A cupboard full of canned soup, beans and tuna looks like a plan until the one tool that opens them goes missing. The electric opener on the counter does nothing when the power is out, and the drawer of kitchen gadgets rarely holds a hand-cranked one.
That is why a plain manual can opener keeps showing up in preparedness advice. Ready.gov’s basic kit list names a “manual can opener (for food),” and the Red Cross survival kit page tells families to add one. Canned food only counts as emergency food if something can open the can without electricity.
What Ready.gov Puts Next to the Canned Food
The federal Ready.gov site lists the manual can opener in its basic disaster supplies kit, alongside water, a flashlight, a radio and a whistle. Its separate food page is more specific. According to Ready.gov, the food list includes ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits and vegetables, and the very next item in that line is a can opener.
The page goes further, advising families to “be sure to include a manual can opener and eating utensils.” It also recommends choosing foods the family will actually eat, and keeping at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food. Cans, peanut butter and dry cereal fill that role, but only the cans need a tool.
Ready.gov adds one practical note about the refrigerator: it says an unopened refrigerator will keep food cold for about four hours. Once that window closes, shelf-stable cans become the main food in the house, which makes the tool beside them matter even more.
How the Red Cross Frames the Same Tool
The Red Cross uses a slightly different structure. Its supply list calls for non-perishable, easy-to-prepare food and water at one gallon per person per day. It describes a 3-day supply for evacuation and a 2-week supply for staying at home. The manual can opener appears in a separate group of items to add for a household’s own needs.
Both organizations land in the same place. The opener is not a bonus accessory. It sits on the list because it is the difference between a pantry and a pile of sealed metal.
The same thinking applies to heat and light. A piece on things never to do with a kerosene heater shows why backup gear needs the same care as backup food, and a list of eight things never to store under the kitchen sink is a reminder that emergency supplies belong on a dry shelf, not under the plumbing.
For shoppers building a kit slowly, tips on seasonal storage can help decide where a box of emergency supplies lives, and a roundup of clever kitchen tricks for home cooks covers the small tools that earn drawer space. A look at easy-to-use products that simplify everyday life at home points to the same idea: the simplest gear is often the most useful when something goes wrong.
Buying the opener is the cheap part of the plan. The lists ask only for a manual model, and the basic wheel-and-handle design that dates to the 1925 feed-wheel version fits that description. Testing it once on a spare can at home, before it is needed, shows whether it grips the rim and cuts cleanly. A dull or flimsy opener that struggles on a can of beans in the kitchen will struggle more in a dark room.
A Short History of the Tool Nobody Thinks About
The can came well before the opener. According to Wikipedia’s entry on canning, Peter Durand patented tin-can food preservation in 1810. The same article says the can opener arrived roughly thirty years after the can, and that until then soldiers opened cans with bayonets or rocks.
Wikipedia’s can opener article lays out the sequence. Robert Yeates, a British cutlery maker, devised a claw-ended opener in 1855. In 1858 Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, patented a lever-type opener that the Army adopted during the Civil War, though its exposed blade was considered too dangerous for home use. William Lyman patented a rotating-wheel design in 1870, and in 1925 the Star Can Opener Company of San Francisco added a serrated feed wheel that grips the rim. That version is still widely used.
The electric opener came later and is the one that fails first in an outage. The article notes that the first electric can opener was patented in 1931, though it found little success, and that a freestanding electric model sold well in 1956. Anyone who relies on a plug-in model can easily forget that a hand-cranked backup exists at all.
Where the Opener Lives Matters as Much as Having One
A tool that exists but cannot be found does little good. A few habits keep it useful: store it with the canned food rather than in the gadget drawer, and keep a second one in the car or camping box. Anyone planning a kit can also pair it with a spoon or two, since Ready.gov specifically mentions eating utensils.
Pet Households Get the Same Advice
The AVMA’s page on pets and disasters carries the idea over to animals. Its pet kit list includes a hand-operated can opener along with a collapsible feeding dish and water bowl. For households with a dog or cat on canned food, the opener serves two bowls.
The AVMA’s list also calls for three to seven days’ worth of pet food, rotated so it does not expire. The pattern across all three organizations is consistent. Canned food needs no refrigeration and no cooking, yet it still needs one small, mechanical tool. Putting the opener in the same bin as the cans takes a minute, and it removes a problem that only shows up at the worst moment.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Donar Reiskoffer – CC BY 3.0/Wikimedia Commons
