Preparedness
Practical, no-fear-mongering guides to emergency preparedness — 72-hour kits, bug-out bags, food and water storage, and the skills that actually matter when things go sideways. Built for people who want to be ready, not paranoid.
The lights go out and you grab a flashlight. The faucet quits and you crack open the stored water. But when the toilet stops flushing, preparedness gets considerably less glamorous. Emergency sanitation without running water is the part of preparedness…
A water main breaks two streets over. The boil-water notice hits your phone before you’ve had coffee. You live on the fourth floor, no basement, no garage, and a closet you already fight your roommate for. Apartment water storage advice…
Everybody answers what is overlanding with a $90,000 rig and a drone shot. The useful answer starts with the truck already in your driveway. You’re eleven miles down a forest road that started out graded and turned into two ruts…
Two radios, one repeater, and a whole lot of silence. Here’s what actually goes wrong. You bought the radios in March. They’ve been in the closet since. Now there’s a family trip in three weeks, or a storm season starting,…
The blister pack says 35 miles. In forest you will get one to three. Here is what FRS, GMRS, ham and satellite each actually do, which licence covers your whole family for $35, and the comms plan that matters more than the radio.
Watts decide whether it runs, surge decides whether it starts, and watt-hours decide how long. A worked load list, the losses nobody prints on the box, and the weekend test that finds the problem before the storm does.
Your phone is the key to your email, and your email is the key to everything else. A digital go bag is the documents, encrypted copies and recovery plan that still work when the phone is gone. Six steps, one afternoon, no money.
You can set up a Meshtastic node for about $25. The physics are real. The default security settings are not. The storm cell parks over your county and doesn't move. Power goes first.
Same radios. Opposite philosophies. One of them is probably wrong for you — and it's not the one the internet is arguing about.
