How much, and for how long

Ready.gov builds the basic kit around one gallon of water per person per day for drinking and sanitation, for several days. Arizona emergency managers tell households to cover at least 72 hours. That gallon is a planning floor, not a medical prescription. Heat, illness, pregnancy, nursing, and hard work all raise what people actually drink. Pets need their own bowl, not a guess carved out of a person’s gallon.

Three days is the floor. Two weeks is the household aim once you have a cool, dark place to put it. Fourteen gallons a person is heavy. Split the load: factory-sealed bottles you rotate by the date on the package, plus food-grade jugs you refill, plus a way to treat more water if the outage runs long.

• Three-day floor: 3 gallons per person, then add pets.
• Two-week aim: 14 gallons per person if storage allows.
• In desert heat, plan extra drinking water. Do not ration so hard that people stop drinking.
• Keep stored water out of a hot attic. Heat and thin plastic are a bad pair.

If the tap is unsafe or dry

Officials will say whether tap water is safe. Until they do, do not assume a clear glass is a clean glass. CDC’s emergency method starts by letting cloudy water settle and pouring off the clearer part, or straining it through a clean cloth, paper towel, or coffee filter.

Boiling is the most reliable home method CDC describes. Bring clear water to a rolling boil for 1 minute. Above 6,500 feet, boil for 3 minutes. Let it cool, then store it in clean, covered containers.

If you cannot boil, CDC allows unscented household chlorine bleach and nothing fancier. Use regular bleach labeled 5% to 9% sodium hypochlorite. Not scented, not color-safe, not splashless, not with added cleaners. For clear water, the CDC dose is 8 drops per gallon, or about ½ milliliter, or a little less than ⅛ teaspoon. Double that if the water is cloudy, murky, colored, or very cold. Stir and wait 30 minutes. A faint chlorine smell is expected. Bleach kills many bacteria and viruses. It is weaker against parasites such as Cryptosporidium. CDC notes boiling is the stronger step against those.

• Read the percentage on the bottle. A 1% bleach needs a much larger dose. Use the live CDC table, not a number remembered from an old card.
• Pool chemicals and “splashless” bleach are not drinking-water tools.
• A camping filter helps only within its own manual. Many filters do not remove viruses unless the maker says they do.
• Find the main shutoff before you need it. A burst pipe wastes the water you still had.

Containers and rotation

CDC prefers clean, food-grade containers with tight lids, sanitized before you fill them. Never use a jug that held chemicals. Thin milk jugs crack and are hard to clean, so they are a poor long store.

Replace factory-sealed water by the date on the package. The American Red Cross food-and-water sheet says to replace the water every six months if it is not commercially bottled water. Write the fill date on the jug. If you are unsure, use that water for washing and drink water you just treated.

What actually stops

A dead grid is more than lamps. Refrigerators warm up. Some well pumps stop. Plug-in medical devices go quiet. Cordless phone bases and the router die. In a desert summer the air conditioner is the line between a nuisance and a medical emergency. In a hard freeze the same outage threatens pipes and anyone who heats with electricity.

Ready.gov’s outage page keeps the order simple: flashlights ready, a radio that does not need the wall, and outdoor burning equipment kept outdoors.

• LED lights and headlamps beat candles. Tired people knock candles over.
• Charge a power bank before the warning, not during it.
• List devices that must stay on: oxygen, CPAP, refrigerated medicine, a garage door you cannot lift by hand.
• Ask the device maker and your clinician about backup power. Do not invent a workaround for medical gear.

Generators and quiet poison

CDC tracks carbon monoxide as a storm killer because people run generators, grills, or camp stoves in garages. A garage, a porch, a crawlspace, and a room with the door cracked still count as indoors. Put a generator outside, exhaust pointed away from the house, well clear of windows and doors. Battery carbon-monoxide alarms belong on every level, including where people sleep. Test them.

Do not backfeed the house by plugging a generator into a wall outlet. That can energize lines and hurt the people repairing them. A transfer switch or interlock, installed by a qualified electrician, is the safe connection. Until you have one, use a cord rated for the load, outdoor-rated if it leaves the house, and uncoiled so it does not melt.

• Store gasoline only in approved containers, outside living space, and only in amounts local fire rules allow.
• Stale fuel gums small engines. Rotate it.
• A car USB port can charge a phone. Never idle a vehicle in a closed garage to do it.
• Leave one lamp on so you know when the grid returns. Unplug sensitive electronics before it does.

Spend scarce watts on people first

If backup power is small, spend it on medical needs, a way to hear warnings, and the food that spoils first. A full freezer, door shut, stays cold longer than a half-empty one. The USDA clock is on the food-safety sheet. In extreme heat, cooling people outranks saving a spare freezer of convenience food.

Fire is the everyday disaster

Ready.gov and the National Fire Protection Association treat home fire as the emergency most households will actually face. Working smoke alarms on every level, inside each sleeping room, and outside sleeping areas save more lives than any shelf of gear. Test them monthly. Replace batteries when they chirp, and replace the alarm itself when the maker’s date says it is done. Know two ways out of every room. Pick a meeting spot outside, in front, where firefighters can see you. Close doors behind you. Get out and stay out.

A fire extinguisher is useful only for a fire that is still small, with a clear exit at your back, and only if you know how to use it. PASS is the common teaching: pull the pin, aim at the base, squeeze, sweep. If the fire grows, leave. Do not go back for things.

Heat, cold, and the utilities

In central Arizona the shelter problem most summers is heat plus a dead air conditioner. Identify the coolest room, a place you could go that still has power, and neighbors who would notice if you went quiet. The heat sheet in this manual follows CDC and NWS signs of heat illness. Do not wait for confusion before you treat heat as an emergency.

A desert winter can still freeze pipes and people. Know how you would stay warm without the furnace: layers, a closed room, not a charcoal grill and not an oven. Those kill with carbon monoxide.

Ready.gov says to know where the water, electric, and gas shutoffs are. Turn gas off only if you smell it, hear it, or officials tell you to. A licensed technician usually has to turn gas back on. Do not practice shutting gas as a drill if you cannot restore it.

• Plastic sheeting and duct tape, listed in the Ready.gov kit, are for sealing a room if officials order shelter-in-place. They are not a daily project.
• Follow the exact shelter instruction in the alert. A tornado room, a chemical shelter-in-place, and a wildfire evacuation are different actions.
• If officials say leave, the house is no longer the plan. The mobility sheet is.

Days of food, not pounds of gadgets

Ready.gov asks for at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food, plus a manual can opener. Three days is the floor that matches the basic kit. A two-week home pantry is the practical aim, because stores empty, roads close, and appetites do not pause for a news cycle.

The Dietary Guidelines use about 2,000 calories a day as a general nutrition label reference, not as your personal prescription. Kids, teens, pregnancy, illness, and heavy work change the need. Use that figure only as a shelf-planning sketch: if four adults needed roughly that much for seven days, you are looking at a large pile of real meals, not a box of bars.

Favor food you already eat. A crisis is a bad time to discover that nobody will touch the “survival” tin. Include no-cook items for the hours when the stove is unsafe or out of fuel: nut butters, canned fish and beans, tortillas, fruit cups, shelf milk, crackers. Dried and freeze-dried meals save space and can keep a long time when they are packed dry and stored cool, but they spend the water you also stored. Count that water. Follow the package date. Home-dried food is only as safe as the process that made it.

• A manual can opener. Electric openers fail with the grid.
• Infant formula, if you need it, in the form the baby already tolerates. Ready.gov and CDC both say water and formula planning belongs in the kit. Do not dilute formula to stretch it.
• Special diets, allergies, and religious rules are part of the plan, not an extra.
• Pet food for the same number of days as the people. A hungry dog is not a detail.

Rotation and the outage clock

First in, first out. When you buy a can, put it behind the older one. Eat the older one this month. A marker date on the shelf beats a memory.

