A “go-bag” is defined by the New York City Office of Emergency Management as “a collection of items you can use in the event of an evacuation,” but in a recent Styles article, a reporter asked some well-known New Yorkers what other items they’d put in their bags besides basic emergency provisions.
If you were leaving your home in a hurry in the event of a disaster, what items — irreplaceable because of their practical, sentimental or monetary value — would you make sure to include in your bag?
Get together with your English-speaking friends or relatives and discuss this question.
You can also use Stephanie Rosenbloom's article to gain some background information about the topic.
For further ideas, you can also visit The Burning House, a project for which people submitted a picture with the objects they would take with them in case of fire in their house. There are lists naming the objects on each picture, so The Burning House can prove invaluable to develop our grasp of everyday vocabulary items.
From a linguistic point of view, the activity can help us revise and practise the second conditional to express hypothesis:
If I had to leave my house in an emergency, I would take...
