This site is written by three people with relevant trade experience. It is not professional emergency, medical, legal or engineering advice, and it does not replace instructions from your own county.
Follow official instructions first
If an evacuation order, boil water notice or shelter order applies to you, follow it. Do not stop to check anything written here against it.
Everything on this site is meant to be read and acted on before an emergency, on an ordinary day. During an event, your utility, your county emergency management office and the National Weather Service know your specific situation and we do not.
Where our numbers come from
Two kinds of figures appear in these guides, and we try to keep them clearly separated.
- Federal figures such as water quantities, refrigerator hold times and outage statistics come from Ready.gov, the USDA and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and are linked in the text so you can check them.
- Our own figures come from three households in Missouri, Alabama and New Mexico across four winters. That is a small sample. Where a result rests on it, the guide says so.
Safety topics we are not qualified to settle
Anything medical, structural or electrical past the point of a household decision belongs to a licensed professional.
Generators, fuel storage, wood heat and carbon monoxide are the areas where a mistake is not recoverable. We give the manufacturer’s and the federal guidance for those, and we say plainly when the right answer is to stop and call someone. Nothing here authorises you to work on your own electrical service, and nothing here is a substitute for a licensed electrician, a chimney sweep or a gas fitter.
Commercial relationships
There are none. This site carries no advertising, no affiliate links and no sponsored content.
Where a guide names a specific tool, material or brand, it is because one of us used it and has something concrete to say about how it held up. Nobody paid for that mention, and we do not accept products sent for review. If that ever changes, this page changes first and the disclosure appears in the guides themselves.
Accuracy and corrections
We publish corrections in place. When a figure or a procedure turns out to be wrong, the guide is updated and a line is added saying what changed and when, rather than the old text quietly disappearing. Corrections can be sent to [email protected].
Last updated: 31 August 2026.