Part two, yes I know it's long.

In the case of a disaster or emergency it is usually accompanied by severe medical emergencies as well. From frostbite if you are caught in a blizzard to the sky is the limit if you happen to be somewhere like the World Trade Center when it is run into.
It could be a car wreck, whether you are involved or just a witness, or it could be a hurricane. Regardless, in almost every one of these cases emergency medicine is one of the most important things a person can know and have tools for.
Do you know CPR? I didn’t until my Mom needed it for a half an hour straight. You learn things real fast when you have to. The problem is, generally in such cases you don’t have time to learn, fortunately in my case Dad is an EMT so that helps a lot.
Regardless of the situation here is what I would recommend as a MINIMUM first aid kit. This would be backpack sized or less, coat pocket sized if you like. I used to carry this with me everywhere but I have gotten lazy and haven’t for a while.
It doesn’t matter what kind of a container you use, just so it works. I know a guy that used to have his in a metal band aid box wired to his belt. That’s all you really need though you could get fancier than that and it wouldn’t hurt anything.
My top favorite herbs for emergencies. Cayenne and Lobelia. Don’t leave home without them. Don’t have a home without them! Properly used they are both so effective they can make the doctors feeble attempts to solve the problem with chemicals look absolutely silly. I used to carry a small tincture bottle of cayenne tincture in one pocket and the same sized bottle of lobelia tincture in another pocket. I would also carry a small film can full of the cayenne powder in a pocket, taped shut to keep the lid from coming off. Use a better container than that though because the film cans have a tendency to open at unwanted times even with tape.
The cayenne is for treating shock and stopping bleeding, both of which are really life threatening at times. I would also use it for hypothermia, frostbite, and heart attacks. The dry powder is for putting on externally bleeding wounds, it can stop the bleeding in seconds if the blood flow is not washing it away too badly. Take a few drops of the tincture internally and that will help too. For everything else I take a few drops of the tincture as often as I can stand it. If you see someone having a heart attack, a few drops on the tongue will almost always take them right out of it. I have never heard of a case where it didn’t work, though that isn’t saying it is fool proof.
The Lobelia is for spasms, poisoning and pain. If someone is having a seizure, a dropper full of the tincture on the tongue (careful that they don’t choke) will often stop it. For poisoning I use it as an emetic, know when to use emetics and when to use charcoal instead please! A tablespoon of the tincture every 10 minutes should bring up anything and everything that could possibly be in the stomach. A cup of water with a few pinches of cayenne powder mixed in taken before the lobelia will help the muscles not to get so sore from throwing up. I remember a guy from our church used to have muscle cramps so bad at times that he would fall over wherever he was and scream like he was being stabbed to death. Almost go into shock it was so bad. Doctors couldn’t do anything for him so his wife asked us if there was an herb that would help. Mom gave him a little bottle of lobelia to keep in his pocket and when he got a cramp he would take a dropper full of it and be just fine. I remember his wife calling, just bubbly with excitement, “He fell over in a spell before he could use it so I grabbed it out of his pocket and gave him a dose and in about 10 seconds he was perfectly normal again!” It works that fast.
It is also really valuable in cases where you need to open the breathing, like in cases of croup or bad colds. It has strong muscle relaxant properties in small doses, and it acts especially on the bronchial tubes to relax them and open up the breathing.
My siblings know what it does because I have had to use it so much, usually when a 6 year old gets hurt he has a fit and screams and howls like he was being killed, to calm them down I use lobelia, though they usually don’t want to take it. I just say, “If you don’t take this little dropper full I am going to give you a spoon full of cayenne tincture to boot!” That gets their mouth open in a hurry!
Charcoal is another thing that I would have in an emergency kit. Not much is better at absorbing poisons, just mix a bunch in with a glass of water and drink it down. That would be for ingested poisons, if you had a snakebite or a spider bite or something like that I would do a poultice of charcoal to draw it out. Echinacea by mouth also helps if you have any around.
Keep a sharp pocket knife. You will need one in almost any medical emergency.
A safety pin, or several, there are a ton of uses for one of these.
A needle and thread. You can’t sew up a wound without it. If you can get any, a suture kit would be even better. I have had one case where I needed one and didn’t have one. Fortunately, I was the patient and I am all right, just have a huge scar to use in telling the story.
Tweezers. Try pulling slivers or sewing a gash without them, you’ll find they are worth the space and weight they require.
A few flax seeds. Yes, just plain old flax seeds. Tape them to the bottom of a tincture bottle or something so they take up no space. I would use them for removing things from an eye. They won’t take out splinters but if you put a flax seed in the eye with a small thing in it the offending item will often stick to the seed and you can pull the seed out easily. A bonus is that flax seeds really don’t hurt in the eye much. Anyone that has had something in his eye knows how debilitating it is.
I like to have a little ginger powder handy too, I get motion sickness in most cases and I’ll always forget and try to read when I am riding with someone in a bouncy vehicle and the ginger keeps me from throwing up. I consider that a must have in am emergency kit for me! I can read in my car so I rarely have to use that trick, the last time I used it I was in an airplane with Kyle’s little brother at the controls. He knew I would get sick if he did any fancy maneuvers and wanted to see it happen at 5,000 feet.
If you have room, a tincture bottle of hydrogen peroxide would be valuable. I use the 35% food grade stuff, not the wimpy 3% you get at the store. You dilute it when you need it so you can carry enough to last a very long time in a tiny little bottle. Just don’t spill any on anything! It’s good for a lot of things from purifying water to cleaning nail holes in dirty feet. People worry about tetanus so much when someone steps on a nail but it isn’t that big of a deal. Tetanus is anaerobic so just flood the area with oxygen and the tetanus will all die. Let the wound bleed and clean it out with H2O2, which oxidizes everything it comes in contact with.
Rubber gloves. Sometimes I just have greasy hands and can’t wash them. Put gloves on and I don’t have to wash them! I usually use that trick when I am doctoring one of the animals, from pulling a calf to giving an IV to a cow down with milk fever. Gloves are handy to have.
Knowledge. You can’t beat it! Like I said, you can have everything in the world but if you don’t know what to do or how to use it, it is all useless to you. Another benefit is that it takes up zero space in your pocket or backpack!
In most common emergencies, stopping the bleeding, sewing that flap of skin back where it belongs for the time being or stopping that heart attack is a good start. There are a lot more things that could happen though and that is where knowledge of using the things that are around you is more valuable than gold. Take the time to learn how to use things. For instance, using the membrane from an egg on an open cut will pull the skin together (you have to do it right) and not only that but it does it so nicely that it leaves no scar! No stitches either. Also don’t underestimate the power of plain old clean water. It’s good for just about every injury or sickness. In cases of broken bones or sprains you can use the lobelia to relax the muscles (topically) and then pull the leg or arm or whatever back into place and splint it. Unless you can get someone that knows what they are doing, that is a much better solution! Get a good book about this subject and read it several times. It also helps to come from a big family on a farm because you get plenty of experience at dealing with things.
You should be able to scrounge for most everything else you would need. Shoelaces, tape, water, containers for heating water, sticks for splints, crutches or for building a stretcher. Your T shirt for bandages etc. My usual band aid is a strop of tape with a wad of comfrey leaf in the summer or a piece of rag or a Kleenex in the winter. It works fine and I don’t have to run to the house for a band aid that will just fall off anyway.
Tailor the kit to your own needs. I have the ginger, you may not need it but may be as blind as a bat without glasses, in that case I would keep a spare pair at all times, it wouldn’t do to get lost because you tripped and broke your glasses, Also if you take any medication you had better keep it with you. Better yet, get off of it and you won’t need it!