USDA’s rule of thumb for a power outage: a fridge keeps food cold for about 4 hours if the door stays shut. A full freezer holds about 48 hours, a half-full freezer about 24 hours, door shut. Food above 40°F for more than 2 hours (1 hour if the room is above 90°F) is in the danger zone. When in doubt, throw it out. Never taste food to test it. The outage-food sheet has the longer version.

From the den

Wolf Den Foods packs low-moisture meals for long storage because this system is the one a kitchen can actually practice on an ordinary Tuesday. Shelf life still depends on the package, the seal, and a cool, dry cupboard. No pouch beats a rotten plan. Build the water and the opener before you build a wall of food.

What belongs in the box

Ready.gov lists a first-aid kit in the basic supplies. The American Red Cross teaches a practical home kit: assorted bandages, gauze, tape, gloves, antiseptic wipes, tweezers, scissors, a thermometer, instant cold packs, and personal medicines. Add what your household actually uses. Check dates twice a year. A kit in a hall closet you cannot find at night is not a kit.

This manual will not walk you through procedures that belong in a class. Bleeding you cannot stop, chest pain, trouble breathing, a seizure, a head injury with confusion, and signs of stroke or heat stroke are 911 calls. While you wait, follow the dispatcher. They are better at this than a webpage.

• Ask your pharmacist or clinician about an extra supply of daily prescriptions. Laws and insurance rules vary. Do not skip doses to “build a stash.”
• Write the drug names and doses on paper. Phones die.
• Spare glasses, hearing-aid batteries, and copies of key medical cards.
• Stop the Bleed is a national public course in direct pressure and packing for life-threatening bleeding. Take the class. Do not freelance from a video in the moment if you have never practiced.

Hygiene is medical

After a disruption, handwashing prevents more illness than a drawer of exotic supplies. CDC’s emergency hygiene message is ordinary and serious: soap and clean water when you have them, alcohol-based sanitizer (at least 60% alcohol) when you do not, and waste bagged so it does not draw pests. The sanitation sheet covers toilets if the sewer or the water pressure fails.

Keep a small reserve of the unglamorous things: prescriptions, fever medicine you already use as labeled, anti-diarrheal if your clinician agrees, menstrual supplies, diapers, baby wipes, toilet paper, trash bags, and gloves.

How warnings actually arrive

Wireless Emergency Alerts are the short messages that can buzz a phone even when it is not signed into a social app. Ready.gov explains the system: presidential alerts cannot be turned off; imminent-threat and AMBER alerts usually can, and they should stay on. A phone in a drawer on silent, with alerts disabled, is how people miss a flash-flood warning.

A NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert is the backup that does not care if the cell tower is busy. NWS broadcasts watches and warnings around the clock. Put one where you sleep if storms are your local risk, and keep spare batteries or a crank model. Local radio and the NWS website (weather.gov) are the next layer. Social media is a rumor until it matches those.

• Enable government alerts on every adult phone. Show teenagers how.
• Sign up for your county’s alert system. In Maricopa County that desk lives with Emergency Management.
• Text instead of calling when networks are jammed. Texts use less of a damaged system.
• Keep a paper card of numbers: out-of-area contact, doctor, vet, school, work, a neighbor.

Radios, licenses, and reuniting

Family Radio Service handhelds need no FCC license and work for a household spread across a store or a neighborhood, not across a county. General Mobile Radio Service reaches farther and requires an FCC license before you transmit. Amateur radio requires its own license. Buying a radio does not grant the license. Do not transmit on a service you are not authorized to use.

Ready.gov’s family plan asks for two meeting places: one just outside the home, one outside the neighborhood. It also asks for an out-of-area contact, because local lines jam and a distant relative can be the switchboard. Practice saying the plan out loud once. The family card in this manual is the paper version.

The safety that is already code

Household safety in a readiness library means the things that prevent a disaster you cause yourself, and the habits that keep a bad week from getting worse. Smoke alarms and carbon-monoxide alarms come first. Exterior doors that actually latch come next. Outside lights that work, trimmed sightlines at the entries, and a habit of locking up even for a “quick” errand. If something feels wrong at the door, you do not investigate. You leave if you can, or you lock in and call 911.

This manual does not teach confrontation, weapons, or “clearing” a house. Those are not webpage skills, and bad instruction gets people shot or charged. If you choose to own a firearm, the legal duties sit with you: storage that children cannot defeat, the laws of your state, and training from a qualified instructor. None of that belongs in a printed checklist on the fridge.

Do not publish the pantry

A photo of a wall of food, a generator, tools, or cash is a map. So is a public post that the family is out of town. Share readiness ideas without showing quantities, locations, or the inside of the house. Tell a trusted neighbor you might need a check-in. Do not tell the whole timeline.

For after a loss, photograph valuables and serial numbers now and store the pictures with your papers, not as a public album. Insurance claims go better with proof. That task lives on the money sheet.

• Know 911 for emergencies in progress.
• Save the non-emergency police number so a suspicious-but-not-urgent call does not jam the emergency line.
• Agree on a household rule for who answers the door.
• After a disaster, extra caution is warranted: dark streets, open houses, and people offering help you did not ask for. FEMA warns that disaster fraud is common. Officials will not demand payment to register you for aid.

Decide the trigger before the siren

Ready.gov separates sheltering from evacuating because they are opposite moves. Write the triggers that make your household leave: an official evacuation order, a wildfire you can smell with time still on the clock, floodwater on the road, a house that is too hot to survive overnight, a medical device you cannot power. “We’ll see how we feel” is how people leave too late.

FEMA’s long-standing kit advice is two containers. One stays home and is heavy on water and food. One is a go-bag you can carry: copies of papers, medicines, a little water and food, a light, a radio, chargers, a change of clothes, cash, and comfort items for kids. A third, smaller kit can live in the car. The go-bag sheet is the packing list.

Routes, fuel, and who cannot walk out

Pick two ways out of the neighborhood. Bridges, washes, and the one road through the brush all fail in specific disasters. Paper maps still work when the phone does not. Keep the tank at least half full in seasons when you might have to move. A gas station with no power is just a building.

Ready.gov’s pet guidance is clear: they are not allowed in every shelter, so plan carriers, leashes, food, meds, and a place that will take them. Children need seats. Elders and anyone disabled need the devices and the extra time. If you do not drive, decide now whose car it is, or which transit and paratransit options your city actually runs in an emergency. Do not invent a ride at 2 a.m.

• Shoes and a flashlight within reach of the bed.
• Out-of-town friends as a destination, plus a backup.
• School and work reunification policies read once, this year.
• Turn Around Don’t Drown: never drive into floodwater. The flood sheet has the NWS wording.

Write the jobs down

Ready.gov’s plan template is mostly names and places, because gear without a role fails in the first ten minutes. In this house, who takes the go-bag? Who gets the youngest child? Who leashes the dog? Who knows the water shutoff? Who is the out-of-area voice if local phones jam? If the usual person is at work, who is the second?

People outside the household matter as much. An elder who lives alone, a neighbor on oxygen, a friend with a truck. Agree on a check-in before a heat wave, not during one. You are not building a squad. You are making sure nobody is invisible.

• Share the plan with the adults. Tell children the meeting spot in calm words.
• Ask schools, childcare, and workplaces how they release people in an evacuation.
• Practice one piece a year: a fire drill to the mailbox, a weekend bag check, a phone-tree text.
• Include roommates and frequent guests. A plan that ignores who is actually in the house is fiction.

Trust is specific

Give a spare key, a medical note, or a pet instruction only to a person you would trust with them on a normal Thursday. Write those names on the household card, which stays on this device until you print it. Do not put alarm codes or hiding spots on that card. The card is for reuniting, not for a map of the house.

Money that works unplugged

Ready.gov’s financial preparedness guidance asks households to keep some cash, because ATMs and card readers fail in a blackout and after a network outage. Small bills are kinder than a hundred when a neighbor is selling ice from a cooler. The amount is your decision. Enough for fuel, a few meals, and a motel night is a common private target. Do not publish the amount or the hiding place.

