Whether trying to survive a natural disaster or an attack, or attempting to make the most out of a dire situation while you’re out in the wilderness, getting the best first aid kit for survival situations is an essential requirement. In fact, a reliable survival kit can even save your life or that of your companions.
Broken bones, falls and other injuries, as well as the need for proper medication in extreme situations are all a part of the possible scenarios you might be facing. So let’s take a closer look at what exactly you will need to have with you as part of your emergency first aid kit.
Important Requirements for a ‘Best’ First Aid Kit
Whether you buy a first aid kit or create your own, there aren’t any rigid rules as to what to add and what to omit. While some items are crucial when dealing with most types of emergency situations, most can be avoided or replaced with alternatives. As a result, many people find it a challenge to determine exactly what to add to their emergency first aid kit in the first place. The following tips should be able to help you in this regard:
- Consider what situations you’re most likely to have to deal with in the long run. Do you travel a lot? Do you simply need a basic first aid kit to keep in your house or your car? Are you looking to prepare for major disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes? Or maybe you’re a prepper who understands the risks involved with potential international conflicts that could lead to a nuclear war. Regardless of your motivations, it is crucial to keep them in mind and select the items to add to your kit accordingly.
- How portable do you need your survival first aid kit to be? Depending on how mobile you need to be, you might have to sacrifice a few of the larger items and opt for a smaller or lighter design for your case. The smallest kits are typically the size of a wallet or small notebook, and they can still contain tiny band-aids, limited amounts of medicine and small tools that can be used just as effectively as larger alternatives.
- If you’re buying first aid kits, make sure you’re aware of the symbols added to represent the standards for quality imposed by institutions such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The ISO only endorses the symbol of the white cross on a green background, while other organizations like the Red Cross and the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have their own unique symbols. The latter will likely mark some first aid kits with the Star of Life symbol, which is commonly associated to emergency medical services.
- Consider also adding important information to your emergency first aid kit, especially if it’s a kit that the entire family might be using. Add a guide to help your children figure out how to use each item if needed, and make sure to include emergency contact details for various services and medical clinics that are supported under your insurance coverage plan. Also, don’t forget to add maintenance medication such as insulin and heart medicine, if you know a family member suffers from a serious illness.
- Your first aid kit doesn’t necessarily have to look like a standard kit or one you’ve seen at your neighbor’s house. You can use anything from an old shoe box to a durable first aid box from your local drug store. What’s most important is the contents, and in that respect, experts encourage you to exercise your freedom in ensuring that you add all the necessary medical supplies and items for your entire family.
Should You Put Together a Customized Kit?
There are several benefits involved with putting together a customized emergency first aid kit. First of all, you’ll be able to choose the amount and quantity of items you need, without having to compromise on getting fewer bandages for the sake of buying a ready-made kit that has some other, less common medical supplies that you might need. Secondly, as mentioned earlier, you can add the most important items that your family will use, focusing on the necessary maintenance medication for specific diseases such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease or even various allergies.
Another important consideration is that you can make your survival first aid kit as large and comprehensive or as small and portable as you need it to be. This means you can adapt it to fit in your car, or for all the items to fit conveniently inside one of your bathroom or kitchen cabinets.
Finally, the price you’d pay for your survival kit is also worth mentioning. Finding the best first aid kit that includes all the items you need can be a difficult job, and you may need to settle for a kit that has hundreds of supplies, which will naturally cost a lot of money. By creating your own first aid box you can hand pick the items and amounts you need specifically, without adding any extras or paying for anything unwanted.
Buying a Complete First Aid Kit – What to Search for?
If you’re after a basic emergency first aid kit, it makes no practical sense to go around town looking for all the items you need, especially if you’re in a hurry. Complete commercial kits are provided with everything you need for the most common emergencies, as long as you know what to look for.
Basic products and medical supplies should be the first on your list. Any kit you buy should have medical adhesive tape, insect bite treatments, pain-relief medication, antibacterial ointments, antiseptic wipes, nonstick sterile pads, adhesive bandages, antihistamine and blister treatments.
