This is the shortest product list on the site, and the reason is the most useful thing on the page: infrastructure readiness mostly lives elsewhere. Electricity failure is the Energy list. A water main break is the Water list. Empty grocery shelves are the Food pantry, jammed cell networks are the Communications plan, and the fuel for the generator is the Energy suite. Those pages own their systems, and pretending otherwise would have padded this one to a rounder number.
What remains, after the honest handoffs, is the layer no other list covers: money that works offline, proof that works offline, the fuel and utility habits that cost nothing, and the manual fallbacks built into a powered house. Seven entries, four of them free, three carrying First 100 positions. Together they answer the quiet version of the question this category asks, which is not how a household survives a catastrophe but how it stays functional through a Tuesday when one system pauses.
The power outage, supply interruption, and utility shutoff checklists pair with this page. The rest of the category's strength is the ten sibling lists, and the best thing this page can do is send you to the right one.
How to read this list
A position badge on an entry means the item also holds a place on The First 100, our sequenced acquisition list; the badge links to its full entry there, with the reasoning and the objections. Cost bands are for a household of four: free, under $25, $25 to $100, over $100. Conditional entries apply only to some households, and skipping the ones that do not apply to yours is the correct outcome.
This page prints clean: the print button keeps the list and drops everything else.
The payment method with no dependencies: no network, no power, no login, no processor having a bad day. When card systems stall, regionally or nationally, commerce drops back to cash within the hour, and the stores that stay open become cash-only by taped-up sign. A few days of fuel and groceries in small bills is the working amount, because on those days nobody has change for a fifty. Keep it with the household documents rather than a wallet, and let it be boring; boring is what this money is for.
The line that outperforms most of the gear on all eleven of these lists, because the most common disruptions are financial before they are physical. A cushion measured in weeks of expenses turns a car repair, a missed paycheck, or an evacuation hotel bill from a crisis into an errand. Build it the unglamorous way, an automatic transfer each payday, sized so you do not feel it. The mistake is treating savings as what happens after the supplies are bought; this entry is supplies, in their most flexible form.
03
A backup payment method on a different network
free
Redundancy for the day one bank or one processor goes dark, which now happens at national scale often enough to plan for. A second card issued by a different bank, ideally on a different payment network, costs nothing to hold and converts most outages into a shrug at the register. Carry them in different places, so one lost wallet does not take both. The mistake is five cards from one bank, which is one point of failure wearing five disguises.
Identity, insurance, ownership, and prescriptions, on paper that works when the systems holding the originals do not. Every recovery process, from a shelter check-in to an insurance claim to a records office reopening, starts by asking who you are and what you can prove. One afternoon at a printer covers the set, and the First 100's tier six covers the pouch, the safe, and the off-site copy that protect it. The mistake is the all-cloud household, whose proof lives behind a login on a phone that is dead, damaged, or in the house they cannot enter.
Fuel and utilities, managed ahead · 05–06
05
The half-full rule, for every tank you depend on
free
A refill habit that costs nothing and removes an entire category of bad day: the vehicle refills at half, and the propane or heating oil tank reorders at half. Regional fuel interruptions arrive with no notice, and they find every household exactly where its habits left it. At half, a disruption is something you watch on the news; near empty, it is your afternoon. The mistake is treating the gauge as a countdown to act on later, which works until the one week it does not.
06
Utility and outage contact card
free
One printed card with the account numbers, outage lines, and alert signups for the electric, water, gas, and internet providers, posted where the household can find it. Reporting an outage is how restoration finds you, and estimated-restoration updates are how a household decides between waiting and adapting. Filling it out takes fifteen minutes and one billing statement per service. The mistake is keeping those numbers in the provider's app, which needs the service that is down and the charge the outage is draining.
The manual fallbacks · 07
07
Manual releases, learned in advance
free
The overrides built into the powered conveniences, found and practiced before they are needed. The garage door's release cord is the classic: a minute to learn on a Saturday, and the difference between leaving for work and being trapped in your own garage during an outage. Walk the house once for the others, powered gates, keypad locks with key backups, and anything else that assumes electricity. The first attempt should not happen in the dark, at night, with somewhere to be; that is the entire entry.
Work the checklist
From owned to tracked.
This page decides what to get. The checklist tracks what you have.