An emergency fund in a bank is still the right tool for ordinary shocks. Cash at home is only the slice that has to work when the bank’s lights are off. Insurance, not a jar of bills, is what rebuilds a house. Know what your policy actually pays for: flood and earthquake are often excluded from a standard homeowners policy. Read it once, on a quiet day. The Insurance Information Institute publishes plain-language explainers.

Proof, claims, and the free desk

Copies of IDs, insurance declarations, a lease or deed, bank and loan contacts, and medical cards belong in a grab-and-go folder or a secure offsite copy. Originals can stay in a safer place if the copies are good. The papers sheet is the full list.

After a presidentially declared disaster, federal aid is requested at DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling the FEMA helpline, 1-800-621-3362. Registration is free. Anyone who asks you to pay to “put you on the FEMA list” is running a scam. Photograph damage before you throw things out, if it is safe to be there. Save receipts. The comeback sheet covers the first days home.

• Automatic bill pay helps until the income stops. Know which bills you would pause, and the hardship number on each account.
• A password manager is convenient and useless if nobody else can reach a critical account. Name a trusted person for the worst case, on your terms.
• Veterans benefits, Social Security, and unemployment have their own official sites. Bookmark those, not a lookalike ad.

The sentence that matters

Ready.gov and CDC use the same first line for a radiation emergency: get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned. A nuclear detonation adds a brutal clock. You have minutes to get under real shelter before fallout, then at least a day inside while the radiation drops. This page is those public steps in the order a household can practice. It is not a promise about surviving at the point of the blast. Ready.gov calls that blast large and deadly. If you are far enough to take shelter, these are the moves.

If this page and the agency linked at the bottom ever disagree, believe the agency. If you are on fire, trapped in a collapse, or badly hurt, that emergency comes first. Call 911 when you can.

FEMA fallout shelter sheet

FEMA’s public sheet is called Shelter-in-Place for Nuclear/Radiological. It is dated November 2021 and listed with the other shelter-in-place sheets on April 15, 2022. The line printed on it is Get In. Stay In. Tune In. Do not stay outside, and do not stay in a car. The PDF and the FEMA page that hosts it are in the sources. A second document, Communicating in the Immediate Aftermath (April 2024), is what FEMA tells officials to say to the public. Where the 24-hour sheet and the 12-to-24-hour messages differ, do not invent a leaving time. Stay until officials say it is safe.

Manufactured or mobile home

From the FEMA nuclear shelter sheet.

• Get to a brick or concrete building if you can do it safely in a few minutes. Ready.gov is the source of that few-minute limit. FEMA’s sheet says brick or concrete are best.
• If you cannot get there, shelter in the middle of the home.
• Stay away from the outer walls, the windows, and the roof.

One- or two-story building

From the FEMA nuclear shelter sheet.

• Stay away from the outer walls, the windows, and the roof.
• Go to the basement or the lowest level.
• If there is no basement, take shelter on the first or middle floor.

Multistory building

From the FEMA nuclear shelter sheet.

• Stay away from the outer walls, the windows, and the roof.
• Go to the basement, the parking levels, or another lowest level.
• Brick or concrete is better than a light frame.

Every building, after you are in

These lines are on the same FEMA sheet, plus the car and clock wording from the April 2024 public messages.

• Do not stay outside. Do not stay in a car. FEMA’s 2024 public script adds that a car will not protect you, and that fallout is hard to predict and hard to outrun. If you are driving, stop and get inside a sturdy building.
• Get inside the nearest building. Brick or concrete are best.
• Bring pets indoors.
• Go to the basement or the middle of the building. A room with no windows is better. More walls mean more protection. Concrete and soil are what block the radiation.
• Stay away from outer walls and the roof. Radioactive material collects there.
• Close windows and doors. If you can, turn off fans and other units that pull air in from outside.
• Stay inside for 24 hours unless local authorities give other instructions. The sheet says to wait for the radiation to decay. FEMA’s 2024 messages say plan on 12 to 24 hours, and the sample alerts say at least 24 hours, possibly longer where you are. Do not leave at 12 hours because the number showed up in a manual. Leave when officials say it is safe, or if the building is on fire or may collapse.
• Listen for instructions.

If the building fails, and after fallout is on you

Fire and collapse outrank the shelter rule. Fallout on clothing does not. FEMA’s sheet and the 2024 messages both say not to leave for children.

• If the building is on fire or may collapse, leave it and get into a different sturdy building.
• Keep the time outside as short as you can. FEMA says a mask and an outer layer you can take off at the next shelter help with decontamination.
• Let other people come in with you. The fallout on them is dangerous. The people are not. Have them take off shoes and outer clothes, or brush off away from people and pets, then wash. Bag the clothes, shoes, wipes, and anything that was outside, and put the bags away from people and animals.
• If you were outside after the fallout arrived, take off your outer layer and put it away from people and pets.
• Brush off fallout. If you can, wash exposed skin and hair. FEMA’s 2024 script: shower if you can, wipe with a wet cloth if you cannot, then clean clothes. Tap water is fine for washing.
• Do not leave to pick up children. Schools and day cares have plans and are caring for them. Reunite later. The same rule covers people in health-care buildings. Going out in a car puts both of you in the radiation.
• Food and drinks that were already inside are safe. Bottled or sealed drinks are the first choice. If those are gone, FEMA says use tap water. Keep pets indoors.
• If officials later tell you to evacuate, gather documents, medicines, and pet food, then move when they say. Not before.

Signs, before you waste the minutes

Three things count. A warning. The blast itself. Fallout, which you should not wait to see. A nuclear power-plant accident or a dirty bomb can also start with “get inside,” but the later order may be to evacuate or to take potassium iodide. Do not use this detonation clock as a reason to ignore an official evacuation, and do not evacuate into fallout because some other emergency is a “drive away” emergency.

• An official warning. Wireless Emergency Alerts on a phone, the Emergency Alert System on radio and TV, NOAA Weather Radio, or local officials. Ready.gov: if you are warned of a radiation hazard, get inside the nearest building and away from windows immediately.
• The detonation itself, if there was no warning. Heat, a blast, flying debris, then a shock wave. Outside, lie face down. After the shock wave passes, get inside. There may be no time to do anything clever before that.
• Fallout later, and maybe invisibly. A ground detonation can pull dirt and debris into the cloud and drop it as sand-like radioactive particles. Ready.gov’s window to reach shelter before that fallout arrives is 10 minutes or more. Do not wait until you can see it.

First seconds: Down. Away from glass.

A nuclear detonation is a large, deadly blast. Ready.gov does not give the public a seconds-per-mile table, so do not stand there and calculate one. If you are warned, or the blast is happening, cover comes before curiosity.

• If you are warned of a blast, take cover behind anything that might offer protection.
• If you are outside, lie face down to protect exposed skin from the heat and flying debris.
• If you are warned of a radiation hazard, get inside the nearest building and move away from windows.
• Do not go to a window to identify a cloud. The instruction is to cover, not to watch.

First 5 minutes: Nearest building, then a better one.

Five minutes is a practice mark inside two Ready.gov lines: go inside as soon as the shock wave passes, and go to a multi-story building or a basement immediately if you can reach it safely within a few minutes. It is not a separate federal alarm.

• After the shock wave passes, get inside the nearest building as quickly as you can.
• Any building is safer than being outside. Brick or concrete, a basement, or the center of a large building is better.
• If a multi-story building or a basement is only a few minutes away and you can reach it safely, go there now. Do not start a trip you cannot finish before fallout.
• Do not use these minutes to load a car. A car is a weak shield and the roads are not the plan.

10 minutes: Be inside. This one is a published number.

Ready.gov: after a detonation you will have 10 minutes or more to find an adequate shelter before fallout arrives. Fallout from a ground burst is dangerous, sand-like radioactive dust. You may not see it. Do not wait for grit in the air to start moving.

