Gear guide

Zombie Survival Kit: The Complete Gear Checklist

A zombie survival kit is just an honest emergency survival kit with a sense of humour about it. The same seven categories we score in the readiness assessment are the ones that decide whether a household copes with a hurricane, a week-long outage or a horde: supplies, shelter, medical, mobility, power, weapons and outdoor skills.

Work through the checklist below one category at a time. Anything you already own counts. If you want to know which category to fix first, take the assessment and get a score out of 100 with your three biggest gaps named.

Medical

Treating the injuries and infections that turn survivable into fatal.

30-day medication organizer and cooler pouch

Keeps prescriptions usable.

Trauma first-aid kit with tourniquet

Bleeding control beats band-aids.

Mobility

Getting out, and getting out before the roads close.

72-hour bug-out backpack

Everything on your back in one grab.

Orienteering Compass

Finds your direction when GPS fails.

Paper road atlas and compass

Works when GPS doesn't.

Outdoor skills

Skills gear: fire, navigation, repair and everything the manual covers.

Ferro rod fire starter

Fire in the wet, forever.

Four-season sleeping bag

Exposure kills more people than anything else.

Power

Light, charge and communication once the grid stops answering.

Foldable 100W solar panel

Recharges without a grid.

NOAA hand-crank emergency radio

Information is a survival resource.

Portable power station

Runs lights, radios and medical gear.

Shelter

Staying dry, warm and out of sight wherever you end up.

Contractor-grade tarp and paracord

Fallback shelter anywhere.

Heavy-duty door reinforcement bar

Buys you the minutes that matter.

Supplies

Water, food and the boring consumables that decide the first two weeks.

30-day freeze-dried food supply

Calories that keep for decades.

55-Gallon Water Storage Barrel, BPA Free, Emergency Water Supply

Stores a long-term emergency water supply.

Collapsible 5-gallon water carrier

Moves water when the taps stop.

Gravity water filter

Turns questionable water into drinking water.

Weapons

Defence and utility tools you can actually maintain.

Fiberglass-handled splitting axe

Firewood first, everything else second.

Full-tang machete with sheath

Clears brush, doubles as defense.

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Personal assessment

Which gap should you close first?

Fifteen questions on your ZIP, your supplies and your plan. You get a Zombie Survival Index score out of 100 and a full readiness report by email.

Get my free ZSI score