By the Wildfire Team Wildfire has changed. What used to be a remote wilderness threat now reaches suburbs and whole towns, moves faster than people expect, and can turn a normal afternoon into an evacuation with almost no notice. Wind-driven fire can advance faster than a person can run, which means the entire game is … Read more
By the Storm Team Flooding is the most common and most widely underestimated natural disaster there is. It does not require a hurricane or a river you live beside. A slow afternoon of heavy rain, a flash flood in a dry wash, a failed storm drain, or a burst levee can put water where it … Read more
By the Disaster Team Most disasters give some warning. An earthquake gives none. One moment everything is normal, and the next the ground itself, the one thing we all unconsciously trust to hold still, is trying to throw you off your feet. That total lack of warning means earthquake preparedness is almost entirely about two … Read more
By the Storm Team A hurricane gives you days. A tornado gives you minutes, sometimes only a handful, and that single fact shapes everything about how you prepare for one. You cannot make decisions when a tornado is bearing down; there is no time. All of your thinking has to be done in advance, so … Read more
By the Storm Team A hurricane is the rare major disaster that announces itself days in advance. That warning is a gift, and the families who fare worst are almost always the ones who waste it, waiting to see what the storm does instead of acting on what they already know. Hurricane readiness is really … Read more
By the Gear Team Walk any preparedness forum and you will find people who have spent thousands of dollars and are no safer for it. They have three flashlights and no water stored, a drawer of knives and no first aid training, a garage of gadgets and no plan. Gear is the most visible and … Read more
By the Financial Resilience Team Here is the disaster that will actually strike most families: not an earthquake or an EMP, but a lost job, a medical bill, a broken transmission, a sudden expense the household simply cannot absorb. Financial trouble is the single most common emergency in modern life, and yet the preparedness world … Read more
By the Medical Team Of all the ways preparedness gets distorted, medical readiness is the worst. People buy a wall of tactical trauma gear they have never trained on, while lacking the basic skills to handle the injuries and illnesses that are a hundred times more likely. Real medical preparedness is not a bigger kit. … Read more
By the Getting Started Team People new to preparedness often get stuck trying to prepare for specific disasters one at a time. A kit for hurricanes, a different plan for earthquakes, a separate stash for a pandemic, and on and on until the whole thing feels impossible and they give up. Emergency managers solved this … Read more
By the Homestead Team The dream is intoxicating: the self-sufficient homestead, chickens in the yard, a full garden, shelves of home-canned food, independence from the fragile systems everyone else depends on. It is a wonderful goal. It is also where more good intentions die than almost anywhere in preparedness, because people try to build the … Read more