• Be indoors by this point. Deeper in the building is the next improvement, not a drive across town.
• If you were outside, take off your outer layer of clothing before you go all the way in, if you can. Do it carefully so dust does not shake loose. Keep it away from your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Removing that outer layer can remove up to 90 percent of radioactive material.
• If you are still outside and cannot get in yet, cover your mouth and nose with a mask, cloth, or towel. That is a bridge, not a shelter.

30 minutes: Get it off you. Seal the room.

CDC and Ready.gov put decontamination and shelter-in-place “as soon as you are inside,” not on a 30-minute bell. Thirty minutes is the practice deadline for finishing those steps so they are not still undone at the first hour.

• Put the outer clothes in a plastic bag or other container you can close. Set the bag away from people and pets.
• Shower with soap and shampoo if you can. Do not use conditioner. CDC says it makes radioactive material stick to hair. Do not scald, scrub, or scratch your skin.
• Keep cuts and scrapes covered while you wash so dust stays out of open wounds.
• No shower: wash hands, face, and skin that was uncovered, with soap and water. No sink: a moist wipe, clean wet cloth, or damp paper towel. Not a household cleaning wipe. Hand sanitizer does not protect against radioactive material.
• Put on clean clothes if you have them.
• Pets that were outside after the dust arrived come in too. Brush gently, then wash with soap or shampoo and water and rinse.
• Close and lock windows and doors. Turn off fans, air conditioners, and forced-air heat that pull outdoor air. Close the fireplace damper.
• Go to the basement or the middle of the building. Stay as far as you can from outer walls and the roof. Fallout settles on the outside.

1 hour: Best room. Radio on. Nobody goes fetching.

By an hour, the shelter actions above should already be done. This hour is for staying there and getting official instructions, not for a new plan.

• Stay in the most protective spot you have: basement, or the center of the building.
• Listen. NOAA Weather Radio, a battery or crank radio, and the Emergency Alert System do not need a working cell tower. Wireless Emergency Alerts help when the phone network still does.
• Do not leave to pick up children or adults from school, day care, a hospital, or a nursing home. CDC says going out to get them can expose you and them. Those buildings are told to shelter until responders say it is safe.
• Food and drink already inside are safe to use. Sealed containers that were outside are all right after you wipe them with a damp cloth. Bag that cloth and put it away from people and pets.
• Do not eat food from the garden, or food or liquids that were outdoors and uncovered, until authorities say it is safe.
• Keep taking medicine that was already inside, or sealed medicine you have wiped off.
• Drinking water, from the Ready.gov nuclear-detonation food, water, and medicine flyer: bottled or other sealed drinks first, then water from the toilet tank (not the bowl) and the water heater. If those are gone, that flyer says use tap water to stay hydrated. CDC adds that officials may later tell you to drink bottled water if they find the tap contaminated, and that tap water can still be used for washing. If the two ever conflict on the day, follow the official in front of you.

First 24 hours: Stay. The worst of it falls off fast.

This duration is official. Ready.gov says to remain in the most protective location for the first 24 hours, and that radiation levels decrease rapidly and become significantly less dangerous during that day. CDC says stay inside at least 24 hours, until officials say it is safe to leave.

• Stay unless you are threatened by fire, a gas leak, building collapse, or a serious injury, or authorities say it is safe to leave.
• A life-threatening condition or a building that is coming down outranks the shelter rule. Call 911 when you can. Do not delay care that keeps someone alive.
• Do not take potassium iodide unless public health officials, emergency officials, or a clinician tell you to. KI only blocks radioactive iodine from the thyroid. It does not stop fallout, blast, or other radioactive material.
• CDC says do not take potassium iodide unless public health or emergency response officials, or a healthcare provider, tell you to. On the CDC KI page, KI is only recommended for people under 40 and for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Officials or a clinician may still tell an adult over 40 to take it if the predicted exposure is high enough to cause hypothyroidism. People with some conditions, including a known iodine sensitivity, should not take KI or should ask a clinician first. Doses differ by age, down to infants, and one dose lasts about 24 hours. Use only FDA-approved KI. Table salt, iodine-rich food, and iodine supplements do not do this job and can hurt you.
• People with a known iodine sensitivity should not take KI unless a clinician says they can.

After the first day: Listen for the all-clear. Do not sightsee.

Shelter usually lasts at least 24 hours. It can be longer. Leaving because the clock feels long enough is not the guidance.

• Keep the radio on. Leave when local authorities say it is safe, not when a rumor does.
• If you did evacuate, do not return until those same authorities say so.
• Do not start an outdoor cleanup. CDC says emergency officials will tell you if your home needs decontamination, and how.

How to be ready before it

The drill is worthless if the room, the radio, and the family rule are decided during the ten minutes. Do this on an ordinary day.

• Pick the room now. A basement is best. Otherwise the most interior room, with the most walls and mass between you and the roof. Know whether a brick or concrete building a few minutes away is actually a few minutes away on foot.
• Stage a bag in that room: closable plastic bags, soap, a full change of clothes, a battery or crank radio, a flashlight, spare batteries, sealed water, shelf-stable food, daily medicines, and pet supplies for at least a day. If it is still in the garage, it is not in the shelter.
• Turn on emergency alerts on the phone. Know which AM or FM station, and NOAA Weather Radio, you will use when the cell network is useless.
• Say the school and care plan out loud before you need it. Children and adults in school, day care, a hospital, or a nursing home shelter there. You do not drive into fallout to collect them.
• A mask, a car, or a pill is not the plan. A cloth over the mouth is only for the minutes you cannot get inside yet. KI is only if officials order it, and it only protects the thyroid from radioactive iodine.

How fallout is avoided

Ready.gov’s protection principles are time, distance, and shielding. In a house they look like this.

• Time. Limit how long you are exposed. The published public windows are the first 10 minutes or more to get under shelter, then at least the first 24 hours inside while the levels drop.
• Distance. Get far from the dust and from the outside surfaces it lands on. The middle of the building, or underground, is farther from the roof and the outer walls.
• Shielding. Mass stops more of it than glass or a car door. Brick, concrete, soil overhead, and a basement beat a wood-frame room with windows. Ready.gov also names underground garages and subways as useful shelter when that is where you are.
• Do not carry it inside. Outer clothes off and bagged, wash without conditioner, pets washed, outdoor containers wiped, the wipe bagged.
• Do not eat or drink it. Nothing from the garden. Nothing that sat outside uncovered.
• Do not go look at it, film it, or drive around in it during the hours the shelter rule covers.

Practice it before you need it

Run the clock on a quiet evening inside the house. Nobody goes outside to pretend. At 0:00 move away from windows into the room you already picked. At 5:00 say, out loud, which better building you could actually reach on foot in a few minutes if you had been caught on the street. At 10:00 practice taking off a jacket into a bag without shaking it. At 30:00 turn the practice into hands washed, the radio found, pets’ water in the room, and the forced-air fan switch identified. At 1:00 read the line that you will not drive to the school. Then stop. The next real hold is 24 hours, and you do not need to sit there tonight to learn it. Print this guide and keep the paper with the radio.

Why this one leads

NWS and CDC treat extreme heat as a leading weather killer in the United States. In the low desert it does not need a named storm. A week of nights that never cool, plus an air conditioner that fails, is enough. Ready.gov’s heat page asks you to find shade, drink water, limit sun in the hottest hours, and never leave children, adults who cannot exit, or pets in a parked car. Interior temperatures climb in minutes.

Know where you would go if your cooling failed: a friend’s house, a mall, a library, a city cooling center. Maricopa County and city sites publish cooling locations when the forecast demands them. Check the morning of, not a bookmark from last July.

Warning signs, in public language

CDC describes heat exhaustion as heavy sweating, weakness, cold or clammy skin, a fast weak pulse, nausea, cramps, or fainting. Move the person to a cooler place, loosen clothes, cool them with wet cloths or a cool bath, and offer sips of water. Get medical help if they are vomiting, getting worse, or not improving.

