night without power) and you may never get around to it if you don't put it on the calendar.
Recruit some friends to do it with you. It's more fun and will help motivate you to actually do it. Get together afterwards and learn from each other’s' experiences. This a great way to learn and grow in your survival knowledge and skills.
Then do it! Try to make the scenario as realistic as possible, but don’t worry if you have to make some adjustments or even bail out mid-stream. That's what these practice sessions are for!
Take notes throughout the exercise. Then afterwards review them and take necessary actions, such as adding items to the kit, improving certain skills, or learning more about a particular disaster.
Finally, put your next disaster scenario day on the calendar!

It can actually be a fun bonding time for the whole family. Below are some reports of our disaster scenario days.

Wilderness Evacuation Scenario
Could we survive in the wilderness with just our 72-hour kit? We loaded our kit up in the car and went camping three hours away to find out. This was our first experience camping as a family as well as the first time we tried to use our 72-hour kit.

Winter Power Outage Disaster Scenario
Our second disaster scenario was a simulated power outage in the dead of winter. Would we be able to stay warm when our primary hear source was rendered inoperable due to the power outage? What happens if the water stopped flowing?

Sudden Evacuation Scenario
We are planning a sudden and fast evacuation to a nearby campground this spring. We will time ourselves to see how long it takes to load up the car with our 72-hour evacuation kit and get on the road with three small children! Will we have forgotten anything critical for survival? Subscribe to my RSS feed (link in box at right) to be notified when I report on our next evacuation scenario this spring!