To be realistic, and from my point of view, the absolute worst place to experience a disaster, whether natural or man made is in a city. Unfortunately, that is the most likely place for such a thing to happen for a huge majority of the population! I’ll be perfectly honest, I would almost rather be stranded on a nice deserted island in the south pacific than stuck in traffic in Chicago. I have been stuck in traffic there so I am not just talking! At least I would know what to do on a deserted island, during a disaster or emergency in a big city I would be at a loss as to what to do other than to do anything and everything to get out of there no matter what! I think one of the most helpless of times I have ever had (I have had more than enough times when I have felt helpless) was when I was lost in down town Los Angeles. There wasn’t a person in sight, it was about 9 pm and I had no clue where I was. The comical part of this was the fact that I had just flown over town in a jet about an hour before and had noted the skyscraper section and thought to myself, “ I really hope I don’t have to go in there, that is the last place on earth I want to go right now!” Well, there I was, driving in circles on eerily empty streets, exactly where I had not wanted to be. I had been directed in a certain direction to get to the freeway where I would head south to San Diego but I ended up in an area where I figured from the graffiti and junk that it was a very unsavory part of town. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had been carjacked or something, and because of the airplane it was one of the rare times when I didn’t have a gun handy. I prayed of course, and not too long after I found a freeway, which made it easy to find the road I needed and got on to I-5 which is what I wanted in the first place. What a feeling, finally on the open road and when I got out of town and onto the lovely road where everyone was doing at least 90, which wasn’t nearly fast enough for me, I wanted to get out of there! Next time I want a bulletproof car.
I like the country but there are times when I have to travel to the city, fly on a plane, ride the train or something like that. I need to learn how to deal with such things a little better than I do now. Like I said before, all I know of to do now is to get away as fast as possible, and I keep that in mind if I am in that situation. There is not a lot that can be done that isn’t something that should be done anyway. Things like keeping really good maps in the car, never letting the fuel tank get below half, and I try to carry a spare tank of fuel in the trunk as well, keeping at least $100 in cash in the car at all times, small bills remember, a single $100 bill does you no good if the gas station won’t take it after dark. I also keep a bank card and gas card in the car because one time I was coming from Chicago and was in the middle of nowhere when I about ran out of gas because all of the stations were closed. Yes it was late at night! I had a credit card at the time and managed to find a station that was closed but took cards. God had to be pushing us because I had been on empty for a long time. I don’t do credit cards so I don’t have one, but you can often get gas cards or even a debit card works if you have a bank account.
I used to keep the car ready so I could get to almost anywhere on the continent in 12-15 hours in an emergency (that’s not taking into account the speed limit or cops trying to enforce it) but I have gotten lazy and I probably couldn’t get out of my driveway in 12 hours on a snowy day anymore.

We can’t physically prepare for everything that may or may not happen. To do that would make us into a worried skeleton from running around gathering stuff. We can prepare in our minds though, knowledge, experience and relying and trusting on God. In the end, He is the one that gets us through trials whether we prepare or not. Remember it was the virgins that carried spare oil that had enough to go welcome the bridegroom and were taken into the wedding feast, the 10 that did not prepare didn’t make it. I realize that the story is talking about something totally different but the idea is still valid I think, and we should take the lesson to heart and be ready.