All guides
Every published guide, 63 in total, grouped by subject. If you would rather browse by what has actually gone wrong, use Prepare by problem.
24 guides
Power
Generators, batteries, fuel and the arithmetic of keeping the essentials running when the grid stops. Sizing first, shopping second — the order matters more here than anywhere else on the site.
- Appliance Surge and Running Watts: A Reference TableTypical running and surge wattage for household appliances, with the reasons the numbers vary and instructions for finding your own rather than trusting a chart.
- Can You Charge a Power Station and Run the Fridge at the Same Time?Pass-through charging works on most modern power stations, but net charge rate is solar input minus load draw, and some units handle the simultaneous job badly enough to matter.
- How Many Solar Panels Does It Take to Recharge a Power Station in One Day?Refilling a 1,000Wh power station in a single day takes roughly 300W of panel in summer and 700W or more in winter, and the station's input limit often decides the answer before the panels do.
- How to Read an EnergyGuide Label to Size Backup PowerThe yellow EnergyGuide label on your refrigerator holds the one number that actually sizes a battery or solar system, and two numbers it deliberately leaves out.
- LiFePO4 vs Lead Acid for Backup PowerLead acid gives up half its rated capacity to depth-of-discharge limits and lasts a few hundred cycles. LiFePO4 costs more up front and less per usable kilowatt-hour over its life, with real exceptions.
- Portable Panels vs a Permanent Array for Outage BackupPortable panels cost three to five times more per watt and produce less, but they work during an outage without a battery, a permit, or an inverter replacement. When each one is the right answer.
- Watts vs Watt-Hours: Why the Number on the Box Misleads YouA power station named for its watts is sold on its watt-hours, and the two numbers answer completely different questions about whether your backup power will work.
- What a Portable Power Station Cannot Run, and WhyThe loads that sit outside the reach of portable battery backup regardless of budget, and the physical reasons the marketing never mentions them.
- Why Solar Panels Never Hit Their Rated WattageA 200W panel produces closer to 130W in good conditions and far less in bad ones. The five losses between the label and the battery, and how to derate honestly.
- Why Your Rooftop Solar Shuts Off During a BlackoutGrid-tied solar systems disconnect the moment the utility goes down, by design and by code. What anti-islanding is, why it exists, and what it takes to keep your panels working in an outage.
- What Size Extension Cord Do You Need for a Generator?Calculate generator extension-cord gauge from load, length, voltage drop, and cord rating without confusing wire size with plug compatibility.
- Battery Backup, Water-Powered, or Generator: Which Sump Pump Backup Actually Works?The storm that floods your basement is frequently the same storm that takes out your power. That correlation is the entire problem, and it is why a…
- Colonial Pipeline: What a Real Infrastructure Cyberattack Looked Like"Can a cyberattack shut down American infrastructure" is a question with an actual answer, because it happened in May 2021 and the details are public.…
- Gas Generator, Portable Power Station, or Home Battery: Which Backup Actually Fits Your House?For most homeowners, a portable generator is the least expensive way to cover long outages, a portable power station is the simplest way to run a few…
- How Do You Run a Well Pump During a Power Outage?A residential well pump needs surprisingly little energy over a day and a surprisingly large amount of power for about two seconds. That single…
- How Long Does the Power Actually Stay Out Where You Live?The average American household loses power for somewhere between two hours and thirty-one hours a year, depending entirely on which state it sits in.…
- How Long Will a Power Station Run a Refrigerator or Freezer?Enter your appliance's annual kWh and a power station's watt-hours to calculate refrigerator or freezer runtime, capacity, and startup compatibility.
- How Much Fuel Does a Generator Use During a Three-Day Power Outage?Nobody actually wants a gallons-per-hour figure. What people want to know is how many cans to fill, or how many propane cylinders to keep, so that a…
- How to Heat a House When the Power Is OutThe most common heating failure during a winter outage is not that the furnace broke. It is that the furnace was fine and could not run.