Heat stroke is the emergency: confusion, slurred speech, a throbbing headache, a strong rapid pulse, possible loss of consciousness, and skin that may be hot and dry or damp. Call 911. Move them to a cooler place and cool them aggressively with whatever you have, such as cool water on the skin and air movement. This page is not a diagnosis. If you are unsure, call.

• Drink before you feel desperate. In a heat emergency, CDC advises not to wait for thirst.
• Water is the drink. Alcohol and very sugary drinks make the day worse.
• Check on neighbors, especially older adults and anyone who lives alone.
• Dress light. Close blinds on the sun side. Use fans only if the room is not already dangerously hot; fans do not replace cooling once indoor temperatures are extreme. Follow the current CDC note on fans if a heat alert mentions them.
• Outdoor work and exercise move to early morning or not at all when an excessive-heat warning is up.

Turn around, don’t drown

The National Weather Service Turn Around Don't Drown page is specific. A mere 6 inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult. It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars, and just 2 feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks. You cannot see the hole under brown water. If you meet a flooded road, turn around. Do not drive around barricades.

Ready.gov’s flood guidance: know whether you live, work, or drive through a flood-prone spot; move valuables up if water is coming and you have time; disconnect utilities if officials tell you to and you can do it without standing in water. Afterward, assume standing water hides debris, sewage, and downed lines.

Arizona washes

Monsoon storms drop a lot of water on a little ground. Dry washes, underpasses, and low dips on familiar roads flood fast, including miles downstream of the rain you can see. Do not camp, park, or walk in a wash when storms are in the forecast. A blue sky over your picnic does not mean the watershed upstream is quiet. NWS Phoenix is the forecast office for much of the state. Alerts belong on your phone before July, not during the first haboob.

• Have a go-bag if you live downstream of a wash or in a mapped floodplain.
• Flood insurance is separate from most homeowners policies. Buy it before the clouds, because policies often have a waiting period. Confirm the current rule with your agent and floodsmart.gov.
• Never let children play in irrigation ditches or floodwater.

Go before the road fills

Ready.gov’s wildfire page and the Firewise program (NFPA) share one timing rule: leave early if you are told to, or if the fire is close enough that waiting is a bet. Houses burn from embers landing in gutters, vents, and wood piles, not only from a wall of flame. A defensible space — cleared gutters, no wood piled on the deck, vegetation managed to the distances your local fire district publishes — is homework for a calm weekend. It is not a last-minute project in smoke.

Pack the go-bag before fire season if you live on the wildland edge: papers, medicines, chargers, water, masks, pet kit. Park the car facing out. Tell the household the route and the meeting place when the sky is clear.

Smoke without flames

You can have a dangerous air day with the fire two counties away. CDC and AirNow advise staying indoors, keeping windows shut, and running air conditioning on recirculate if the system allows and you still have power. A properly worn N95 or P100 reduces the particles you breathe if you must go out. Cloth masks do not do this job. People with asthma, heart disease, children, and older adults should follow their clinician’s plan and not “tough out” a smoke day.

Do not add indoor smoke. Skip candles, incense, frying, and the fireplace while the outdoor air is already bad.

People first, then pipes

Ready.gov’s winter page is about staying warm without poisoning yourself. Layers, a hat, a closed interior room, and dry clothes matter more than a heroic heater. Never use a generator, grill, camp stove, or charcoal indoors or in the garage. Never use a gas oven as a heater. Carbon monoxide and house fires follow those shortcuts. Space heaters need three feet of clearance and a shutoff when you sleep, unless the maker designed it for something else and you follow that manual.

Know who in the family gets cold faster: infants, older adults, anyone with poor circulation. A freeze warning is a check-on-neighbors day even in the desert.

Pipes

Before a hard freeze, open cabinet doors on exterior walls so room air reaches plumbing, disconnect hoses, and cover hose bibs. Let a faucet drip if your water utility or Ready.gov’s winter guidance recommends it for your type of house. Know the main shutoff so a split pipe does not run all night. If a pipe bursts, shut the water off, shut off the water heater’s power or gas if you can do that safely, and call a plumber. Do not stand in water near electrical devices.

Pull aside, stay alive

Arizona DOT’s dust-storm message is taught for a reason. Blowing dust drops visibility to zero in seconds, especially on valley freeways and open desert highways in monsoon season. If a wall of dust is ahead and you can still exit, get off the highway. If you are caught in it: do not stop in the travel lane. Pull as far off the roadway as you safely can. Turn off all lights, including brake lights, so another driver does not follow your glow and hit you. Set the parking brake. Take your foot off the brake pedal. Stay belted. Wait until the storm passes.

Do not try to outrun a dust wall at freeway speed. Check NWS Phoenix before long drives in monsoon season, and delay the trip when blowing-dust advisories are up.

At home

Close windows and bring pets in. Dust aggravates asthma the way wildfire smoke does. If you use a rescue inhaler, it should already be in the go-bag and the daily bag, not in a cabinet you cannot find while coughing. Afterward, watch for downed lines before you clear debris.

The first seconds

Ready.gov and the ShakeOut campaign teach one action: Drop, Cover, and Hold On. Get down before the quake knocks you down. Cover under a sturdy table, and hold on to it. If there is no table, get down next to an interior wall and cover your head and neck. Stay away from windows and anything that can fall. Do not run outside during the shaking. Do not stand in a doorway because it used to be folk advice. It is not the plan.

If you are in bed, stay there and cover your head with a pillow. If you are driving, pull over smoothly, set the brake, and wait. If you are outside, move to a clear spot away from buildings, wires, and trees.

After

Expect aftershocks. USGS is the source for what just happened and what the local hazard is. Check yourself and the people next to you. If you smell gas or hear hissing, shut the gas off if you can do it without creating a spark, and leave it off until a qualified person turns it back on. Text family instead of calling. Use the stairs if you must leave a damaged building. The comeback sheet covers re-entry. Arizona’s risk is lower than the West Coast’s and it is not imaginary. USGS maps are the reference, not a neighbor’s memory of 1970.

Seasons and the real danger

Ready.gov lists the hurricane seasons.

Eastern Pacific: May 15 to November 30.

Atlantic and Central Pacific: June 1 to November 30.

Hurricanes are not only a coastal problem. Rain, wind, water, and even tornadoes can reach far inland from where a storm makes landfall.

The National Hurricane Center lists storm surge, heavy rain flooding, wind, tornadoes, and rip currents as the hazards. Surge can be more than 20 feet in places. Hurricane-force winds are 74 mph or more.

Before the storm

Ready.gov's list:

• Know your evacuation zone and your route.
• Have several ways to get alerts. The FEMA app gives National Weather Service alerts for up to five locations. Wireless Emergency Alerts and the Emergency Alert System need no sign-up.
• Keep insurance and ID up to date, with copies in a secure, password-protected digital space.
• Clear drains and gutters, bring in outdoor furniture, and consider hurricane shutters.
• Charge phones and buy backup chargers.
• Pack medicine, disinfectant supplies, and pet supplies. You may not be able to buy supplies for days or even weeks after a hurricane.
• Check on neighbors and older adults.

During

• If you live in a mandatory evacuation zone and officials say go, go immediately.
• For wind, go to a designated storm shelter or an interior room.
• If floodwater traps you, go to the highest level of the building. Do not climb into a closed attic, because rising water can trap you there.
• Do not walk, swim, or drive through floodwater. Turn Around, Don't Drown.

After

• Follow local officials.
• During cleanup, wear protective clothing and work with someone else.
• Use a mask when cleaning mold or debris. People with asthma, other lung conditions, or weakened immune systems should not enter buildings with indoor water leaks or mold.

Watch, warning, emergency

The National Weather Service uses three alerts:

• Tornado Watch. Tornadoes are possible. Review your plan, check your supplies and safe room, and be ready to act quickly.
• Tornado Warning. A tornado has been sighted or indicated by radar. Move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building and avoid windows. If you're in a mobile home, a vehicle, or outdoors, move to the closest substantial shelter.
• Tornado Emergency. The highest alert. A violent tornado has touched down. Seek refuge immediately.

