90% of households have no plan to evacuate in 5 minutes

Only 10% of households are ready to evacuate in 5 minutes

Spain is a country of insurance policies: home, life, travel, even mobile phone insurance. But when the question is 'what would you do if you had to leave everything behind in five minutes?', the most common answer is an awkward silence. The economic debate on emergency preparedness leaves one figure on the table: only between 5% and 15% of the population would have a clear plan. In other words, between one and three in twenty.

The 72-hour backpack: what doesn't fit in an insurance policy

The first consensus among the most pragmatic analyses is that you don't improvise a plan: you execute one you've prepared. The essentials are ranked in a hierarchy: proper footwear, warm clothing, medication, keys, a charged phone, documents and water. A backpack packed with everything needed for 72 hours appears on almost every list. But what most people forget doesn't fit in the backpack: two meeting points, a contact outside the area and at least one alternative route that doesn't depend on the car. 'If the road is closed, the vehicle becomes a death trap,' warn those who have thought through the scenario more than once.

The price of being prepared: from an e-bike to an off-roader

The solutions described are not cheap. Some detail a mountain e-bike with three batteries for 300 kilometres, quick-dry technical clothing and cash in three currencies. Others admit to owning an off-road vehicle with two extra 20-litre jerry cans and a water-purifying flask with a capacity of 10,000 litres. Ammunition, gold and cash appear as stores of value in the worst-case scenario. But it's not all about equipment: some admit their plan boils down to waiting for someone with a ready-packed backpack to walk by and grabbing it. The freeloader problem taken to the extreme: relying on someone else's effort being available to those who made none.

Staying home: the rational alternative to the flight instinct

There is, however, a camp that distrusts evacuation itself. If the order to leave comes from the government, they reason, the likely outcome is that half the population will rush onto the same road and the traffic jam will be worse than the disaster. In that case, the safest shelter is your own home, or a second property in the countryside, the more isolated the better. The argument has its own economic logic: in a crisis with collapsed infrastructure, mobility becomes a high-risk luxury. The decision to stay or go is not instinct: it's a probability calculation about the specific threat.

On this basis, preparedness remains a niche. No one has settled whether it's a rational investment or a weekend fantasy. But when reaction time is measured in minutes, the only certainty is that the decision has already been made in advance. Anyone who doesn't know whether to leave or stay has probably already decided to do nothing.