Important Documents to Assemble
When all around you is chaotic, it is easy to forget a critical element of your family’s survival plan so I strongly recommend that one of the things you need to have with your survival storage and your 72-hour “bug-out bag” is a printed copy of your plan. It is much easier to refer to a document than to stress over your inability to recall all the important details.
But there are other essential documents you need to gather and have in your survival supplies. These documents should be placed in a zipped plastic bag to keep them waterproof and then secured in your “bug-out-bag.” So this is where it is up to you and your personal situation and decision for what to do next. Do you make multiple copies of each of these documents to have several sets?
Here are the most critical:
- Personal IDs for all family members
- Passports for all family members
- Birth certificates for all family members
- Photos of each family member in the event you are separated
- Credit card information
- Banking information
- Mortgage information
- Insurance policies – life, auto, home, medical
- Medical ID cards for each family member
- Vaccination records for each family member
- Pet immunization records
- Phone numbers you might need
- A detailed map of your immediate area
Understanding that having multiple sets increases the risk of identity theft, you must determine what works for you. In my family’s case, we realized that we are most often separated during the day and, at best, are an hour away from home. Because of this, we made multiple document sets and placed a set in each of our cars, each of our bug-out-bags and sent a set to my parents out of state.
For the sets in our cars, we hid the bags securely under the carpet where it is unlikely they would be found, even if a car was stolen and vandalized. We each have a bug-out-bag ready to grab and go and now they both have copies of these important documents. And finally, just in case there was a major event and we couldn’t reach our documents, we could contact my parents to give us the information we need.
If this seems like overkill to you, just imagine how lost you would be without access to these vital records. Think it through and determine what will be the best solution for your family.
