New data reveals what people would save in a disaster situation

Imagine your phone suddenly flashes with an emergency alert in the middle of the night and you must leave your home immediately. 

What do you grab? 

Researchers have been investigating what people would want to take with them during a disaster as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded After the End project, which is investigating how people experience and recover from crises. 

1,000 adults were asked to imagine receiving an emergency alert telling them to leave their home immediately and take enough supplies to last for the next three days. They were then asked what they would want to take with them. 

Most participants forgot to pack essential survival items including food, water, essential medicines, cash, important documents and batteries or power banks. 

Only four people out of the 1,000 surveyed reported being already fully prepared for a disaster with a pre-packed emergency bag. 

Then, the researchers asked if they could take one more item what would it be. 

Their answers didn't simply list more survival equipment - they started listing pieces of their lives. 

Photographs were the most mentioned item, with nearly a third of participants saying they would take them. Phones came next, followed by jewellery and sentimental keepsakes. Dogs, toys and teddy bears, cats, books, wedding rings, letters, diaries, children's artwork and even the ashes of deceased relatives and pets all appeared among the responses. 

It might initially seem irrational.  If your house is threatened by fire, flood or another disaster, surely bottled water is objectively more useful than a teddy bear? 

Psychology suggests it may not be quite that simple due to a psychological concept known as the extended self where some of the things we own become incorporated into the way we understand ourselves. 

Your wedding ring isn't simply a piece of metal, a photograph isn't merely ink on paper, an old teddy bear isn't simply fabric and stuffing.  These objects can contain memories of people, places and earlier versions of ourselves. 

Following the devastating 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake in Japan, researchers surveyed survivors about important possessions they had lost. People who had lost possessions they considered important showed greater stress than those who had not, supporting the idea that involuntarily losing meaningful possessions can affect us psychologically. 

Researchers also looked at self-efficacy, which is our belief that we are capable of dealing with situations and achieving what we need to achieve. 

Someone with high self-efficacy is more likely to think: I can deal with this. 

People in the survey who reported greater self-efficacy also reported having more of the practical items, which raises an interesting possibility. 

Disaster preparedness may not simply be about owning enough tins of food, it may also be about creating a sense that I know who I am, I know what matters to me and I can cope with what happens next. 

Emergency authorities are right to focus on water, food, medication, communications and other essentials. Those things can literally keep us alive. 

But perhaps psychological survival deserves a little space in the bag too. 

Because disasters don't just remove electricity, running water and access to shops. 

They can suddenly remove our home, our routines and the familiar objects that normally surround us. 

And when almost everything familiar disappears, a photograph, wedding ring or battered childhood teddy bear may do something surprisingly important. 

It reminds us that although our surroundings have changed, we are still us. 

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