Naked and unprepared is not a good look: disaster planning for the clothes free community
A practical, no shame guide to weathering the next big storm.
I have spent enough time on naturist message boards and inside our own Discord to know that when a hurricane, wildfire, or earthquake shows up on the news, someone always jokes about riding it out bare. Cute. But 2017 gave us a real answer to that joke. When Hurricane Irma barreled toward Florida, Club Orient in Saint Martin, one of the most beloved naturist resorts in the Caribbean, was leveled and never rebuilt. Meanwhile, over in Land O’ Lakes, staff at Caliente Resort spent the days before the storm draining a quarter acre pool and stacking a thousand lounge chairs, all while the club stayed open to shelter members and neighbors who needed somewhere to go. One version of that story is a loss. The other is a community showing up for itself. Both are reminders that being a naturist does not exempt you from disaster planning, it just means your planning looks a little different.
Most emergency prep content is written for a textile audience with textile assumptions baked in. It assumes you already own clothes suited for climbing over debris, that your “go bag” lives in a closet you use daily, that nobody in your household has ever had a conversation about whether pants are optional at breakfast. None of that changes the fundamentals, but it does mean a few things deserve extra thought if your normal state of being is undressed.
Build the kit you’d actually build anyway
Strip away the novelty and disaster prep for naturists is disaster prep, full stop. FEMA and the Red Cross have said this for years, and their advice holds regardless of what you’re wearing when you read it. You want at least three days of water, a gallon per person per day, along with shelf stable food, a flashlight, a battery or hand crank radio, a first aid kit, and copies of important documents in something waterproof. The one addition worth flagging for our community: pack real clothing, not just the swimsuit you keep around for the rare textile beach. Evacuation shelters, hospitals, and hardware stores are not clothing optional, and you do not want the first time you put on real shoes in months to happen during a wildfire evacuation. Keep a full, boring, weather appropriate outfit in your bag. Sturdy shoes matter more than you’d think when you’re used to bare feet on your own property.
The American Red Cross puts it simply: a whistle can signal for help using far less energy than shouting, and three sharp blasts is recognized worldwide as a distress call. That’s the kind of advice that has nothing to do with what you’re wearing and everything to do with staying alive long enough for someone to find you.
Know what your community actually is
Here’s where naturists have something most disaster guides never mention: an actual network. If you belong to a club, a resort, or even a tight Discord server like ours, you already have a phone tree waiting to happen. Caliente didn’t just protect its own members during Irma, it opened its doors to more than a hundred outside evacuees and turned a banquet hall into a shelter. That’s not an accident. Naturist spaces tend to run on trust and familiarity that most neighborhoods lost decades ago. Use that. Set up a group text or Discord channel specifically for check ins during severe weather. Know who on your property has mobility issues, who has medical needs, who has a truck and who has a generator. If you run a club or an online community yourself, this is worth building into your culture now, not scrambling to invent the night before a storm makes landfall.
A lot of naturist clubs describe their whole philosophy as respect for self and others. Disaster prep is honestly just that same value turned into logistics.
Plan for the parts nobody wants to picture
If you live somewhere with wildfire risk, and I’ve spent enough time tracking fires near Penrose to know how fast this turns real, you need an evacuation plan that assumes zero warning and zero time to find pants. Keep that bag by the door, not in a closet three rooms away. If you live on naturist land or run a residential clothing optional community, talk to your local fire department or emergency management office ahead of time about what they need from you during an evacuation. Most first responders have seen it all and genuinely do not care what you’re wearing when they show up, but showing up already dressed and moving fast makes everyone’s job easier, including yours.
For hurricanes specifically, resorts along the Gulf and the Caribbean have learned some hard lessons. Secure or store loose furniture and lounge chairs early, because the wind doesn’t care whose property it’s throwing them into. Know your resort’s or community’s official shelter in place policy versus its evacuation trigger, and don’t wait for a personal comfort level to make that call for you.
The part where I remind you this is not optional
I get the appeal of thinking a storm won’t touch you, that your slice of clothing free paradise is somehow separate from the chaos on the news. It isn’t. Disasters do not check membership cards. What they do check is whether you had water, a plan, and people who knew to look for you. Being a naturist means you already understand something a lot of people spend their whole lives avoiding, which is comfort with your own body and your own vulnerability. Use that same honesty here. Pack the bag. Make the plan. Text your neighbors. You can absolutely do all of it bare chested on your own porch the day before the storm arrives. Just make sure the bag by the door has real clothes in it.
I have been through an emergency evac (though not as a naturist), and your advice is sound, Friend. Well written.
This is the kind of practical naturist writing we need more often. It treats naturism as a real way of living, not a fantasy outside ordinary responsibilities. A go bag, shoes, documents, and emergency clothing are not anti-naturist; they are part of caring for the body and community when conditions stop being ideal.