Water · Heat · Light · Info

Most families never make a plan at all. Make yours in two minutes, and tape it inside the cupboard door.

Four facts about your home become real quantities, a shopping list you can use today, and a one-page plan anyone in the family can follow without you.

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  • Runs in your browser
  • Your numbers stay on your computer
  • Gallons or litres
  • One payment

That is the whole thing. A few questions about your home, your numbers, a list, and a card for the cupboard door. No sound needed.

Six o’clock on a January evening. The lights go out, the furnace fan stops, and the house goes quiet in a way you feel in your chest.

Your phone says 11 percent. The flashlight is in a drawer, and the drawer is one of three, and the batteries in it were bought the year the grandchildren were small. Somebody at the table is looking at you, because in this house you are the one who knows what to do.

You do know, more or less. There is water in the garage. There are cans in the pantry. What you do not have is the one page that says how much, for how long, and in what order, written down somewhere a person could find it without you.

That page is what this is.

FEMA asked American households about all this in 2023.

77%
said a disaster was likely to reach them FEMA, 2023 survey
89%
had already read or heard how to prepare FEMA, 2023 survey
37%
had made a plan FEMA, 2023 survey

Nearly everyone has the information. Almost nobody has the page.

Here is why, and it is smaller than it sounds. You open a checklist, and four lines in it says store water. How much? For the two of you, or for the week the grandchildren stay? Does the dog count? What about July, when a gallon a day stops being a reasonable guess? The checklist was written for an average household, and yours has never been average. So you close it and promise yourself the weekend.

“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself.”

Proverbs 22:3

Foreseeing is the part most of us have already done. Hiding ourselves, in this case, means a page on a door. That is stewardship of the people under your roof, and it takes two minutes.

When the power goes out, people picture a hundred problems. There are four.

  • Water 01

    It stops being safe, or it stops arriving. Flushing is the half of water people forget to count, which is how a house ends up with plenty to drink and a real problem by the second morning.

  • Heat 02

    It stops being something you control, in July for the same reason as in January. It is also why the food in your kitchen becomes a clock the moment the refrigerator dies.

  • Light 03

    It goes, and with it everything you can do after five in the afternoon. Most of the second-day mistakes are decisions taken in the dark.

  • Info 04

    You stop knowing what is happening, how long it will last, and whether the right move is to stay put or drive to your daughter’s. Nobody packs for this one, and it is the one that makes the other three worse.

Every other problem in the first three days is one of those four wearing a costume. Cooking is heat. Charging the phone is information. Keeping a prescription cold is heat. Flushing is water.

You do not need a bunker, and you do not need two hundred items. You need four columns, a number in each, and none of them touching zero for three days.

Hand somebody those four numbers and they can finish the job in an afternoon.

What you get

One purchase. Three things, and one of them keeps working.

01

The Blackout Numbers calculator

Four facts. How many people live in your house, how many days you want covered, what your climate does, and which of the four pillars you want tracked in detail.

It gives back quantities. Not categories, not ranges, not “consider storing”. The amount, for your household, rated to your people and your weather instead of to a national average. Gallons or litres, whichever you think in.

  • Shopping list Take it to the store or paste it into a delivery order.
  • One-page plan Your numbers, in order, ready to print.
  • Wall card For the inside of a cupboard door.

The wall card is the one that matters. A plan on your phone assumes you are home, awake, and holding a charged phone, which is a lot to assume about the exact night it was written for. Paper on a door works when you are out and your husband is the one standing in the kitchen.

02

The Rotation Tracker

Everything you store expires. People buy the water and the cans and the batteries, feel better for three weeks, then let the shelf sit for four years until somebody checks the dates and throws the lot away. Buying is the easy half. Remembering is where it falls apart.

The tracker holds your dates and does the remembering. Each month it tells you what to eat before it turns and what to buy in its place. You stop keeping a stockpile and start eating your own groceries in a smarter order, and the shelf stays current without costing you another afternoon.

That is why this is a tool and not only a booklet. A booklet is finished the day you download it. This one earns its place in month seven.

03

The Four Pillars guide, four plans, and the first ten minutes

The guide is short, about ten minutes to read. Every number in it comes from FEMA, Ready.gov, the CDC or the FDA, with the link printed under it. Where there was no source, there is no number.

Then four plans, staged across the full three days, with a checkpoint at the first hour, the sixth, the twelfth, and each morning after. One for living alone. One for a couple. One for a family with children in the house. And the Extra Care plan, for a home where somebody cannot manage alone and that has to be worked out in advance instead of at two in the morning.

Each plan opens with the first ten minutes, because most of what goes wrong on day two was decided before anyone found the flashlight.

