A field guide for households
Cover the first 72 hours, the next two weeks, and the slower craft of doing more for yourself. Calm guidance, grounded in FEMA, Red Cross, and traditional practice.
Content based on official guidance from FEMA, the American Red Cross, the CDC, and the hands-on traditions of generations who knew how to do for themselves.
What we mean by survival
No sirens. No countdowns. Just ordinary households becoming harder to break.
The name on the door says survival, and that's probably how you found us. But survival in the new world isn't what it used to be.
It's a flashlight you can find in the dark, a week of food you would actually eat, documents in order, neighbors you know, and enough margin to stay steady when normal life gets interrupted. We're here for that older, quieter work: building a household that can take care of itself and help the people around it.
It starts at home, and the circle widens outward.
Start here
Power goes out. Roads close. Shelves empty. The households that do well aren't the ones with the most gear. They're the ones who decided, ahead of time, where the water is, who picks up the kids, and what the plan is when the phones don't work.
Start with 72 hours of self-sufficiency, or take the readiness assessment and get a checklist built around your household.
72
hours of readiness
Water · food · medicine · shelter · light · communication
The readiness curve
Preparedness isn't a single moment. It's a ladder, and most households do well to climb one rung at a time.
01
Survive
The baseline. Water, food, light, medicine, and a household plan for the most common short emergencies.
Start here →
02
Sustain
Hurricanes, regional outages, supply disruptions. What changes when 72 hours isn't enough.
Build it out →
03
Endure
The boring discipline that decides recovery time: drills, documents, skills, community.
Go deeper →
04
Provide
Gardening, preserving, solar, wood heat, hand tools. The slower craft of doing more for yourself.
Begin the craft →
Know your ground
We have your ZIP on file. Pick up where you left off with live conditions and the hazards that apply to .
Hurricanes in Florida, wildfires in Colorado, ice storms in Texas. Enter your ZIP and we'll show you the three or four hazards that actually apply, with specific preparation notes for each.
Or browse all 22 hazard guides without entering a ZIP.
Every plan covers the same basics: water, food, shelter, medical needs, communication, and recovery paperwork. The 72-hour checklist walks through all six.
See the checklistBeyond the kit
The hands-on trades that keep a household running: basic plumbing, wiring, and repair, and the fixes worth knowing before something breaks.
Learn the trades →
The long game of resilience: how the systems around you work, what to keep on paper, and the quiet discipline that decides how fast you recover.
Think long term →
The body that can carry water up the stairs, clear a downed limb, and keep going when the work is physical and the day is long.
Build the base →
Gardening, radio, fermentation, woodworking, foraging. Hobbies that happen to build real capability while being genuinely worth doing.
Explore avocations →
The other half
Self-reliance is not a look. It's the ability to cook from staples, store water, preserve food safely, repair small failures, and keep basic systems running longer than expected. A garden helps. So does a hand tool that outlives you.
Twelve domains, from water and food to energy, skills, and land. Useful when something goes wrong. Useful when nothing does.
Explore Self-reliancePublished daily
A morning readiness check for 15 North American regions, drawn from government feeds and newswires. What's active, what's watched, what it means for a household.
Read today's brief →
A daily read on the pressures sitting on the kitchen table: layoff filings, price reports, utility rates, and benefit deadlines, each translated into one next step.
Read today's post →
Start steady
You do not need to prepare for everything at once. Start with water, food, light, medicine, communication, and a household plan. Then adjust for the risks where you actually live.