This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, In Case of Survival may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Every zombie movie starts with someone at home, conveniently near their supplies. Real disasters are less considerate. Earthquakes, storms, blackouts and the rest arrive on a Tuesday afternoon while you are at work, your kids are at school and your go-bag is sitting in a closet across town. So the real question is not whether a home office or a cubicle is better for the apocalypse. It is how to be ready in whichever one you are sitting in when it starts.
If you work from home
Congratulations, you are already where most preparedness advice assumes you will be. Your supplies are close, your commute is zero and you can lock your own door. The risks are different:
- You are alone. No coworkers means nobody notices if you are hurt. Set up a daily check-in with a neighbor or friend, so somebody will come looking.
- Your setup depends on power. A home office with no electricity is just a room. Keep a power bank charged, know how long your laptop battery lasts, and have a battery or crank radio for news. For outages longer than a day, Practical Preppers builds off-grid power systems that keep a home office running.
- You may become everyone’s base. Family and friends who work elsewhere may try to reach you. Agree in advance on whether your home is the meeting point.
If you work in an office
Offices have real advantages: sturdy buildings, other people, and often a security team with an emergency plan. They also have one big weakness, which is that they are not home and nothing in them is yours.
- Know the building. Find two ways out of your floor and where the stairs lead. Learn where the first aid kit, fire extinguishers and defibrillator are. Elevators are off the table in fires and earthquakes.
- Keep a desk kit. A small bag in a drawer with comfortable walking shoes, a liter or two of water, a few energy bars, a phone charger, a flashlight, a dust mask, a day’s worth of any medication you need, and a printed list of important phone numbers. Your phone’s contacts are useless if the phone is dead. To skip the assembly, Redfora sells ready-made emergency kits.
- Plan the walk home. In a major disaster, roads jam and transit stops. Know how you would walk home, how long it would take, and which bridges or tunnels might close. Many people in New York walked hours across bridges after the 2003 blackout; plan for it now, in shoes you can walk in and with a pack you can carry for hours. Roaring Fire Gear makes backpacks for exactly that kind of distance.
- Know when to stay. Sometimes the safest move is sheltering where you are until conditions improve. A building with water, bathrooms and other people is not a bad place to wait out a storm.
For everyone: the family plan
The most useful preparation is the same wherever you work. Sit down with your household and decide:
- Where you will meet if you can’t get home: one place near the house and one outside the neighborhood.
- Who your out-of-town contact is. After a local disaster, long-distance calls and texts often get through when local ones don’t, so everyone checks in with the same relative in another state.
- Who picks up the kids if you can’t, and whether the school has that person on its list.
- What happens to the pets if nobody can get home for a day or two.
Write it on a card for every wallet and backpack. It takes an evening, and it is the single best thing you can do for your household’s odds.
So, cubicle or couch? Whichever one you’re in when it happens. Where do you spend your workdays, and how far is it from home on foot? Tell us in the comments.