Why not a free checklist?

There are good free checklists. Ready.gov publishes one, and it is cited at the bottom of this page. Use it.

What a checklist cannot do is know your house. It says one gallon per person per day and leaves you to do the arithmetic for two adults, a visiting grandson and a large dog, in a climate it has never heard of. It cannot hold your expiry dates, and it will not tell you in March that the chili from October needs eating this week.

The numbers and the remembering are the two things you are paying nine dollars for. The rest you could do yourself. The honest truth is that for three years you have not, and nine dollars costs less than one more year of meaning to.

Your numbers stay home

What you type about your household stays on your computer.

The calculator runs in your browser, and no server receives what you enter. The guide, the plans and the tracker sit behind a simple login, so only you have them.

  • Every calculation happens on your own device, with no network calls after the calculator loads.
  • Your dates and quantities stay in your own browser storage, on your own machine.
  • The calculator keeps working with the connection off.

I will send you a few emails after you buy: where to find the tool again, when to check the tracker, that sort of thing. On the access page there is one box, left unticked, that says “Yes, send me Samuel’s occasional product picks.” Leave it alone and you will never get a recommendation from me. Tick it, and once in a while I will tell you about something I think is worth your money. Some of those links pay me a commission, and I will say so when they do.

Who this is not for

If your plan is already on the door and your spouse could run it without you, you have done the work and I have nothing to sell you.

If you want off-grid living or a year of food in the basement, this is the wrong product. Three days, on purpose, and the narrowness is the point.

And if you came to be told the world is ending, you will be disappointed. This is a page for the cupboard door, nothing more.

Who wrote this

About Samuel

I am Samuel Harding. I put Family Blackout Plan together because every checklist I found told every family the same thing, and mine is not every family.

I am not an expert, and I do not claim to be one. That is why every figure in the product carries its source, and why the plans tell you to call your doctor or your fire department the moment a checklist stops being enough.

If you have a question, write to me at [email protected]. I read every message.

The first households

No reviews yet. Family Blackout Plan went on sale in October 2026. The first households that use it will be asked what they think, and their words will go here as they come in, the kind ones and the other kind.

$9

One payment. One optional box.

  • The Blackout Numbers calculator, in gallons or litres
  • The Rotation Tracker, holding your dates month after month
  • The Four Pillars guide
  • Four plans, staged across three days: solo, couple, family, and extra care
  • The printable wall card
  • Unlimited re-runs when your household changes
Get Family Blackout Plan · $9

No subscription. One payment page, with one optional box on it: the Household Pack, $9, five short add-on plans for an apartment with no storage, a baby in the house, pets, the car, and a card for each room. Tick it or leave it. The plan is complete without it.

What I promise, and what I don’t

Use it, print your plan, tape it up. If it did not hand you something you could act on, write to me and I will refund the nine dollars.

Now the limits, said plainly, because this is a category full of promises nobody can keep.

This is a plan and a set of numbers. It is not safety, and it is not a promise about how any particular storm will go for your house. It is not medical advice, and it never will be. If somebody under your roof has medical needs, the plans send you to the person who prescribes for them, because that is the only right answer. And when your fire department or your utility says something different from this plan, they win.

Questions

How long does the calculator take?
Two minutes for the numbers, one more to print. The shopping is the long part, and that is a trip to the store rather than a project.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. You will want a printer at some point, because the wall card is meant for paper.
Gallons or litres?
Both. You pick, and you can switch whenever you like.
Do I need to be online?
To open the calculator and to sign in to the guide. The calculator then runs on your own device.
Is there a subscription?
No. One payment, and it is yours.
Is this a Christian product?
It is written by one, for households like mine. There is one verse in it and the word stewardship, and that is the extent of it. There is no sermon, and the water arithmetic is the same for everyone.
Where do the starting quantities come from?
The published US federal guidance, which is one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days. Every figure I start from is sourced at the bottom of this page. The calculator then adjusts for your household, your chosen window and your climate, and you can override any of it.
Will this work outside the United States?
The arithmetic is not country-specific, and the units switch. The quantities I start from come from US federal sources, cited below, so check whether your own country’s guidance differs before you treat the defaults as final.
What if my household changes?
Run it again. Two minutes, no limit.
Will you email me?
A few service emails after you buy, so you can find the tool and remember the tracker. Product recommendations only if you tick the box on the access page. One click stops any of it.

Two minutes from now you can have the number.

The amount of water, food, light and backup your house needs to carry three days without anything running out. Printed, taped inside the cupboard door, done.

Get Family Blackout Plan · $9
Family Blackout Plan
Your numbers in two minutes
$9