Before

Ready.gov:

• Tornadoes can bring winds over 200 mph.
• Know the signs: a rotating, funnel-shaped cloud, an approaching cloud of debris, or a loud roar like a freight train.
• Pick your shelter. The best is a safe room built to FEMA criteria or a storm shelter built to ICC 500. The next best is a small, interior, windowless room or basement on the lowest level of a sturdy building.
• Plan for pets.

During

Go to your safe place right away.

Cover your head and neck with your arms. Put furniture or blankets around or on top of you.

In a car or truck. Ready.gov says there is no safe option, only less dangerous ones:

• If the tornado is visible and far away and traffic is light, you may be able to drive out of its path by moving at right angles to it.
• If debris is flying, park out of traffic lanes. Keep your seat belt on, put your head below the windows, and cover your head.
• If you can get noticeably lower than the roadway, leave the car and lie there, covering your head.
• Never shelter under a bridge.

After

• Text instead of calling.
• Stay clear of fallen power lines.
• Wear thick-soled shoes, long pants, and work gloves for cleanup.

Read the alert

The National Weather Service's local offices issue winter alerts based on local criteria.

Freezing rain coats roads and power lines with ice.

• Winter Storm Watch. Conditions favor a significant storm: heavy snow, sleet, ice, or blowing snow.
• Wind Chill Watch. Dangerously low wind chills are possible.
• Winter Weather Advisory. Wintry weather is expected but below warning level; expect hard driving.

At home

Ready.gov:

If the heat goes out, NWS says: close off rooms you don't need. Stuff towels in the cracks under doors. Close curtains. Eat and drink. Food gives the body energy to make heat, and cold air is very dry. Wear loose layers.

• Stay off roads if at all possible.
• Limit time outside and dress in layers.
• Avoid overexertion when shoveling snow, to reduce the risk of a heart attack.
• Use generators and fuel only outdoors, at least 20 feet from windows, doors, and attached garages.
• Install carbon monoxide detectors on every level of the home.

If the car gets stuck

NWS: Stay in the vehicle. You become disoriented quickly in wind-driven snow.

Before any winter drive, tell someone your route and carry a charged phone, a car charger, and a car kit.

• Run the engine about 10 minutes each hour for heat. Crack a window while it runs, and clear snow from the exhaust pipe so carbon monoxide doesn't build up.
• Turn on the dome light at night while the engine runs.
• Tie a bright cloth, preferably red, to the antenna or door. After the snow stops, raise the hood.

Frostbite and hypothermia

From Ready.gov. Frostbite: signs are numbness, white or grayish-yellow skin, and firm or waxy skin. Go to a warm room and soak the area in warm water. Do not massage it or use a heating pad.

Hypothermia (body temperature below 95°F). Signs are shivering, exhaustion, confusion, fumbling hands, memory loss, slurred speech, or drowsiness. Warm the center of the body first: chest, neck, head, and groin. Keep the person dry and wrapped in blankets.

NWS's cold page adds that hypothermia can occur in temperatures as warm as 60°F, particularly in water or if you're outside a long time and not dressed for the weather. It also says that of the approximately 1,300 people the CDC lists as killed by hypothermia each year, most are seniors.

Where the risk is

Ready.gov says:

• There are 161 potentially active volcanoes in the United States.
• Alaska, Hawaii, California, Washington, and Oregon have the most, but other states and territories have them too.
• Lava and debris can flow at up to 100 mph.
• Ash can contaminate water, damage machinery, reduce visibility, and irritate skin, eyes, nose, and throat.

Prepare now

• Sign up for the free USGS Volcano Notification Service.
• Ask local emergency management about evacuation and ash shelter plans.
• Store food, cleaning supplies, and water for several days.
• Talk to your doctor if you have breathing problems.
• Plan for pets and livestock.
• Check what your homeowner's insurance covers.

During

• Evacuate early if told to.
• Avoid areas downwind of the volcano and river valleys downstream of it.
• If you have supplies, shelter where you are. Cover vents and seal doors and windows.
• Avoid driving in heavy ash.
• Do not get on your roof to remove ash.

After

• Stay indoors until authorities say it's safe.
• Text rather than call.
• People with asthma or lung conditions should avoid contact with ash.
• See USGS volcanic ash guidance.

What it is

Ready.gov: a tsunami is a series of enormous waves caused by earthquakes, underwater landslides, volcanic eruptions, or asteroids. It can travel 20–30 mph with waves 10–100 feet high. Coasts that border the Pacific Ocean or the Caribbean have the greatest risk.

NWS: the first wave may not be the last or the largest. Danger can last hours or days.

Natural warnings

NWS and Ready.gov list three natural warnings. If you notice any of them in a hazard zone, do not wait for an official warning.

• A strong or long earthquake.
• The ocean acting strange: a fast-rising flood, a wall of water, or water suddenly draining away to show the ocean floor.
• A loud roar from the ocean.

What to do

• If there's an earthquake, Drop, Cover, and Hold On first.
• When the shaking stops, move to your safe place outside the hazard zone. If you can't reach it, go as high and as far inland as possible.
• Ready.gov says to pick shelters 100 feet or more above sea level, or at least one mile inland.
• If you're outside the hazard zone and get a warning, stay where you are unless officials say otherwise.
• Evacuation routes are often marked by a wave with an arrow pointing to higher ground.
• If you're on the beach and feel any earthquake, no matter how small, move off the beach.
• If you're in a boat, face the waves and head out to sea. If you're in a harbor, go inland.

After

• Stay out of the hazard zone until officials say it's safe.
• Avoid floodwater, which can hide debris and live electricity.
• Stay away from damaged buildings, roads, and bridges.
• Photograph damage for insurance.

Before

Ready.gov:

• Learn how diseases spread.
• Prepare for schools, workplaces, and community centers to close, including telework and virtual school.
• Gather supplies for several days or weeks: cleaning supplies, non-perishable food, prescriptions, and bottled water.
• Review what your health insurance covers, including telemedicine.
• Make password-protected digital copies of important documents.
• Watch for scams.

During

Ready.gov:

• Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
• Use hand sanitizer that is at least 60% alcohol when soap isn't available.
• Keep at least six feet from people outside your household.
• Cover your mouth and nose with a mask in public.
• Clean high-touch surfaces.
• Stay home when sick, except to get medical care.
• If you think you've been exposed, contact your doctor and follow quarantine instructions.
• Share only accurate information.
• Feeling anxious is normal. Stay connected by video or phone and talk to someone.

After

Update your family plan.

Talk with your community about the lessons learned.

Official guidance changes as a specific disease is understood. For a real outbreak, the CDC and your state health department outrank this page.

Indoors

Ready.gov:

• Leaks. Fix dripping faucets by replacing washers. One drop per second wastes 2,700 gallons a year. Check all plumbing for leaks. If a well pump turns on and off while no water is being used, you have a leak.
• Fixtures. Install aerators with flow restrictors and an ultra-low-flow showerhead.
• Toilets. Consider a low-volume toilet that uses less than half the water of older models.
• Reuse. Never pour water down the drain when there's another use for it, such as watering plants.

Outdoors

Ready.gov:

• Plant native or drought-tolerant plants.
• Use drip irrigation and mulch.
• Raise the mower blade to at least three inches.
• Point sprinklers at the lawn, not the pavement.
• Consider rainwater harvesting where practical.
• A traditional pool filter backflush uses 180 to 250 gallons. Choose a water-saving pool filter.

When your utility declares restrictions

Follow your water provider's rules. They outrank this page. Your stored emergency water (see the Water chapter) is for drinking, not the garden.

Signs

Ready.gov lists these signs of a chemical release. Some toxic chemicals have no odor.

