Reddit mentions of Aqua Blox 5-Year Shelf-Life Emergency Drinking Water, 8.45-Ounce Tetra Pack (Pack of 27)

Ok, the basics that you need:

• water for you and your pets
  
• non-perishable food for you and your pets
  
• a handcrank radio/flashlight
  
• any perscriptions you or your pets need
  
• a first aid kit: immediate things you might have to deal with are profuse bleeding and broken bones. Buy a good, thorough first aid kit, and a first-aid book and keep them together.
  
• a wrench by your easy-to-find gas line, so you can shut it off if there's a break in the gas line to avoid fire/explosions. A good system is to buy a wrench just for this purpose, tie it near the gas line, and have the gas line painted white, with red on the middle part (that you would actually grab and turn). You want to make this as intuitive as possible, so that if you're not home, hopefully a neighbor might come check your house and help you with this.
  
  These are the basics, I went overboard and have a complete survival kit (for 10 people) and added more water and first aid stuff to that. Keep in mind, emergency personnel say that, realistically, in a major disaster, it could be up to two weeks before anyone comes by to help or check on you, so you need to be prepared to live on your own for that long.
  
  As far as water goes, you need high-quality, opaque, food grade plastic. Ideally, you might buy a few 55 gallon drums, as you'll want water for two weeks for drinking, as well as washing your hands, etc. It needs to be stored away from light (which will encourage bacteria to grow), and be for long-term storage (milk jug plastic is not designed to be in use for long periods, and that plastic will start to break down). Obviously, if you're in an apartment, a 55 gal drum might not be for you, but there are other options. For example, you can buy these aqua blox that are supposed to be good for up to 5 years. Also, your hot water heater contains drinkable water, unless the water main breaks and starts to let in crap (so you might want to shut that off if you suspect it). You cannot drink pool water (unless you're on a salt system, in which case you must distill it first), but you can drink the water out of your toilet tank (not your toilet bowl - very different) so don't put those chemicals in your toilet tank! you don't really need blue toilet water, anyway.
  
  So, back to sanitizing your water if you choose to fill your own containers. A standard is to use just the tiniest bit of sodium hypochlorite (5.25%, common bleach), let it sit for 30 minutes, and then drink it (off the top of my head, I think its 1 tsp to 1 gal, but you should check and write it down and keep it in your kit). You might also want to do that before you store it... some people say do it before you store it, others before you drink it, in an emergency, I would go with both. Make sure, though, that you don't get the bleach with any fragrance, gel-consistency, soaps, or other crap - straight, simple bleach, Iodine can also be used. The best I've seen though, is that these stay fresh for up to 1 year, maybe two. In an emergency, you can probably re-sanitize with bleach and be fine. However, I recently found this product and will be using this, instead, as it claims to keep the water good for up to 5 years. Might be wasting my money, but we'll see. For some reason, I've seen no websites, nor have the emergency personnel I've talked to, ever mentioned the little fizzing water sanitizers. I'll have to inquire next time if that's because these are not viable for true sanitizing, or because they, themselves have an expiration date. Bleach, as far as I can tell, does not.
  
  Hope this helps. I think the bottom line is that you need to be prepared for way longer than most people think. I took a CERT training course last year (which I highly recommend, I learned A TON) and they said that most likely you'll be on your own for two weeks, which almost no one is prepared for. So, better to go overboard then get sick from dehydration.
  
  Good luck and good on ya for being prepared!