The family plan

The four decisions in your plan

Experts sum it up in four steps: get informed, know the risks in your area, split responsibilities and practice. In practice, it comes down to agreeing on this:

1. An out-of-area contact

Pick a relative or friend who lives in another region or state. After a local emergency, calls inside the affected area get jammed, but long-distance calls and texts often get through better. Everyone checks in with that person, who passes the information on.

2. Three meeting points

• Next to home: a specific spot on your street for a fire or gas leak, like the building opposite or a lamppost.
• Outside your neighborhood: a square, a library or a relative's house, in case you can't get home.
• Outside the city: the home of someone you trust, in case you need to leave the area, with at least two routes to get there.

3. Who does what

• Children: who picks them up from school and what the school does in an emergency. Ask: schools have an emergency plan.
• Older or dependent relatives: who checks on them and who has a key to their home.
• Pets: who grabs them if you have to leave.
• The house: who knows how to shut off the water, the gas and the main breaker. Ideally, every adult.

4. Practice it

Once a year, review the plan and do a small test (we explain why it works in the mindset guide): leave home with the go-bag in five minutes, or spend an evening without electricity. You find the flaws by practicing, not on the day you need it.

When there's no signal

• Text before you call. Text messages need very little network capacity and get delivered when there's a gap. Keep them short: where you are, how you are, where you're going.
• Emergency numbers work on any carrier with coverage at that moment, even if it isn't yours: 911 in the US and much of the Americas, 112 in Europe. Only use them for emergencies. List by country.
• A printed list of phone numbers in your wallet, in each child's backpack and in the kit. If you lose your phone, nobody remembers the numbers.
• A note on the door: if you have to leave and someone might come back, leave a note in an agreed place saying where you went.

Alerts and radio

Emergency alerts on your phone

Many countries send emergency warnings to every phone in an area through the cell towers, without using your number or data: Wireless Emergency Alerts in the US, EU-Alert in Europe, ES-Alert in Spain or the earthquake early warning in Mexico. They sound even when your phone is on silent. Check that emergency alerts are enabled in your phone's notification settings; the path depends on the model.

Radio

When the internet fails, radio keeps working. Keep one powered by batteries or a hand crank, with AM, which reaches farther, as well as FM. In the US and Canada, a radio with NOAA weather band receives automatic weather warnings. Write the frequencies of your public broadcaster and local stations in the kit.

License-free walkie-talkies

In the US and Canada they're FRS radios; in Europe, PMR446. They need no license and are sold everywhere. Other countries allow different bands: check before buying. They're useful for coordinating within a building, a neighborhood or a small town.

• Real range: a few hundred yards in a city and a mile or two in open country. Experts warn that the 30-mile ranges printed on the box are not realistic.
• Agree in advance on a channel and a time to switch them on, for example every hour on the hour for five minutes, to save batteries.

For longer distances there's amateur (ham) radio, which requires a license. Many countries have volunteer ham networks that support emergency services. And if you want text messages without any signal, see our off-grid communication gadgets.

Your plan on one page

Copy this list on paper, fill it in with your family and keep a copy in the kit, another in each go-bag and another in your wallet.