The mistake most new dads make about emergencies is thinking they’re about gear. Gear is fun to buy because it feels like progress. But emergencies are not a gear problem; they’re a skills problem. If you possess the right skills, you can succeed with whatever you have. If you don’t, no amount of gear will save you.
The right question isn’t “What should I buy?” but “What will actually happen?” Most emergencies you face won’t be cinematic. They’ll be storms, power outages, and home fires. The test will be whether you can keep everyone calm, make a couple of good decisions, and do a few basic things well.
You don’t need a bunker. You need a plan you can explain to a five-year-old and drills so short they feel silly. If something is complicated, you won’t do it when you’re tired and the house is dark. Complexity fails in the field. The trick is to make the default safe.
Here’s the surprising part: you can do most of this in a weekend. The hard part isn’t setup; it’s keeping the habits alive. But habits are easier than you think if you keep them small and tie them to things you already do.
Start with a plan so short you can write it on one page. The core is just two decisions and one contact. Pick an out-of-area person your family can text if local networks are busy. Pick two meeting spots: one nearby, one out of the neighborhood. That’s it. If you get those right, you’ve solved the coordination problem that wrecks most families in the first hour of a crisis.
Why out-of-area? Because local networks get jammed by everyone calling everyone else. A single text to someone far away is more likely to go through, and one person can relay updates for multiple people. It’s the lowest-cost way to buy reliability.
Why two meeting spots? Because the first one sometimes won’t work. Fires, downed lines, police tape: you don’t get to pick the shape of the problem. Two spots means the plan has redundancy. Redundancy is the grownup word for not being surprised by obvious surprises.
Every plan has a missing piece until you rehearse it. So rehearse it. Walk your kids to both spots. Show them the map on your phone. Use the same words every time. If you can explain the plan in 20 seconds, you’ve done it right. If you can’t, it’s not the kids who are confused.
Next, fix alerts. The point of alerts isn’t drama. It’s lead time. If you have even ten minutes’ lead time, you can turn a mess into an inconvenience. Turn on Wireless Emergency Alerts on your phone. Then back it up with a NOAA Weather Radio. Phones go quiet or get noisy at the wrong moments; radios don’t care. Buy the model that lets you program your county so you’re not woken up by storms two states over. Put it where you’ll hear it at night.
People never do this because nothing bad is happening when you’re setting it up. But that’s the time to do it. The return on a five-minute settings change is measured in hours when everyone else is still figuring out what’s going on.
Now for the scariest but most useful set of skills: first aid. Learn CPR and how to use an AED. Learn how to stop bleeding. The way you do that is not by watching videos at 1.5x. Book a class and put your hands on the equipment. The first time you push hard enough in CPR you understand why people hesitate. Better to learn that in a classroom.
Stock a simple kit with things you know how to use. Gloves, bandages, sterile dressings, tape, antiseptic wipes, tweezers, a reputable tourniquet, and age-appropriate pain relievers. Keep it where you can reach it quickly, not in a closet behind the camping stove. And learn where the AEDs are at work, school, and the gym. The only AED that matters is the one you can get to.
Also learn one phone number: Poison Help, 1-800-222-1222. It reaches experts where you live. Most calls are questions, not emergencies. The value isn’t just answers; it’s a calm voice that tells you which way is up.
Fire safety is another place where a little practice changes everything. Make a two-minute escape plan and practice it. Two ways out of every bedroom. Crawling low under smoke. Back of the hand on doors. Meet at a specific spot outside and stay out. Kids take cues from your tone more than your words. If you treat drills as normal, they will too.
Install smoke and carbon monoxide alarms the way the manufacturer says, and then do the boring parts: test them monthly and replace them on schedule. CO is invisible and odorless, which means you only catch it with alarms. This is one of those systems where “almost” doesn’t count.
