A long blackout is not always the only problem in the house. People leave because of a secondary failure — a burst pipe, a kitchen fire from improvised cooking, an order to evacuate. The documents that make the next month survivable should already be in one bag.

The bag is a bag, not a filing cabinet. IDs, insurance papers, a list of prescriptions, the policies a clerk will ask about, and a few photos you would actually miss. If it does not fit in something you can carry down the stairs while the other hand is full, it is still a filing cabinet.

Paper still beats a hard drive for the things a clerk will ask to see. A USB drive in the same bag is fine as a copy. It is not fine as the only copy if you also need a computer that turns on.

Clerks, pharmacies, and insurers in a bad month may be on paper, on a generator, or on a system that is only half up. A card and a printed policy do not need your laptop. A photo of the documents on a phone helps until the phone dies and you have no paper behind it. Put the photo on the phone and the paper in the bag.

Include a list of account numbers you can read without logging in. Password managers that live only online are a single point of failure you can feel coming.

Write the numbers, the insurer’s phone, the doctor, the person you would call out of area. Update the list when the policy changes, not during the walk to the car. An online password manager is convenient in a week when the network exists. In the week it does not, it is a lock on the far side of a door you cannot open.

Fireproof is nice if you already have the box. It does not replace grabbable. A perfect box in a house you have been told to leave is a box. The requirement is that the next month’s paper is already in the thing you pick up.