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Lists Worth Keeping · Myths that sound right

Nine preparedness myths that sound right.

Advice that gets passed along because it is reasonable, and what the agencies that study each question actually say.

Go to the list How we verify claims

By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival

Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources

01 · The story

A bridge in Kansas, and what it taught Oklahoma.

On April 26, 1991, a television crew on the Kansas Turnpike pulled under a highway overpass as a tornado crossed the road. They filmed the whole thing from a ledge beneath the bridge, and everyone walked away. The footage ran for years. It looked like proof.

The National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, later took the video apart. The tornado was weaker than it looked and the crew was on its edge. The bridge had an unusual design, with a girder to hold onto. The land around it was open farmland with little to throw. The crew survived, in the Weather Service's words, largely through luck and circumstance. None of that made it into the caption.

On May 3, 1999, tornadoes crossed interstates at seven places in central Oklahoma. At three of them, an overpass sat in the path. People who had seen the Kansas footage stopped their cars and ran for the bridges. At each of those three overpasses, someone died. At Shields Boulevard in Moore, about a dozen people under the bridge were seriously hurt, and the stopped cars blocked the interstate so that emergency vehicles could not get through.

That is how a myth works. It is not a lie. It is a true story with the wrong lesson attached, repeated by people who mean well, until it sounds like common sense. Most preparedness myths are like this. They are the things a reasonable person would guess, and they are wrong in ways that only show up when it matters.

Here are nine of them. Each one is followed by what the agency that studies the question actually says, with a link so you can read it yourself.

02 · The list

Nine things that sound right.

Each myth is followed by the current guidance from the agency responsible for the question. The documents are linked in the sources at the bottom of the page.

  1. 01

    A generator in the garage is fine if you leave the door open.

    It is not. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says never to run a generator inside a home, garage, crawlspace, or shed, even with doors and windows open or fans running. Carbon monoxide builds to deadly levels within minutes and lingers for hours after the engine stops. Run it outdoors, at least 20 feet from any window, door, or vent, with a battery-powered CO alarm inside.

  2. 02

    A gas oven will heat the kitchen in a pinch.

    The CDC's guidance is one sentence long: never use a gas range or oven to heat a home. Ovens are not vented to the outdoors the way a furnace is, and running one with the door open fills the room with carbon monoxide. In Texas in 2021, a quarter of the people who stayed home without power did exactly this. More than 1,400 were treated for CO poisoning that week.

  3. 03

    If the food in the refrigerator still feels cold, it is safe.

    Cold to the touch is not a food safety standard. USDA says a closed refrigerator keeps food safe for about 4 hours without power. After that, perishable food such as meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, soft cheese, and leftovers should be thrown out. A full freezer holds for about 48 hours, a half-full one for about 24. An appliance thermometer, not your hand, tells you whether anything stayed at 40 degrees or below.

  4. 04

    If it smells fine, it is fine.

    USDA is blunt about this: never taste food to determine its safety. The bacteria that cause foodborne illness do not reliably change the smell, look, or taste of food. The rule is older than any of us and still correct: when in doubt, throw it out.

  5. 05

    Boil water for 10 minutes to be sure.

    One minute at a rolling boil is enough, according to the CDC. Above 6,500 feet, make it three. Longer boiling wastes fuel and water at the moment both are scarce. If you cannot boil, 8 drops of plain unscented household bleach per gallon of clear water, stirred and left for 30 minutes, does the job. Double the bleach for cloudy water.

  6. 06

    Open the windows before a tornado to equalize the pressure.

    The National Weather Service says opening windows will have no effect. Buildings are destroyed by wind and debris, not by pressure differences. Every second spent at a window is a second not spent in an interior room on the lowest floor, which is where the Weather Service wants you.

  7. 07

    A highway overpass is a good tornado shelter.

    See the story above. The Weather Service says the space under an overpass can act as a wind tunnel, that most bridges offer nothing to hold onto, and that the wind can swing nearly 180 degrees as a tornado passes, turning the sheltered side into the exposed one. Leave the tornado's path if you can. Otherwise get into a sturdy building, as low and as far inside as possible.

  8. 08

    My truck sits high enough to get through that water.

    Six inches of fast-moving water can knock an adult off their feet. Twelve inches can carry away a small car. Eighteen to 24 inches moves trucks, vans, and SUVs. More than half of flood deaths are vehicle related, and the road under the water may not be there anymore. The Weather Service has a slogan for this that it has repeated for twenty years: Turn Around, Don't Drown.

  9. 09

    Rub frostbitten skin to warm it up, or hold it near the fire.

    Both make it worse. The CDC says not to rub or massage frostbitten skin at all, and not to warm it with a stove, fireplace, heat lamp, radiator, or heating pad, because the numb tissue burns easily. Use warm water that is comfortable to an unaffected hand, or body heat such as an armpit, and avoid walking on frostbitten feet. Then see a doctor. If there are also signs of hypothermia, that is a medical emergency and comes first.

03 · What it means for you

Where the stakes are.

Notice what the nine have in common. Six of them involve heat, fire, or flowing water, which is where the stakes are highest and where a wrong guess does the most harm. The other three are about time: how long food lasts, how long to boil, how long you have before a tornado. Those are the questions worth settling before an emergency rather than during one.

Notice, too, that none of the corrections require buying anything. A thermometer in the refrigerator costs a few dollars. The rest is knowing where the line is.

If you want the longer versions, we have guides on heating during outages, keeping a refrigerator during outages, boil water advisories, and disinfecting water with bleach, along with hazard pages for tornadoes and floods.

And if a piece of advice you have always trusted is not on this list, the test is simple. Find the agency that studies the question and read what it says. If you cannot find one, hold the advice loosely.

Sources

Where the corrections come from.

All sources accessed 2026-11-09. Agency guidance changes. If a linked page has moved, the agency's current page on the same subject is the one that governs.

About the author

Dan Whelan is the founder of New World Survival. He and his wife Vicki rode out Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and spent the week after sorting donations at a relief center in Homestead. More than thirty years of household preparedness later, he built this site to pass on what works. Read their story