Disaster preparedness: with this “go” bag pillow, you’ll always be prepared for an emergency, even in the middle of the night!

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Background:

When disaster strikes, it’s useful to have a set of easily-accessible emergency supplies that can be brought by a person fleeing danger. This is the concept of a “go” bag: a backpack full of common supplies that a person might need if they had to temporarily abandon their home due to a natural disaster.

The Issue:

It’s tempting to put a bag of rarely-used emergency supplies somewhere out-of-the-way. The problem is that then when a person is fleeing a flash flood / sharknado / mudslide / whatever, they’ll have to rummage through their house looking for these inaccessible emergency supplies.

What is needed is a way to make sure the “go” bag is always somewhere immediately accessible, even if disaster strikes in the dead of night!

Proposal:

The solution is unbelievably simple: it turns out that most people sleep in close proximity (possibly even in direct contact with) a pillow (Figure 1) every night.

Fig. 1: A pillow, in case you were unfamiliar with the concept. Apple for scale.

Conveniently, this pillow just happens to be almost exactly the same size as an emergency backpack! You can see where this is going, I’m sure.

All we need to do is repurpose the pillow so that instead of only being stuffed with useless foam padding, it is stuffed with essential emergency supplies (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: We can cram all these useful supplies inside a regular pillowcase. In this particular example, there’s even still room for the original pillow!

It’s not immediately evident from the high-quality packing job shown above, but a regular pillowcase can fit a huge number of crucial emergency supplies (Figure 3).

Fig. 3: The full set of disaster-readiness supplies covers nearly every possible type of emergency!

You might say, “Ah, this is fine and good, but I’ll probably sideline this emergency ‘go’ bag pillow, too, surely I don’t have anywhere good to store it.” But you do—you can STILL use it as a regular pillow (Figure 4)!

Fig. 4: And the best part: it still works as a pillow, too! It might seem a little lumpy at first, but you’ll get used to it. Try not to sleep directly on the scissors or power drill, though.

Conclusion:

Pack your “go” pillow today! Don’t wait until disaster strikes and it’s too late!

PROS: Increases emergency-readiness and reduces stress levels of people who are in an emergency situation, since they’ll know that they’re prepared (with all the items shown in Figure 3).

CONS: None!

Originally published 2024-02-10.