Put 24 European emergency guides side by side and the overlap is narrower than you would expect. We mapped every guide onto the same 53-item checklist. Six items are on every list. Most of the rest are recommended by some countries and ignored by others.
Fig. 1 · Consensus
Each dot is one item, placed by how many of the 24 guides list it
The six on every list
Drinking water, a torch, a battery or wind-up radio, regular medication, a first-aid kit and cash. Together they cover the basic needs in the European Commission's guidance: water, light, health and information. Cash is on every list because card terminals and cash machines stop when the power does. Close behind come spare batteries (22 guides), and then candles, matches, a lighter, a power bank and copies of your documents (19 each). More on each in the items every guide agrees on.
Where countries split
By category, the guides agree most on power and information and money and papers: on average, each item in those groups appears in about two thirds of the lists. They agree least on tools and safety, hygiene and toilet and what to take if you leave, where the average item appears in only about a quarter to a third of the lists. Toilets are the clearest gap. Every household needs one when the water stops, but only Germany, Sweden and Poland list an emergency toilet bucket.
Fig. 2 · Interactive
Pick an item: which countries recommend it?
The rarest items
- Iodine tablets: Finland, Belgium, Denmark and Austria. They protect the thyroid only after a radiation release, and only if taken when the authorities say so.
- An emergency warning app and a carbon-monoxide alarm: only Germany and Poland. The CO alarm matters because power cuts push people to use gas heaters and camping stoves indoors.
- A toilet bucket with bags: Germany, Sweden and Poland.
Rare doesn't mean unimportant. Often a single authority has thought one risk through further than the others. Our checklist marks as essential anything at least a quarter of the guides list, and shows the rest as "also recommended" with the countries that name them.
More from this series: Europe's emergency lists in charts and which countries' lists look alike.