Dawn pulls it out from under her bed.
There's a pile of stuff under there. Her diaries - her ex-diaries, she thinks sardonically, remembering a little bonfire in the middle of her bedroom; how soon things become stupid, embarrassing, even life altering things like that - said she'd been collecting since she was ten. It made sense; at ten, you think the end of the world is going to come with a nuclear bomb, at least you do growing up in the nineties.
It's not a shoebox, but a metal box.
It's funny, Dawn knows, her worried about a nuclear attack. Buffy saw the apocalypse, Dawn's lived through one, fought in a second, survived a third. Those apocalypses means she hoardes holy water, has a stake in her jacket at all times, carries a tazer. She might not be supergirl, but you don't have to be to not be stupid.
The box, it's full of supplies.
What the apocalypse - those apocalypses - taught Dawn is this: you can't ever have too many toothbrushes, too much soap, too much tuna. You always need batteries, you always need instructions on how to hotwire a car, to fix a telephone. you need those things that will allow you to survive without infrastructure. In her high school history class - and yes, eventually she was allowed to graduate; it was only a semester late, too - she did an end-of-term paper on the possible breakdown of political structure within North America. The teacher gave her an A, called it an incredibly detailed look at a possible nightmare.
Dawn has enough nightmares. She stakes vampires even if she isn't a Chosen one.
This is the thing Dawn has learned. She has a bag full of holy water and stakes, swords, crossbows - Buffy's finally let her use one and it's way more effective than the stake - but she also has a fireproof, airtight safe under her bed that has cans of tuna, peaches, Spaghetti-O's. She has articles on hydro-electric power, on alternative power, on alcohol-fueled cars. She has toothbrushes. She has soap. She has batteries, she has space blankets.
Dawn has provisions for the end of the world.
Oh, it'll probably be another hellmouth - there's one in Chicago, Giles said only last week he thinks there might be one in Brussels under some trade organization's headquarters. It'll be chanting and fighting to the death and quick, for sure. There won't be any time for the government to collapse because, sure enough, Buffy or someone will end up fixing things too quickly. It'll be tragedy and it'll be terrifying but it won't be prolonged enough for the world to really get out of control. It'll be a short, sharp, shock, not a slow decline. Dawn knows, it'll be mystical, it won't be radiation.
Dawn spins the lock of her safe, and sticks the toothbrush in the pile. The safe's nearly full, she'll have to get another one or think about reorganizing. Maybe some kind of spell could enlarge the inside, just a little bit, just enough so she could get another few weeks of food inside. It's already bulletproof, it's one of two pieces of carry-on luggage, it never really leaves her side.
Stakes and canned food.
Dawn knows other people don't live like this, but she has seen up close the possibilities for catastrophe and she's not a stupid girl, she's studied, she can see, the possibility for societal decline. It would take so little. Dawn spins the lock again, and the safe is locked up tight. Just in case.