Maybe I’ve written one too many books with the word apocalypse in the title, or maybe all the people I know that have been victims of one hurricane or another are rubbing off on me, but I find myself wanting to be prepared for whatever unexpected events might come. So I’ve got food, water, power, fuel, first-aid. I’m not a hardcore prepper, but I’ve got a few supplies.

Thinking about ebola made me realize that there’s nothing in my kit in the event of a widespread biological outbreak. Sure, I could stay home for a few days or a week, but what if I needed to venture out for more supplies? So I thought I’d check to see what the CDC recommends, and how much it would cost to be prepared. If it wasn’t too much, then maybe it would be worth adding to the emergency kit. I visited a few different CDC pages.

The answer is that for less than the cost of taking your family to the movies, you could buy all the safety equipment you’d need.

The basics are this:

• goggles: basic ($3.29), better ($9.35), face shield for $13
• respiratory mask: 10-pack N95 for $14.50
• gloves: 100-pack for $9

If you want to go hardcore, as you’d want to if you needed to take care of an ebola patient, you’d add:

• full-body suit: one suit for $7
• disinfectant: one can for $8

In the end, it costs about $15/person. Pretty cheap to add to an emergency kit. Part me says it’s crazy to get this stuff, but part of me also knows that by the time you actually need it, it’s too late to get it.