The part that isn’t gear

Open this first. It walks you through unpacking the bag, checking every item off, and being genuinely ready in about ten minutes — before you've read anything else.

Print, cut, play. Forty situations weighted to what American households actually meet — outages and storms far more often than hurricanes. Nobody is hurt on any card; the tension is always a decision under a clock.

Printed backs for both card sizes, so the deck looks like a deck rather than a stack of paper. Print these on the reverse only if you want to — the game works face-only, and home duplex alignment drifts.

One landscape sheet. Cut on the solid lines, fold on the dashed, glue the grey tab. Holds the whole deck, and the back panel prints the four questions so the box itself teaches the game.

Twenty-four curveballs that change the situation mid-round, and eight role cards deciding who is home — including one where the children act first, because the plan has to work when the usual decision-maker is not the one holding it.

The fill-in-the-blanks plan: key contacts, meeting points, who collects which child, where you go if you can't come home. It's the document behind three of the Level 1 gates in the readiness assessment.

Readiness fades. This is how you run one drill a year so the plan stays real — a step-by-step you can follow in an evening. A plan you've never walked is a plan you're guessing about.

Every item that shipped in your bag, by name and quantity, plus a second table for what you add yourself. For the twice-yearly check that everything is still there, still in date and still working.

The card that goes in the bag: primary and secondary contacts, an out-of-area contact, doctor, allergies and medical needs, insurance policy. Written down, because your phone is the thing that dies first.

How to bring children into this without frightening them — what to say by age, and how to give them a job. Fear without a job is how you raise an anxious kid; a job is how you raise a calm one.

Pets are the reason people go back into buildings. Plan for them in advance and you remove that decision entirely.

Hurricane, flood, power outage, tornado, evacuation — what to do before the season starts, and what to do when a warning lands.

The part nobody prepares for: the weeks after. Documenting damage, filing correctly, and the order to do it in. The most financially valuable document in the vault, and the one people wish they'd read first.

Coping strategies for after the event, for you and for the people you're responsible for. Written because the hard part usually isn't the seventy-two hours — it's the months that follow.