You're not being paranoid.
You're just paying attention.
And once you've started, the only question is what to do first.
There was a specific moment. Maybe it was the week the grocery stores ran out of certain things for the first time in your living memory. Maybe it was a news story about the power grid, or a storm that knocked out your neighbourhood for four days, or a conversation with someone who had been through something real and told you what it was actually like.
Whatever it was, something shifted. And now you're thinking about things you never thought about before.
What do we have in the house if the power goes out for a week? If we couldn't get to a store for ten days? If we had to leave in under an hour — what would we take?
You open the kitchen cupboard and do a rough calculation. Maybe five days, optimistically. Maybe three, realistically. Maybe less if you remove everything that requires gas or electricity to prepare.
You thought about putting something together. You looked at a few options online. And then you hit the wall that almost everyone hits: half the market is designed for hardcore preppers who already know what they're doing, and the other half is so basic it makes you feel worse for having bought it. The thing you actually want — a clear, honest, sensibly built starting point — seems oddly hard to find.
FEMA recommends two weeks of emergency supplies for a household. The Red Cross recommends 72 hours as a minimum — the window between a crisis event and organised relief reaching most families.
Most emergency management professionals, when you talk to them off the record, say that a family with a solid 72-hour kit and two weeks of additional pantry supply feels genuinely prepared — not anxious-prepared, actually prepared.
That's the realistic target. And the 72-hour kit is the foundation. We built the Groundwork 72 for exactly this.
Families who want to take this seriously without it taking over their lives, buying into an aesthetic they don't identify with, or spending six weekends researching water filtration systems. Here's what's in it, in plain language:
| What you get | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Clean water for 72 hours (Sawyer filter + 8L storage + backup tablets) | Water is the first thing that becomes critical in any displacement. The filter removes 99.9999% of bacteria. It works from a puddle. You don't need to trust municipal supply. |
| Food for 72 hours (12 ration bars, 4,920 kcal total, no cooking required) | Designed for the scenario where your kitchen isn't available. US Coast Guard approved formulation. 5-year shelf life. They don't taste bad — we tested this specifically. |
| Warmth for four (SOL Heavy Duty emergency blankets ×4) | These are not the foil blankets that tear when you unfold them. They reflect 90% of body heat. Adults and children both covered. |
| 72 hours of light (2× Goal Zero lanterns, solar-rechargeable) | 200 lumens each, 70-hour runtime. Power outage, evacuation shelter, vehicle — they work in any context. |
| Phone power (Anker 733 power bank, 10,000mAh) | Charges your phone twice from zero. Holds charge for 12 months in storage. |
| Emergency radio (Midland ER310) | Hand-crank — works with no external power. All NOAA weather alert channels. This is what tells you what's happening when the internet is down. |
| First aid (73-item kit, properly curated) | Not padded with items that exist to inflate the count. Includes genuine trauma capability — CAT tourniquets, haemostatic gauze — alongside comprehensive everyday-injury coverage. |
| Everything else | Leatherman multi-tool, paracord, duct tape, sanitation supplies, document wallet with family emergency record template, laminated emergency protocol card. |
It arrives in a 1680D nylon bag that fits under your bed, in a car boot, or in a hall cupboard. 6.8kg complete. One adult can carry it at pace.
Shipped directly from us in Bozeman, Montana. That is $1.11 per week over the five-year rotation cycle — less than a coffee, to close the gap that has been sitting in the back of your mind since whatever that moment was.
Free shipping · 30-day returns · 5-year component guarantee
The Groundwork 72 covers 72 hours. It is not a month's supply, not a long-term storage system, not a complete preparedness solution. We tell you this because most kits in this category imply they're the whole answer. They're not, and neither are we.
The 72 is the foundation. After you have it, the next step is two weeks of additional pantry supply — which costs nothing beyond your normal grocery shop spread over a few months. We publish a guide on how to do this at groundworkco.com/next-steps. It's free, it takes 20 minutes to read, and it will tell you exactly what to do after this purchase.
"I felt a bit silly buying it, honestly. Then we had a five-day power outage in January and I didn't feel silly at all."K.B. — Virginia
Groundwork 72 / Family — $289. Start here.
Free shipping · 30-day returns · Assembled in Montana
You've already done the hard part — deciding this matters. The rest is just one step at a time.