• Trouble breathing.
• Eye irritation.
• Loss of coordination.
• Nausea.
• Burning in the nose, throat, and lungs.
• Many dead insects or birds.

Before

• Put duct tape, scissors, and plastic sheeting in your kit.
• Learn how to run your home's ventilation system.
• Pick an above-ground shelter room with as few openings as possible.
• Ask your Local Emergency Planning Committee about chemicals stored in your area.

If told to evacuate

• Go immediately.
• To find a public shelter, text SHELTER plus your ZIP code to 43362.
• Get out of the building without passing through the contaminated area.

If told to stay inside

• Bring pets in.
• Go to an interior room. Close and lock doors and windows. Close vents and fireplace dampers.
• Seal the room with plastic sheeting and duct tape.
• Turn off air conditioners and ventilation, or set them to 100% recirculation.
• Seal gaps with wet towels, plastic, tape, wax paper, or foil.
• If gas may have entered, take shallow breaths through a cloth.

If you're outside

• Move upwind of the source.
• If you're in a car, close the windows and vents and shut off the air conditioner and heater.

After

Don't go outdoors, even to help others, until officials say it's safe.

To decontaminate: remove all clothing. Cut off anything that would be pulled over your head. Bag the clothing. Flush your eyes with water. Wash with soap and water.

Household chemicals: never mix bleach and ammonia. Poison Control: 1-800-222-1222 (Red Cross).

Before

Ready.gov: wherever you go, including work, school, and events, identify exits and places to hide. Learn first aid so you can help the wounded before help arrives.

DHS "If You See Something, Say Something" asks you to report suspicious activity to local law enforcement.

CISA notes that active-shooter incidents often end within 10 to 15 minutes. CISA offers free training, including the IS-907 course.

During

From Ready.gov:

• Run to safety. Getting away from the attacker is the top priority.
• Cover and hide if you can't get away. Stay out of view and put a solid barrier between you and the threat if possible.
• Defend, disrupt, fight only as a last resort, when you can't run or hide.
• Help the wounded. Take care of yourself first, then help if you can. Call 911 when it's safe.

Explosions and collapse

Ready.gov:

• If you're trapped, use a flashlight or whistle, or tap on pipes, to signal rescuers.
• Shout only as a last resort, so you don't inhale dust.

Bleeding

Stop the Bleed teaches three actions: direct pressure, wound packing, and a tourniquet.

MedlinePlus says to place a tourniquet 2–3 inches above the wound and note the time it was applied.

Protect yourself

Ready.gov:

CISA's "Secure Our World" four steps are: recognize and report phishing; use strong passwords; turn on multifactor authentication; update software. That CISA page is now marked Archived Content.

• Limit the personal information you share online.
• Keep software and operating systems updated.
• Use strong passwords, a password manager, and two methods of verification.
• Be suspicious of anything urgent or too good to be true. When in doubt, do not click.
• Back up your files in encrypted storage.
• Check your statements and credit reports regularly.
• The government will not call, text, or contact you on social media about owing money.

During an attack

• Check your bank and card statements and your credit reports.
• Change your passwords immediately.
• Turn off the affected device and have it scanned. If there's a problem, disconnect it from the internet and do a full system restore.
• Tell your work or school.

After

• Contact your banks and card companies, and close unauthorized accounts.
• File with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
• File a local police report.
• Report identity theft to the FTC.

If the grid is the target

A cyberattack on utilities looks like a power outage from your kitchen. Use the Power and Outage-food chapters.

Before

Smartraveller (Australian Government):

• Follow the news.
• Unrest often happens around major anniversaries and elections.
• Authorities may block phones or the internet during unrest. Get information while you can.

If unrest is near you

Smartraveller:

• Avoid all protests. Even peaceful ones can turn violent without warning.
• Stay put or move. If you're safe where you are, stay; many protests are short. If you're not safe, go to a safe place away from the unrest.
• Don't watch. Don't go watch or film it. Authorities may treat you as a participant.
• Follow instructions. Do what police and paramedics tell you.
• Check in early. Tell family and friends you're okay as soon as you can, because communications may be cut later.
• Expect closures. Roads may close and transit may stop. Plan transport before you go out.

Sheltering

If officials tell you to stay inside, use Ready.gov's shelter-in-place steps (the Shelter chapter).

If violence breaks out where you are, use Ready.gov's public-attack steps: run, cover and hide, and defend only as a last resort.

After

If you're injured, go to a hospital away from the unrest.

Check whether your insurance excludes civil unrest. Smartraveller says it is a common exclusion for hire cars.

Money you can reach

Ready.gov:

• Consider an emergency savings account.
• Keep a small amount of cash at home in a safe place, in small bills.
• Get property (homeowners or renters), health, and life insurance, and review what each policy covers.
• Download the Emergency Financial First Aid Kit (EFFAK).

Papers

Ready.gov's list, and why each matters:

Benefits that keep arriving

Ready.gov:

• If you get federal benefits, use direct deposit: 800-333-1795.
• Or use the Direct Express card: 877-212-9991.

Scams follow shocks

Ready.gov warns that scammers exploit financial fear with work-from-home offers, debt consolidation, and student-loan repayment pitches. Report anyone claiming to be a government agent to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint.

Food is a financial plan

A rotated pantry (see the Pantry and Food chapters) is the part of this you can eat.

BYU Extension's long-term storage plan lists, per adult per year: 24 #10 cans of wheat (30+ years); 12 cans of white rice (30+ years); 12 cans of legumes (25 years).

Pack for the walk to the car, then the night away

Ready.gov’s basic kit list is the national standard. A go-bag is the part you can carry if you leave on foot or in a hurry: water, food that needs no cooking, a flashlight, a whistle, a radio, a small first-aid kit, medicines, copies of documents, cash, a phone charger and battery, sturdy shoes, a change of clothes, hygiene items, and any infant or elder needs. Add local maps. Add a paper contact card.

Do not build a bag so heavy nobody will take it. Split weight. Label each bag with the person’s name. Keep them by the door you would actually use, not in a loft you avoid.

• Water: as much as you can carry, knowing the rest of the supply stays with the house kit.
• A whistle to signal for help, from the Ready.gov list. Three blasts is a widely used distress pattern.
• Dust masks, and N95s if smoke is a local risk.
• Comfort: a stuffed animal, a deck of cards, an extra pair of glasses. Morale is a supply.
• Revisit the bag when the season changes and when prescriptions change.

Build it from the grocery you already buy

A two-week pantry is fourteen breakfasts, lunches, and dinners per person that survive a dark fridge. Ready.gov wants that food to be things your family will eat, with a manual can opener beside the cans. Add a little more for appetite and for a guest. Dried meals only count if the water to rehydrate them is also in the house.

Use a simple rotation: buy one extra of the shelf-stable foods you already like, eat the oldest, replace it. Dates go on the front of the shelf in marker. Once a season, pull anything past its date and use it in normal cooking if it is still good, or discard it. Cans that bulge, leak, or hiss are trash. USDA is plain about that. Do not taste them.

• No-cook shelf: nut butter, canned fish, beans, fruit cups, tortillas, crackers, shelf milk.
• Comfort shelf: coffee, tea, spices, a familiar sauce. People eat more when food tastes like home.
• Special shelf: formula, allergy-safe food, soft food for someone who needs it, pet food.
• Fuel shelf, if you cook on a camp stove: only outdoors, stable, never in the garage, and counted as a carbon-monoxide risk the same way a generator is.

The plan is a conversation

Ready.gov asks households to plan how they will reach each other if they are separated: different workplaces, a school, a store. Pick a meeting place just outside the home for a fire drill. Pick a second place outside the neighborhood for a wider evacuation. Pick a relative or friend far enough away that they are not in the same outage, and ask them to be the message board.

Fill in the household card on this page. It stays in this browser until you print it. Put a copy in the go-bag, the car, and with the out-of-area contact. Update it when phones, schools, or jobs change. Practice once: everyone texts the contact a single sentence on a normal day so the number is real.

