Pack an encrypted copy of vital records

Keep an encrypted USB drive in your go-bag with scans of IDs, insurance papers, prescriptions, and essential medical information. Add a sealed printed copy of…

Keep an encrypted USB drive in your go-bag with scans of IDs, insurance papers, prescriptions, and essential medical information. Add a sealed printed copy of your password manager's emergency kit, and update both whenever the originals change.

Why the encryption is not optional

A drive holding your IDs, insurance, and medical details is a lifeline in an evacuation — and a jackpot for identity theft if it falls out of a bag in a shelter or parking lot. Encryption makes a lost drive a shrug instead of a disaster: without your passphrase, the contents are unreadable noise.

How to build it, step by step

1. Gather the set: IDs and passports, insurance cards and policies, property titles, prescriptions and medical summaries, bank and insurer phone numbers, pet records.
2. Scan or photograph each one carefully — every page, front and back of cards — into one folder.
3. Copy the folder to a USB drive and encrypt the whole drive: BitLocker on Windows, an encrypted disk image on a Mac, or the free tool VeraCrypt.
4. Choose a strong passphrase you can remember under stress, and store a sealed copy with a trusted person.
5. Add the sealed printout of your password manager’s emergency kit, so family can reach accounts if you cannot.
6. Put the drive in your go-bag, and refresh it whenever documents change — new passport, new policy, new prescriptions.