You know the drill. You may have even participated once or twice. As a natural disaster approaches, everyone in town is going crazy for grocery stores, home improvement stores, and gas stations. Demand surpasses stocks in a capitalist’s nightmare, and most people leave empty-handed, without enough flashlights, batteries, or kitchen utensils to overcome the hurricane, snowstorm, or approaching forest fire. It is best to stock up in advance and avoid battle royale. We’ve put together all the essentials for your emergency team.
Updated June 2022: We’ve added the Coway Airmega 200M Air Purifier, the 5-gallon Garage Boss Gas Can, N95 and KN95 Forest Fire Face Masks, the Mountain House Adventure Dehydrated Food Kit, and the Petzl Lighthouse Actik.
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A flashlight
He Fenix E20 V2 ($ 45) is my best choice for an affordable emergency flashlight, but the ThruNite Archer 2A V3 ($ 25) is another solid option. At 350 and 500 lumens, respectively, they are bright enough to stay compact and last a long time in low light environments: 200 hours at 5 lumens for the Phoenix and 51 hours at 17 lumens for the ThruNite. They both use two AA batteries, and in the event of an emergency, your main concern is to have a good supply of spare batteries.
If you use alkaline batteries, remove them from the flashlight if it will not be used for a long time, otherwise they will leak and cause problems. Keep them close to the flashlight so you can easily find them. Try attaching the batteries to the flashlight barrel.
Professional advice: High-performance flashlights are specifically designed to use lithium-ion batteries or have non-removable rechargeable batteries, which will do you no good if the power is out of time. Rechargeable nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) AA batteries maintain their best performance during battery life, while alkaline performance decreases further as they run out, so buy some. Panasonic Eneloops ($ 40). They are better for the environment, but if left unchecked, you can still use normal alkaline AA.
You may prefer to have a headlight on hand. He Petzl Actik ($ 50) it’s my favorite model and has never disappointed me, from snowy mountains to dusty deserts. It works with three easy-to-find AAA batteries and has three brightness settings, the brightest of which is powerful enough for home emergencies.
A flashlight
Flashlights do a bad job when you need to light an entire room or if you need hands-free work. Diffuse light is what you want, and the Coleman Divide + Push Lantern ($ 16) he does it very well. It’s smaller than Coleman’s typical flashlight, which is nice because it will probably spend most of its life in storage. There are two parameters: 425 lumens high for 40 hours of runtime and 50 lumens low for 330 hours of runtime. It uses three D-cell batteries, which sounds great, but along with other full-size, battery-powered flashlights, such as the eight-cell Coleman Twin LED flashlight, it’s cheap.