- How to Read a Grid Reliability Report for Your Own RegionEvery year the North American Electric Reliability Corporation publishes an assessment of whether the grid can meet demand across roughly two dozen…
- Texas 2021: What Actually Failed, in OrderWinter Storm Uri is the best-documented modern grid failure in the United States, and it is far more useful for planning than any hypothetical. It…
- Transfer Switch, Interlock, or Extension Cords: How Should You Connect a Portable Generator?You have sized the generator and worked out the fuel. The remaining question is how the electricity gets from the machine in the driveway to the things…
- What an EMP Would Actually Do: The Evidence, Not the Sales PitchElectromagnetic pulse is the most heavily marketed fear in preparedness, and almost every page you'll find about it is attached to something for sale.…
- What Size Generator Do You Actually Need? Sizing It Without OverbuyingMost people buy too much generator. They add up the nameplate wattage of everything in the house, arrive at a frightening number, and buy a unit that…
9 guides
Water
Storage, treatment, collection and supply. What each treatment method actually removes, how much a household really needs, and which alternative sources survive contact with measurement.
- Does Stored Water Go Bad? Rotation, Treatment, and Shelf LifeWater itself does not expire. What degrades is the container, the seal, and anything that got in when you filled it, which is why the six-month rotation rule is about your filling technique rather than about chemistry.
- How Much Bleach Per Gallon: The Number Changed and Most Charts Didn'tHousehold bleach got stronger and most dosing charts did not change. The familiar per-gallon figure is keyed to the old formulation, and a government page is still publishing it.
- The Water Already in Your House: Heater, Pipes, and TankA water heater holds 40 to 80 gallons of potable water most people never count. The procedure to get it out has three steps that matter, and doing them in the wrong order damages the heater.
- What to Store Water In: Containers, Plastics, and What LeachesA used juice jug works and a used milk jug does not. Which plastics are suitable, why five gallons is the practical ceiling, and what actually fails in stored water containers.
- Where the One-Gallon-Per-Person-Per-Day Number Comes FromFEMA says one gallon. Most preparedness sites now say two. The disagreement is about scope rather than facts, and knowing what the original figure excluded tells you which number you need.
- How Much Rainwater Can You Collect From Your Roof?Calculate roof runoff, realistic collection yield, tank overflow, and days of non-potable supply from rainfall and catchment area.
- Can You Really Make Drinking Water From Air? What the Measurements ShowPulling drinking water out of thin air is not a trick. It is a dehumidifier with a filter on the end, and dehumidifiers work. The question is never…
- Filter, Purify, or Distill: What Each One Actually RemovesWater treatment marketing uses filter, purifier, and purification interchangeably. They are not the same thing, they remove different classes of…
- The Colorado River Shortage, Explained Without the Sales PitchMost water-scarcity marketing in the preparedness world traces back to one real situation: the Colorado River is over-allocated, its reservoirs have…
11 guides
Food
Shelf life, calories per dollar, preservation without power, and what a plot of ground actually produces. Priced per calorie, because that is the only comparison that survives marketing.
- Food-Grade Buckets, Gamma Lids, and What Actually SealsA bucket is a rodent and impact barrier, not an oxygen barrier. Which plastics are food safe, what a gamma lid is for, and why sealing food directly in a bucket is the wrong architecture.
- Killing Insect Eggs Before Storage: Freezing, Dry Ice, and Diatomaceous EarthGrain arrives with insect eggs already in it. Oxygen absorbers kill every life stage on their own, which makes most pretreatment redundant, and the exceptions are specific.
- Mylar Thickness: What 3.5 Mil vs 7 Mil Actually ChangesThicker mylar buys puncture resistance, not a better oxygen barrier. The barrier comes from the aluminum layer, and the failure mode that matters is the seal, not the film.
- Oxygen Absorbers: How Many, What Size, and What They Actually DoAbsorber charts size against container volume, but the oxygen is in the air trapped between the grains. The correct calculation uses headspace, and most people under-dose by half.
- Where Shelf-Life Numbers Come From: A Sourced Storage TableEvery shelf-life chart in the preparedness niche is published by someone selling storage bags. This table gives the numbers with the source, the storage conditions, and whether anyone actually measured them.
- Pressure Canner vs Water Bath vs Steam CannerChoose pressure, boiling-water, or atmospheric-steam canning from food acidity and a tested process—not equipment marketing.
- "Three Days of Food": Where That Number Comes From and What It Actually MeansYou have heard it in every preparedness pitch: grocery stores hold only three days of food. It's usually deployed to imply that the country is three…
- Growing Medicinal Herbs From Seed: What Each One NeedsMost medicinal herb guides skip the step that decides whether you get plants at all. It isn't soil, water, or light. It's cold stratification — the…
- What a Quarter Acre Actually Feeds: The Yield MathThe self-sufficiency conversation runs on pounds. Pounds of tomatoes, pounds of zucchini, a photograph of a full harvest basket. Pounds are the wrong…
- What Actually Lasts 25 Years in Storage, and What Quietly Doesn'tThe twenty five year figure attached to long term food storage is not marketing invention. It comes from real research, it applies to specific foods…
- What Emergency Food Actually Costs Per CalorieA popular emergency food bucket sells for about eighty dollars and advertises 150 servings. It contains 25,280 calories.
