Shelter-in-Place Kit & Guide
A Shelter-in-Place kit is a kit that allows you to seal off a building, room, or vehicle to make it as airtight as possible. This kit can greatly increase your survivability against chemical, biological, and radiological exposure. The kit itself doesn’t have to be anything fancy and is very simple to put together.
It is sometimes confused with designated disaster shelters and the kits that accompany those. Shelter-in-place is an emergency warning that authorities will give in the event of a chemical or radiological emergency in specific areas. It is direction to complete a simple plan to prevent your exposure to airborne threats.
Contents (Jump to a Section)
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Shelter-in-Place Kit Contents
It’s one of the easiest and cheapest emergency kits to throw together. The essentials are just two components: tape and plastic sheeting.
Duck Tape MAX [Budget pick from our duct tape review] – Duct tape is great, and you probably already have some lying around. Chances are, you might not have enough. To seal one room, you will need at least one 30-yard roll. When used properly, these kits use a lot of tape and plastic sheeting.
Plastic Sheeting – You can get 4-6 mil sheeting of any color, but I prefer 4 mil since you can contour it to odd-sized doors, windows, and vents. I also prefer black sheeting since it can double as a resource to cover windows for light discipline.
The 10-foot wide sheeting we suggest may seem like overkill, but it is always better to cut plastic down to cover an opening than to seam it together with duct tape- there is almost always a hole!
Strongly Suggested
Besides the two basic components, we strongly suggest an emergency weather radio for your kit. The other components are useless if you can’t hear the shelter-in-place, evacuate, and all-clear directives.
Your cell phone may be operable and receiving alerts as well, but it’s best not to rely on a single source of communication/information. Plus, most of our weather radio picks can actually help keep your cell phone charged during a power outage.
Weather radios are the cheapest way to stay informed during emergencies. They are versatile, can usually generate their own power through an integrated crank or small solar panel, and can tune to the WX band for direct alerts, updates, and information.
Additional Materials
Once you’ve sealed the room, you typically stay put for a while. Depending on the airborne threat, this could be up to several days. At the very minimum, to receive the shelter-in-place directive and to stay updated on when you should leave, you’ll need a radio.
Beyond that radio that should be in your sealed-off room, you should also have access to your Emergency Home Survival Kit. We have an extremely thorough guide, but this is the kit that covers your survival basics- including food, water, hygiene, sanitation, lighting, entertainment- everything you will need to get through a few days of sheltering in place comfortably and effectively.
This kit is the backbone of your preparedness, so you need it for the wide range of threats beyond the ones that require you to shelter in place.
How to Shelter-in-Place
The shelter-in-place kit is used for three types of scenarios: chemical, biological, or radiological events. These events usually come with a warning, and possibly even a message to shelter in place. Even with a warning, being able to shelter in place quickly is the most important part of the entire plan. While a radiological event could take hours to contaminate, a chemical release would usually only give you minutes to become airtight. Follow the following steps in order:
- Close and lock all windows and doors. Leaving any of these open would just be unwise.
- Shut off your HVAC system. Do not pull any air in from the outside.
- Shut off any fans. Quit circulating air within your home.
- Go to your designated Shelter in Place room. It should be on the top story of your home and towards the center. The higher the room, the better, since chemicals and other contaminants are heavier than air and tend to settle in clouds at ground level.
- Cut plastic to cover your doors and windows in this room. Some people choose to pre-cut plastic to the size of their doors and windows to save time at this step. I don’t suggest this, however, since that may affect your plans if you have to switch Shelter in Place rooms for any reason.
- Tape the plastic to the frames to create airtight barriers. Use plenty of duct tape on areas where you are not sure it has been sealed- better safe than sorry.
- Cut plastic and tape over any air intake or exhaust inside the room.
- Turn on the radio and stay informed on when conditions are safe for you to evacuate.
Here is the corniest video we could find about it that is still accurate:
Why You Need a Shelter-in-Place Kit
Evaluate the threats that apply to your area. Do you live close to military bases (attacks), industrial areas (chemical accidents), or a nuclear power plant? (radiological contamination) If you perceive any threat that would include a chemical, biological, or radiological hazard, you need to put together a Shelter in Place Kit.
The kit is very easy to put together- the plan is much harder to execute quickly. In a life-or-death situation, you may be surprised at how hard it is to cut and apply plastic to windows and doors. Practice can make perfect, so a dry run is never a bad idea.
Keep your kit in your designated shelter-in-place room to save a little more time and to know where it is. Let your family in on the plan, so they know what to do as well. Some believe the kit is not worth it because you will “suffocate to death”.
The Math on Why You Won’t Suffocate
A 12’ x 12’ x 12’ room contains roughly 49,000 liters of air. While a person breathes about 11,000 liters a day, they only extract about a quarter of the oxygen from each breath. Our biology isn’t about using every liter of air; it’s about the oxygen concentration.
Once the oxygen level drops from the normal 21% to around 15%, or if carbon dioxide levels rise too high, the air becomes unsafe. Because of this ‘usable limit,’ the safe window for one person in a sealed room of this size is close to two and a half days. Five people would last in a room for about half a day.
These are fine because a Shelter-in-Place kit is designed to be used only for a few hours. Chemicals you can typically wait out, and radiological exposure forces you to evacuate eventually anyway- you are just sheltering for the duration that Alpha and Beta particles are being emitted. Once those have settled, you will need to evacuate to avoid long-term gamma radiation exposure.
Warning: Don’t deplete the oxygen levels unnecessarily with open flames or panicked/high-stress breathing.
Vehicle Shelter-in-Place
Shelter-in-place in a vehicle is a different story. The steps to do this are simpler than a room- you turn off the AC/heater fan and close all the vents with duct tape. It is advised that you turn your car off, but in this situation, you really don’t have that much air.
Staying mobile and continuing to evacuate may be a priority since you only have a few hours of air in your average car. You may have to make that judgment call.
This is just one more reason to keep a roll of duct tape in your car. Instead of stowing it in the trunk or bed, make sure you have access to the roll without exiting your vehicle.
The Final Word
As far as specialized kits go, the Shelter-in-Place kit is pretty cheap and easy to put together. It can save your life in the rare scenario where you find yourself needing it, but it can also double for other purposes.
Duct tape and plastic sheeting have countless uses just by themselves, so there is no reason not to put this kit together. If you are looking to learn more about the components or survival in-place (bug-in) kits, check out:
- Best Duct Tape for Emergencies and Survival
- Best Flood Barriers for Disasters and Emergencies
- Home Survival Kit List | 53 Essentials
See more of our expert-written guides, resources, and reviews in your search results – add TruePrepper as a preferred source.
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Thanks for these tips, might come handy some day.
:)
Joe
How I can save all this information in case power grid is out and I have no access to the internet?
Hi Gerry, most of our checklists are available in our free PDF library.
The Math on Why You Won’t Suffocate: I may be mistaken but I believe the limiting factor is high CO2 rather than low O2. The drive we feel to breathe is triggered by the buildup of CO2 not the depletion of O2. In the event of a cave-in, underground miners often are supplied with a lime-based product to absorb the excess CO2 which is the more immediate threat.
You are 💯 correct! CO2 build-up is the greatest concern, not O2 depletion.