• Write school, daycare, and workplace release rules next to the card.
• Include pets in the meeting plan. A child will go back for a dog.
• Agree on a check-in time if phones return, such as the top of the hour, so you are not calling constantly.
• Do not put gate codes, alarm codes, or safe locations on the card.

What goes in the folder

Ready.gov’s financial and kit guidance both point at documents: identification, insurance policies, and account records, stored in a waterproof way you can carry. Build one folder, or one encrypted backup plus a paper folder. Review it every year.

• Driver licenses, passports, birth certificates, Social Security cards: copies in the bag, originals secured.
• Insurance declarations for home, renters, auto, health, and flood if you have it.
• Lease or deed, vehicle titles, a recent photo of each room.
• Medical list, vaccination record if you want it handy, pet vaccination and a photo of the pet.
• A short list of bank, utility, and employer contacts. Not every password.
• Cash envelope, separate, so the folder is not the only secret.
• A USB drive goes stale and can fail. Paper still opens with no power. Use both if you like redundancy.

Handwashing is the whole game

CDC’s emergency hygiene guidance puts soap and water first. Wash for at least 20 seconds, including after using any toilet setup and before eating or preparing food. If clean water is short, use alcohol-based sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, then wash properly when you can. Assign a little of the stored water to hygiene. Drinking is the priority, and zero washing is how a shelter gets a stomach bug.

A toilet that is not the sewer

If the sewer backs up, do not keep flushing. That floods the house with wastewater. If water pressure is gone, a toilet may still work once or twice if the tank was full. After that, line a bucket with a heavy trash bag, keep urine and feces together or separated based on the method you actually have supplies for, add absorbent material such as cat litter or sawdust if you have it, and tie the bag. Double-bag if you can. Store waste outside, out of the sun, away from water sources, and away from animals, until your city says how to dispose of it. Do not bury waste in a garden you eat from, and do not dump it in a storm drain.

Comfort matters or people will not use the setup. A bucket with a seat, privacy, and a handwash bottle beside it will be used. A lecture will not. Keep toilet paper, bags, gloves, and a spray of diluted bleach for hard surfaces — the surface mix is not the drinking-water dose. Follow the bleach label for disinfecting surfaces, and never mix bleach with ammonia or vinegar.

What Ready.gov wants in a pet kit

Ready.gov’s pet page asks for food, water, medicines, a carrier or crate, a leash, a photo of you with the pet in case you are separated, vaccination records, and a contact for a vet and a backup caretaker. Put ID on the collar and keep a microchip current. Many human shelters cannot take animals. Decide the kennel, the friend, or the pet-friendly hotel before a wildfire day.

• Practice putting the pet in the carrier on a boring afternoon.
• Heat and parked cars kill animals. The same rule as for children.
• Store pet food where it stays cool and dry, and rotate it.
• A printed feeding and medicine note so a neighbor can take over.
• Never leave a pet tied outside in a storm, a freeze, or a heat warning.

Build around real bodies

Ready.gov keeps separate pages for children, older adults, and people with disabilities because a generic list leaves them out. Infants need formula or the feeding plan you already use, bottles, diapers, wipes, rash cream, and extra clothes. Do not invent a new formula in a shortage. If you are pregnant or nursing, your water need is higher and your clinician’s advice outranks this page.

Older adults may need spare glasses, hearing-aid batteries, a walker, a printed medicine list in large type, and a cooler plan for medicines that must stay cold. Anyone who uses electricity to breathe, move, or communicate needs a power plan written with their clinician and the utility’s medical-baseline program if one exists where you live. Ask the power company on a normal day.

• Service animals are part of the evacuee, not luggage. Pack their food and orders.
• Write communication needs: languages, speech devices, what calms a child.
• Neighborhood check-ins matter most for people who live alone.
• Caregivers need their own go-bag. A plan that exhausts one person collapses.

USDA’s clocks

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service publishes the numbers households should memorize. A refrigerator will keep food at a safe temperature for about 4 hours if you do not open the door. A full freezer holds about 48 hours, a half-full freezer about 24 hours, again if the door stays closed. Put a thermometer in both so you are not guessing.

Perishable food held above 40°F for more than 2 hours should be discarded. If the room itself is hotter than 90°F, that window shrinks to 1 hour. That includes meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, leftovers, and opened baby formula. Food that still has ice crystals or is at 40°F or below can be refrozen or cooked, with the details on the USDA page. When in doubt, throw it out. Do not taste food to decide.

• Group what you will eat first, while it is still cold, and eat from the fridge before you open the deep freeze.
• A cooler with ice can extend the clock for a few high-value items. Keep the drain closed and the lid shut.
• Generators can run a fridge if they are outdoors and the cord is right. They cannot make unsafe food safe again.
• After a flood, discard anything not in a waterproof container, and discard wooden spoons and other porous items that touched floodwater. When in doubt, USDA and CDC both lean toward throwing it out.

Do not rush the door

Ready.gov’s recovery steps start with the official all-clear. Roads that look fine hide washouts, downed lines, and weakened bridges. When you do approach the house, look from the outside first. If walls are cracked, the roof is sagging, or you smell gas, stay out and call the utility or 911. Do not use the light switch if gas may be present. Use a flashlight.

Photograph every room and the outside before you clean, if it is safe to be inside. Those pictures are the claim. Save receipts for emergency repairs. File with your insurer promptly and, if a federal disaster is declared for your area, register at DisasterAssistance.gov. Registration is free.

• Throw out flood-touched food, cosmetics, and medicines unless the package is waterproof and intact, and still follow USDA if you are unsure.
• Assume floodwater is dirty. Clean and disinfect hard surfaces with the product directions. Dry the house out to limit mold.
• Generator stays outside, still, on the way back. The first night home is when people get careless.
• Tap water stays off-limits for drinking until the utility says it is safe. Use your stored water.
• Watch children and pets. Snakes, debris, and contaminated puddles show up after floods in desert washes as surely as anywhere else.
• Scammers follow disasters. Your insurer, FEMA, and the county will not demand gift cards.

What agencies actually say

SAMHSA’s Disaster Distress Helpline exists because disasters shake people who were steady the week before. The number is 1-800-985-5990, and talk or text is available. For a suicidal crisis, 988 is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call or text. Those are not preparedness props. They are staffed lines.

Children often show stress as clinginess, sleep changes, or play that repeats the event. Ready.gov’s guidance for kids is to keep routines where you can, answer questions honestly in simple words, and limit graphic news in the background. Adults need the same limits. Eat, drink water, sleep if you can, and do one useful task at a time. A pantry you built in June is allowed to be the thing that makes September feel smaller.

• If someone cannot sleep for days, cannot care for a child, or talks about hopelessness, treat that as urgent and use 988 or 911.
• Do not use alcohol to come down from a bad night. It makes the next day worse and it dehydrates you in the heat.
• Check on the person who “seems fine” and is doing everyone else’s chores.

Start here, in this order

You do not need a wardrobe or a weekend in the woods. The highest-yield public training for a household is short and official. Take them in an order that matches the systems: warnings and a plan first, then bleeding control and first aid, then a community course if you want to be useful to neighbors.

• Ready.gov and Listo.gov (Spanish) for the family plan and the kit. Do that before any gadget.
• American Red Cross first aid and CPR. Skills expire. Renew them.
• Stop the Bleed, for life-threatening bleeding. Find a class on their site.
• FEMA Independent Study, free online, at training.fema.gov. Good starting points are the citizen-preparedness courses currently listed there. Course numbers change; use the catalog, not a screenshot from a forum.
• Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) through your local fire department or the FEMA CERT page, if you want supervised neighborhood skills.
• NWS Skywarn if you want to report weather properly instead of posting blurry clouds.
• If you want radios beyond FRS bubble-pack range, get the FCC license the service requires. Amateur radio licensing runs through FCC-authorized examiners. GMRS is a separate FCC license. Owning the radio is not the license.