The craziest Apple product you've never heard of is this earthquake survival kit

Apple earthquake survival kit
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple has made many weird and wonderful products over the years, but who knew that the company also produced something called the Earthquake Survival Kit?

The kit was produced in 1986, it seems, and it includes a brochure titled "How do you plan to survive," which might not be the cheeriest thing we've ever seen Apple ask.

And as if the existence of the kit wasn't amazing enough, it turns out that you can actually read the whole thing online.

How do you plan to survive?

The whole thing is available to read today thanks to the Computer History Museum and consists of three high-resolution PDF scans.

"The kit includes documentation about the Earthquake Survival Kit program started by Apple in 1986," the museum explains. "It also includes an Apple brochure titled 'How do you plan to survive?' from 1986, a Sunset Magazine special report titled 'Getting ready for a big quake' from 1982, and the third edition of 'Safety and Survival in an Earthquake,' published by the American Red Cross in 1986."

Apple's kit begins by warning people that just by living in California they'll "probably experience a major earthquake during your lifetime." After that, we're told that "preparing today for such a disaster could save your life, and the lives of your family and the other people around you."

The intro ends with the ominous "It's up to you."

From here on out the Earthquake Survival Kit is a collection of suggestions for the things that you should and shouldn't do when you're in the middle of an active earthquake, and it's all good stuff.

It isn't clear if this is the only survival kit Apple produced, but we have to imagine there is something similar floating around Apple Park to help employees should an earthquake hit, too.

You can read the whole thing at the Computer History Museum's website and now we can't wait to be able to read a 1986 earthquake kit in our 2024 Vision Pro next year. We bet nobody saw that coming when they were putting this thing together all those years ago.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.