You should also know how to use a fire extinguisher, and more importantly, when not to. The mnemonic is PASS: Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep. But the real rule is this: if you don’t have a clear exit behind you, or the fire is bigger than a small wastebasket, get everyone out and call 911. People get hurt trying to be heroic in kitchens. The most heroic thing is getting everyone outside fast.
If you use a generator, it lives outside, far from doors and windows. Not in the garage with the door open, not in the basement “just for a bit.” The constraint is CO, not noise. Generators are one of the easiest ways to turn a power outage into an emergency.
Water and food are where gear people go wild. You don’t need to. Store at least a gallon of water per person per day for a few days. Include pets in the math. Use clean, food-grade containers and label the fill date. Put them somewhere you’ll remember to rotate them.
If officials say disinfect water, boiling is the default. Bring it to a rolling boil for a minute (longer at high elevations), then let it cool. If you can’t boil, follow official guidance for other methods. Don’t improvise. The point of preparedness is to reduce decision-making, not create it.
Food safety in outages is basically thermodynamics with a fridge door. Keep the doors closed. The clock starts when the power goes out, not when you open the fridge. Refrigerated food is unsafe after about four hours without power. A full freezer holds safe temperatures about two days. Put thermometers in both so you’re not guessing. Never taste food to check safety. “When in doubt, throw it out” sounds wasteful until you compare it to a weekend of food poisoning.
Hygiene still matters when water is tight. Prioritize clean hands before food prep and after bathroom breaks. Stock hand sanitizer, baby wipes, trash bags, and paper towels. Set up a simple hand-cleaning station kids can reach. The job here isn’t perfection; it’s breaking the chain of transmission.
Shelter-in-place vs. evacuate is another place to decide in advance. You don’t have to anticipate every scenario, just decide to follow official instructions. If told to shelter, go inside, close windows and doors, and stay tuned. If told to evacuate, go. The error most people make is waiting for more certainty. The more certain you are, the fewer options you have.
A go-bag is a hedge against indecision. It’s not a talisman. Pack one for each person with a day of water and snacks, copies of IDs and key documents, some cash, a headlamp, a small first-aid kit, medications, basic hygiene items, a change of clothes, and a charger/power bank. For infants add diapers, wipes, formula and bottles, and a comfort item. For pets add a leash, carrier, food, bowls, and vet records. Then put the bags where you can grab them. The measure of a good go-bag is not how complete it is but how fast you can leave without chaos.
Avoid risky procedures unless your utility trained and directed you to do them. The rule of thumb in emergencies is to make fewer decisions, not more. If you find yourself about to try something you’ve never done, stop and call someone who has.
The most important part of all this is practice. People imagine preparedness as a once-a-year overhaul. That’s the least effective way to do it. Skills atrophy when you store them like holiday decorations. Do short, regular reps instead. Ten-minute drills you can stack onto existing routines.
Tie maintenance to things that already happen. Test alarms when you change the clocks. Review the plan on birthdays. Check kit expirations when you pay annual insurance. Restock anything you use the same day. You’re trying to offload preparedness from memory to systems.
If this all sounds anticlimactic, that’s the point. The best preparedness looks boring because it’s built for the most likely problems. You’re not trying to be impressive; you’re trying to be ready. The difference shows up in how your house feels when something goes wrong. If everyone knows where to go and what to do, the volume goes down. You can hear yourself think. That’s worth more than another gadget in a bin.
The meta-lesson here is the same one you see in other domains. Small, frequent practice beats big, rare effort. Defaults matter more than intentions. And the bottleneck is attention, not equipment. You can set this up in a weekend, and then all you have to do is keep it alive with tiny habits.
If you want a sequence, do this:
Do those seven and you’ve got the 80/20 of family safety. They align with what the grownups in charge say—weather services, public health, fire codes—because those groups have seen enough to strip away the nonessentials. You don’t need to memorize their sites to benefit from their experience. You just need to adopt the parts that make your defaults safer.
You’ll know you’ve done this right when it feels suspiciously easy. The test isn’t how much time you spend setting up. It’s how calm the house is the next time the lights go out.