Field Manual · First Edition · 2026
Forty-five chapters covering every hazard that can reach your address — earthquake, flood, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, volcano, wildfire, heat and cold — then the first seventy-two hours, then the six months that decide whether your household actually recovers. Every figure sourced to a named agency.
Not a book about bunkers and buckets. A book about the two weeks your household has to get through alone.
Why this one is different
Most of what is sold in this category is a checklist with a stock photo on the front. Here is what separates this from that.
Earthquake, tsunami, flood, hurricane, tornado, volcano, ashfall, wildfire, extreme heat and extreme cold. Nine hazard families, each with its own chapters on what it does, what to do before, and what to do while it happens.
Section One is an afternoon with four free federal map layers. You come out with a written, ranked list of the hazards that can actually reach your address — and that list decides everything you buy afterwards.
Nine chapters on the part nobody writes about: documenting damage so the claim pays, mould and structure, what public assistance actually covers, and the week-two problems that are not about food.
USGS, NOAA, FEMA, CDC, EPA, CPSC, SBA, the NFIP, the BC Coroners Service, the Oregon Resilience Plan — with the web address printed beside the figure so you can check any of it yourself.
Forty-five honest-limit boxes naming exactly where a method stops working and when to call a professional. No guide that is trying to sell you something writes those.
Forty-five artifacts — checklists, decision trees, scripts and worksheets — set in boxes you can photograph. Plus six printable documents for the moments when the book is not in your hand.
Illustrated PDF · 422 pages · 9 sections · 45 chapters · 45 photographs · 20 charts · 6 companion documents
The four free map layers that tell you which disasters can reach your address. The forty-minute house survey, room by room, that finds what will hurt you. Water, food, power, warmth and sanitation, in the order they fail. Three kits, not one, and why a single bag cannot do both jobs. What actually kills people in earthquakes, which is almost never the shaking. The six inches of moving water that takes an adult off their feet, and the twelve that carries a car.
The three different floods that need three different plans. Why the hurricane warning arrives after your real decision deadline. Thirteen minutes, and the interior room that will do. The ember, not the flame, and the first five feet around your house. Volcanic ash, which is not snow and weighs far more than it looks. The two extremes that quietly kill more people than all of them. The first fifteen minutes, in order. And then the claim, the mould, the money and the month.
Regular price $47 · Launch edition $27 · Six companion documents ($106) included free
The arithmetic
People assume that after a declared disaster, someone makes them whole. The published figures say otherwise, and the gap between the two numbers below is the reason this book exists.
What a household typically receives
$1,000
Median FEMA Individuals and Households Program award for non-wildfire disasters, 2013–2023. The median wildfire award is $3,150.
What the programme caps at
$43,600
The maximum for housing assistance, for disasters declared on or after 1 October 2024 — a ceiling almost nobody reaches.
| The figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Median FEMA household award | $1,000 |
| Programme cap for housing assistance | $43,600 |
| Return on each dollar of mitigation, riverine flood | 7 : 1 |
| Return on each dollar, wildland-urban interface fire | 6 : 1 |
| US adults who could cover a $400 emergency in cash | 63% |
| What the first tier of preparation costs | about $150 |
| What this manual costs today | $27 |
Preparation is not insurance and it is not a stockpile. It is the set of decisions you make while nothing is happening, so that the worst ten minutes of your life do not also have to be the ten minutes you make them in.
Median and maximum award figures from the Government Accountability Office (GAO-25-106862) and the Federal Register notice of maximum assistance, 24 October 2024. Benefit-cost ratios from the National Institute of Building Sciences, Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves, 2019. Emergency-expense figure from the Federal Reserve, Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024. Tier costs are the author's, built from 2026 retail and named as estimates in the book. Every one of these appears in the manual with its source printed beside it.
Actual pages
Five real pages from the file that lands in your inbox. Scroll sideways.
Nine sections · Forty-five chapters
Ordered the way the work actually happens: know your risk, build the lifelines, pack the kits, then hazard by hazard, then the event, then the recovery.
Section One · 5 chapters
Find out which disasters can actually reach your address — and stop preparing for the wrong one.
Section Two · 5 chapters
Water, food, power, warmth, sanitation. Everything else is detail.
Section Three · 5 chapters
Three kits, not one — and the difference between them is the difference between leaving and staying.
Section Four · 5 chapters
Earthquakes: what actually kills people, and the sixty seconds you get.
Section Five · 5 chapters
Floods and tsunamis — the most common disaster on earth, and the most underestimated.
Section Six · 5 chapters
Hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes: days of warning, or thirteen minutes.
Section Seven · 5 chapters
Volcanoes, wildfire, and the two extremes that kill more people than all of them.
Section Eight · 5 chapters
The universal protocol — whatever hit you.
Section Nine · 5 chapters
Recovery is the longest phase and the one that costs the most.
Included with every copy
$106 value · yours freeThe manual tells you what to do. These are what you carry, fill in, tick off and stick inside a cupboard door — designed to print in black and white on ordinary paper.
The main event
422 pages · 45 chapters · 45 photographs · 20 charts · 45 artifact boxes. Every hazard that can reach your address, the first seventy-two hours, and the six months that decide recovery.
The book itself$47
Free bonus no. 1
Go-bag, stay-box and car box on three tick-box sheets, with $150, $400 and $900 tiers priced line by line — so you can start at the bottom and stop wherever your budget does.
$19Free
Free bonus no. 2
The checklist of what an adjuster and an assistance programme will ask for, plus a fill-in template for the copies that survive the house — and where each copy should live.
$19Free
Free bonus no. 3
One stiff card per hazard. First fifteen minutes on the front, first three days on the back. Print them, cut them, and put them where the torch is.
$24Free
Free bonus no. 4
A dated tracker for everything stored, so the supply you built in March is still good in three years instead of quietly expiring in a garage.
$15Free
Free bonus no. 5
Prescriptions, doses, prescribers, devices and power-dependent equipment for every person in the house — the single most useful piece of paper in an evacuation.
$15Free
Free bonus no. 6
Your frequencies and alert channels written down in one place, what to set up before, and what to do during a blackout when the towers are up but the power is not.
$14Free
Order
Illustrated PDF · 422 pages · 9 sections · 45 chapters · 6 companion documents
The manual is $47. Right now it is $27 — and the six companion documents, $106 on their own, are included free with every copy.
Before you buy