Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge

Requirement 9 is a whole other merit badge

"Earn the First Aid merit badge." One line, ten words, and it is the biggest thing on this page by a wide margin: First Aid has fifteen requirements and around a hundred parts of its own.

No other Eagle-required badge does this. It means the honest answer to "how long does Emergency Preparedness take?" is "as long as First Aid takes, plus a few weeks". If you have already earned First Aid, this badge is much shorter than it looks. If you have not, start there today and work through everything else on this page while you do.

There is a separate plan on this site for the First Aid merit badge.

The chart comes before the family meeting

Requirement 1(b) asks for a chart or spreadsheet covering twenty-one emergency situations against each aspect of preparedness. Requirement 2(a) then asks you to hold a family meeting and discuss the situations on that chart.

So the chart is finished first. That sounds obvious written down, and it is the kind of thing that catches people out anyway, because the family meeting needs a date everybody can make, and finding that date is easier when the chart is already done rather than being written the night before.

Twenty-one situations, and none of them optional

Requirement 1(b) runs from a stovetop fire to a tsunami. They are all required. They are drawn individually on this page not to pad it out but because a twenty-one item list inside one requirement is exactly the sort of thing that gets half-finished. It is easy to do fifteen and believe you have done the requirement.

The one that needs an organisation

Requirement 8(d) is taking part in an emergency service project or a practice exercise, with a troop, a community agency, a Scout camp or a school. That is somebody else's calendar. Ask early what is planned; a mobilisation exercise is not something you can arrange for yourself on a Tuesday.

Where you choose

• Requirement 3: inspect a home against a safety checklist, or build prevention plans for five family activities outside the home.
• Requirement 10: interview a coordinator, research three careers, or work out how these skills feed a hobby or a healthy lifestyle. Answer the two questions above the plan and the branches you are not taking come off your list.

What this page is

Not a copy of the requirements. Each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year. Nothing here is a substitute for the training the badge asks for.