Water · Heat · Light · Info

Most families don't make a plan at all. Make yours in five minutes, and tape it inside the cupboard door.

Your answers 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.

Yes, build my family's plan · $9
  • Runs in your browser
  • Your numbers stay on your device
  • Gallons or liters
  • One payment
  • Instant access

That is the whole thing, on a phone-sized screen. 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 five 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

You answer questions about your home: the people and pets in it, how many days you want covered, your weather, any medicine, and what has to stay powered. Skip any you are not sure of.

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 liters, 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 a federal source, such as FEMA, Ready.gov, the CDC or the FCC, and the links are listed at the end. 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 what nine dollars buys. You could do both yourself with a calculator and a notebook. This does them in five minutes, and keeps doing them.

Your numbers stay home

What you type about your household stays on your device.

The calculator runs in your browser, and no server receives what you enter. Everything comes in one email: a link that opens the calculator and the tracker, and the guide and the plans as files you can save and print.

  • Every calculation happens on your own device. The calculator counts a few anonymous moments, such as opening it or printing the wall card, and never sends what you type or the numbers it works out.
  • Your dates and quantities stay in your own browser storage, on your own machine.
  • The calculator keeps working with the connection off. Saving your plan as a PDF needs a connection.

After you buy, I send you one email with your plan, and a second one if you add the Household Pack. Keep the first one: its “Open my plan” link opens the calculator on any phone or computer. Your answers and your tracker stay on the device where you typed them, so on a new device you answer the questions again.

After that, I send occasional emails with preparedness tips and products I think are worth a look. One click unsubscribes you from any of them.

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. The plans cover the first three days. The calculator goes up to two weeks.

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.

Everything you get

One link opens your plan. Seven printable files come with it.

It all arrives in one email after you pay. There is no account to create and no password to remember.

The core

The Blackout Numbers Calculator

Tell it who lives in your house, how many days you want covered and what your weather is like. Then it asks about pets, medicine and anything that has to stay powered, and you can skip any question you are not sure about. It works out the amounts for your household, in gallons or liters.

  • Your numbers Water, food, medicine and backup power, sized for the people and animals in your house.
  • Your shopping list Exact amounts. Check off each line as you buy it, print it, or copy it into a delivery order.
  • Your wall card One page with your numbers at the top and what to do hour by hour, for the cupboard door.

The same link opens the Rotation Tracker. Type in what you store and the date on it, and it lists what to eat first and what to replace, most urgent at the top. It can also put those dates in your phone or computer calendar as reminders.

Run the calculator again whenever your household changes. There is no limit.

Included at no extra cost

Also in the same email

  • Bonus 1: four printable plans. The Solo plan, the Couple plan, the Family plan and the Extra care plan. Print the one that fits your house. Each goes hour by hour through the first three days, starting with the first ten minutes. The Extra care plan is for a home where someone cannot manage alone: an older adult, a baby or a pet.
  • Bonus 2: the wall card. A ready-to-print page with the first ten minutes, how long the fridge and freezer keep food safe, a short list of things never to do, and blank lines for your own numbers. You can tape it up before you even open the calculator.
  • Bonus 3: the Four Pillars guide. About ten minutes to read. It explains why water, heat, light and information come in that order, gives each one a two-minute test you can do at home today, and lists the public source behind every figure.
  • Bonus 4: What this plan is not. Four pages on what the plan leaves out, such as medical advice, evacuation and long-term food storage, and where to turn for those instead.
What you get: the Blackout Numbers Calculator open on a laptop with a household's results, the printable wall card, and the PDF guide and plans

$9

Everything above. One payment.

Yes, build my family's plan · $9

On the payment page there is one optional box: the Household Pack, $9 more. It adds five short plans for what a general plan leaves out: an apartment with no storage, a baby in the house, pets, the car, and one card per room. It comes in its own email. Your plan is complete without it.

30 days to change your mind. Write to me at [email protected] within 30 days and I will refund you in full, Household Pack included. You do not need to give a reason.

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, or you changed your mind, write to me within 30 days and I will refund everything you paid, the Household Pack too. You will not have to explain why.

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?
Five 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 liters?
Both. You pick, and you can switch whenever you like.
Do I need to be online?
To open the email and the calculator. The guide and the plans are files you can save and print, and the calculator then runs on your own device. Saving your plan as a PDF needs a connection.
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. Five minutes, no limit.
Will you email me?
Yes. Your plan first, then occasional preparedness tips and product ideas. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link.

Five 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.

Yes, build my family's plan · $9
Family Blackout Plan
Your numbers in five minutes
$9