For advanced wound care and medication, your typical survival first aid kit will likely contain pressure bandages, a pocket mask, anti-acid tablets, Aloe Vera gel and eye drops. For wound care you can also consider kits that can provide you with surgical gloves, saline for flushing out wounds, liquid bandages, roller gauze, a multi-tool pocket knife and a small mirror to help you see and address wounds in less accessible areas.
Finally, it’s a good idea to consider the less common, optional items you might need. These will largely depend on your own customized requirements. For example, you may want to include venom antidotes and special items required for dealing with snake bites, or you could look into adding maps, compasses and navigation items that will help keep you alive when you’re stranded out at sea.
Best First Aid Kit – The Top Brands to Look for
Now that you know what it is you need to find, let’s see who can provide the best first aid kit products that have it all. The following brands are counted among the most reputable and dependable when it comes to offering the best value you can expect for your money:
- Ever Ready First Aid
- Ansi First Aid – Ansi will bring you some of the most comprehensive and complete emergency and survival first aid kit products currently available on the market. While available at an affordable cost, Ansi kits are considered to be highly practical, regardless of whether you need them to treat a mild wound or deal with a heart attack. Medical tape, blister and splinter relief, Ibuprofen, rescue blankets, triangular bandages and certi-strips are just some of the products you can get as part of your kit, and the provided guides from Ansi will make it easy even for beginners to use kits efficiently.
- First Aid Only – is another brand that provides high quality emergency first aid kit products for convenient medical support at short notice. Their kits can feature more than 300 items, ranging from high quality adhesive bandages of multiple sizes, to eye pads, sterile gauze pads, trauma pads, adhesive tape rolls and nitrile examination gloves.
- Finally, Rescue Essentials provide comprehensive Trauma first aid kits that are suitable for first responder type medical situations. These kits are built to Department of Homeland Security Specs are used by US Customs and border control. They are designed to provide the necessary support when dealing with the most common medical emergency situations.
These brands are known for offering the best quality, as well as for adding all the most practical items to any emergency first aid kit. Although the pricing involved might be slightly higher than in the case of some of the cheapest kits available on the market, you’ll find that the added expense is well worth it.
** Note** You should bear in mind that most of the first aid kits provided by the brands above are designed for the home market or workplace so will need considerable boosting in order to bring them up to med kits worthy of being of use in an emergency disaster situation, plus they do not carry any antibiotics and other meds that will be needed when the SHTF and even basic medicines are no longer available.
Subtle Factors That Set Apart the Best First Aid Kits
The redundancy of the included items, the convenience associated with restocking your first aid kit and the overall weight of the box are factors you should always consider before buying your new emergency first aid kit.
Also, if size and weight isn’t a problem, why not get the largest kit and the greatest amount of supplies and medicine that you can find? In most cases, you will have to watch for expiration dates for your medication, and replace all the necessary items periodically, since it’s likely that you won’t use all the items too soon. On the other hand, if an emergency situation does present itself, and you have a use for almost everything you have in your kit, you will be glad that you added everything and don’t have to worry.
Best First Aid Kit – Pricing and Reviews
Regardless of the survival first aid kit you buy, reviews and prices are also essential, if you want to make sure you get only the best products. Online reviews are available on all the top and most recent products offered by the aforementioned brands. Also, specialty websites can give you the scoop on what specific items to expect from each first aid kit and on whether or not the quality is worth the cost.
The price for a typical ready-made first aid kit can vary from below $10 to more than $50, and you’ll find that prices will vary even within the product list offered by the same brand. Although you don’t necessarily have to focus on paying a large sum for a common survival kit, you’ll find that it is worth taking the time to analyze your options and see which specific product can offer the most suitable supplies and tools for your emergency needs.
Getting the best first aid kit on the market ultimately depends on you and your specific requirements, and the quality level you get may be far less dependent on the amount you pay than you might imagine.
If you are looking to put together a SHTF medical emergency kit remember that what you will in fact be putting together is as much health protection and treatment as possible, there is a good chance there will be no doctors, no healthcare, no medication, nothing! Self reliance is key.
Important: Even if you have the best med kit possible and enough antibiotics to treat a small army of infected people, if you don’t know how to use any of it then you may end up doing more harm than good. Study!