8 guides
Defense
Home hardening, shelter and the law. Evidence about how homes are actually entered, and the unglamorous measures that work. Nothing here is about confrontation.
- Carrying Less-Lethal Where You Actually Go: Federal Buildings, Schools, and Interstate TravelA device legal in your state is still restricted in federal facilities, on school grounds, in airports, and the moment you cross a state line. State-by-state tables cannot show you this layer.
- Pepper Gel, Spray, Foam, and Stream: Where Each Delivery Format FailsThe active ingredient is the same across formats. What changes is range, wind behavior, blowback risk, and how much of it ends up on you instead of on them.
- What a Stun Gun Actually Does, and What a TASER Does DifferentlyA contact stun device causes pain. A probe deployment causes loss of muscle control. These are different physiological effects, and the marketing for the cheaper category depends on the confusion.
- When Less-Lethal Doesn't Work: The Failure Rates Nobody AdvertisesEvery less-lethal device has a documented failure rate against real subjects. The category's marketing never mentions it, and the failure modes are specific enough to plan around.
- FEMA Safe Room vs Storm Shelter vs BasementCompare FEMA safe rooms, ICC 500 storm shelters, ordinary basements, best available refuge areas, and community shelters using FEMA criteria.
- Home Hardening: What Actually Stops a Break-InMost residential break-ins are opportunistic, fast, and decided in under a minute from the street. The intruder is not defeating your security; he is…
- Pepper Spray and Less-Lethal Laws: What Varies by State and How to Check YoursPepper spray is legal for self defense in all fifty states. That sentence is true and it is also the reason people get into trouble, because legality…
- What Burglary Data Actually Says About How Homes Get EnteredMost home security advice is built on a picture of a break-in that happens at night, by force, while the household sleeps.
11 guides
Skills
Communication, offline knowledge, food preservation, and the judgement to tell a real claim from a sales pitch. The things that keep working when the equipment does not.
- A Household Communication Plan for When the Network Is DownAn out-of-area contact, a meeting point, a check-in time and a written card. The part of emergency communication that costs nothing and gets skipped anyway.
- FRS, GMRS, or Ham: Which Radio Licence Do You Actually Need?FRS needs no licence and is capped low. GMRS needs one licence that covers your whole family. Ham needs an exam per person. Which one fits a household.
- GMRS Repeaters: How a Handheld Reaches Further Than Its Power SuggestsA repeater swaps your handheld's horizon for one on a hill. What repeater channels are, how to use one, and why this is the real reason to hold a GMRS licence.
- Satellite Messengers, PLBs, and When a Phone Genuinely Cannot HelpA PLB signals government search and rescue and does nothing else. A satellite messenger sends text and needs a subscription. The difference matters most on the worst day.
- Two-Way Radio Range: Why 35 Miles Is Never 35 MilesBlister packs claim 35 miles. The regulation caps a handheld low and the signal travels line of sight. Here is what a two-way radio actually does.
- NOAA Weather Radio vs Phone Alerts: What Actually Wakes You Up?Compare Wireless Emergency Alerts, NOAA Weather Radio with SAME, apps, and broadcast alerts as a layered household warning system.
- Building a Preparedness Reference Library That Works Without InternetA reference library is a bet against your own memory. You will not remember the pressure canning time for green beans at your altitude, the splint for…
- Preserving Food Without Power: What Actually WorksEvery method of preserving food does one of three things: removes the water, changes the pH, or drops the temperature below what bacteria tolerate.…
- Some Sellers Contractually Forbid Bad Reviews. Here's How to Spot It.Search any preparedness product and you'll find a wall of positive reviews. The usual explanation is that reviewers earn commissions, which is true and…
- The Lookalikes That Kill: Why Foraging Mistakes HappenNobody dies foraging because they couldn't find food. They die because they found something that looked exactly like food.
- What Preparedness Products Really Cost: The Gap Between the Sticker and the CartA survival guide advertised at $37 is rarely a $37 transaction. The sticker price is the entry fee. What determines the actual cost is what happens…