Every field grows its own shorthand, and preparedness grew a thicket of it: BOBs and EDC, SHTF and Faraday cages, mylar and micro-hydro. If you are new, the jargon is a wall between you and information you need; if you have been at this for years, you still hit terms from the homesteading side or the radio side you never picked up. This page is the wall-remover: the terms we actually use on ThisTracks, defined in plain English, with links deeper into the site where a definition deserves a full article. Bookmark it; we keep it updated as the vocabulary grows.
A – B
All-hazards approach. Preparing for the effects common to most disasters (no power, no water, no supply chain, possible evacuation) rather than obsessing over one specific scenario. The 80/20 of preparedness, and the frame behind our family risk assessment guide.
Bartering. Trading goods and skills directly, without money. Valuable in tight economies and disaster recovery; see building a bartering network.
Berkey. Shorthand for the gravity-fed countertop water filter category, after the best-known brand. Covered in our water purifier guide.
Bug in / Shelter in place. Staying home during an emergency instead of leaving. Usually the right call; see the other half of every emergency plan.
Bug out. Leaving home quickly because staying is more dangerous, per your evacuation plan.
Bug-out bag (BOB) / Go-bag / 72-hour kit. A pre-packed bag holding roughly three days of essentials for a fast exit. Our go-bag guide is the starting point of a whole series.
Bug-out location (BOL). A pre-planned destination for an evacuation: a relative’s house, a cabin, a campground. The important part is choosing it before you need it.
C – E
Canning (water bath vs. pressure). Preserving food in sealed jars. Water-bath canning handles high-acid foods (fruit, pickles, tomatoes with added acid); low-acid foods (vegetables, meat, broth) require a pressure canner to kill botulism spores. Not interchangeable. Details in canning vegetables.
Cache. Supplies stored somewhere other than home (a workplace locker, a relative’s basement, a buried container) so one disaster cannot take everything.
Defensible space. The vegetation-managed buffer around a structure that slows a wildfire’s approach; the core of wildfire preparedness.
EDC (everyday carry). The useful items on your person daily: light, knife, fire, whistle, power. Our take: EDC for normal people.
EMP. Electromagnetic pulse: a burst of energy (from a nuclear detonation or extreme solar storm) that can damage electronics and the grid. Real physics, heavily mythologized; we separate the two in EMP and Faraday protection.
F – H
Faraday cage. A conductive enclosure that shields electronics from electromagnetic energy. Can be as simple as a sealed metal trash can with insulated contents.
FIFO (first in, first out). The rotation rule for stored food and water: use the oldest first, restock at the back. What makes a deep pantry a system instead of a pile.
Fermentation. Preserving food with salt, time, and beneficial microbes (sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt). The oldest preservation tech there is; see our fermentation guide.
Food forest / Permaculture. Garden design that mimics natural ecosystems with perennials and layered plantings, trading annual replanting labor for up-front design work.
FRS / GMRS. The two families of consumer walkie-talkie radio in the US. FRS is license-free and short-range; GMRS allows more power and repeaters with a cheap no-exam license. Compared in our emergency radio guide.
Grid-down. Any extended loss of the electrical grid, from a regional storm outage to the long-tail scenarios in long-term power grid failure.
Grey water. Gently used household water (sinks, showers, laundry) that can be reused for irrigation where local rules allow. Distinct from black water (sewage), which cannot.
Ham radio (amateur radio). Licensed two-way radio capable of local through worldwide communication with no infrastructure between operators. The deep end of disaster communications.
Heirloom / Open-pollinated seeds. Varieties whose saved seed grows true to the parent plant, unlike hybrids. The foundation of seed saving.
Homesteading. The broad project of producing more of what you consume (food, energy, skills) on whatever land you have, from a balcony to forty acres. Start with planning your homestead.
I – O
LiFePO4. Lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry: heavier than standard lithium but far more charge cycles and better heat tolerance. What to prefer in a power station you want to own for a decade.
Mylar bags. Metallized plastic bags that block light, moisture, and oxygen. With oxygen absorbers inside food-grade buckets, they are the backbone of 25-year food storage.
NOAA weather radio / SAME. The National Weather Service’s continuous broadcast, and the county-coding system (SAME) that lets an alert radio wake you only for warnings that affect your area.
Off-grid. Operating without connection to public utilities, whether one system (water, power) or a whole property. Overview: off-grid living tips.
OPSEC (operational security). Not advertising what you have or where it is: the habit of keeping your preps, travel plans, and valuables out of casual conversation and public view. Paired with awareness in this guide.
Oxygen absorber. A small iron-powder packet that removes oxygen from a sealed container, stopping oxidation and most pests in stored food. Sized in cubic centimeters (cc) to the container.
P – R
Potable. Safe to drink. The entire point of water storage and filtration is keeping this word attached to your supply.
Prepping. The unglamorous act of arranging your household so that likely disruptions are inconvenient instead of dangerous. The front door of this whole site: why prepare.
Preparedness pyramid. Our ordering of priorities: water, food, shelter, security, health, and finances, built wide at the base (the everyday disruptions) before the exotic top.
Rainwater harvesting. Collecting roof runoff into barrels or cisterns for garden or filtered household use. Build one with our system guide; check state rules, which vary.
Root cellar. Any cool, humid, dark storage space that keeps crops fresh for months without electricity. The old technology still beats the refrigerator at scale; see root cellars and cold storage.
Rule of threes. The survival priority clock: roughly three minutes without air, three hours without shelter in harsh conditions, three days without water, three weeks without food. Why shelter usually outranks food; unpacked in survival priorities.
S – Z
SHTF. The genre’s famous acronym for a major society-scale disruption (“when the stuff hits the fan”). We mostly avoid it: the disasters worth preparing for are usually regional, personal, and survivable, and the doom framing sells gear better than it builds readiness.
Situational awareness. The trained habit of noticing your environment: exits, baselines, and things that break the pattern. The cheapest security system there is.
Solar generator. Marketing term for a battery power station paired with solar panels. There is no engine; it is a battery, and the panel wattage is the number to check.
STOP. The lost-person protocol: Stop, Think, Observe, Plan. The antidote to panic walking, from signaling for rescue.
Tourniquet. A device that stops limb bleeding a pressure dressing cannot. Modern doctrine: applied correctly, it saves lives and limbs are overwhelmingly fine; training matters, so see building a trauma kit.
Two is one, one is none. The redundancy proverb: any critical item will eventually fail, so critical capabilities need a backup. Applied with judgment, it builds systems; applied without, it builds clutter. See gear philosophy.
Water-bath canning. See canning; the high-acid-only method.
Zone (USDA hardiness). The map system rating regions by average coldest winter temperature, which decides what perennials survive in your garden. The starting point of choosing crops for your climate.
How to use this page
- New here? Read the entries for all-hazards, preparedness pyramid, rule of threes, and FIFO; that is the site’s worldview in four definitions.
- Every linked term has a full article behind it; the glossary is the map, not the territory.
- Missing a term you hit somewhere on the site? The page is maintained; it will appear here.
Jargon is a fence, and fences keep people out of a field that badly needs more calm, practical participants. If a term on this site ever makes you feel like an outsider, come back here; and if it is not here yet, that is our failure, not yours, and it will be fixed. Preparedness belongs to everyone with a household to take care of.
Last updated: July 18, 2026
