About The Steady Prepper

Owen Hartley is the pen name of this site's editorial team. We use one name and one consistent voice so the site reads like it comes from one place, but there's no single person called Owen, and we won't pretend otherwise. You won't find invented "the day the grid went down" stories here.

Our guides are researched from published sources: Ready.gov and FEMA, the CDC, the EPA, the World Health Organization, the American Red Cross, the FDIC and other official agencies, plus their counterparts in the UK (such as the government's Be Ready campaign and the Drinking Water Inspectorate), Canada (Health Canada and Get Prepared) and Australia (state health and emergency services), plus manufacturer manuals and spec sheets, and readers' real experiences when they share them with us. We link every source and give the date we checked it. When we use a scenario to show how the numbers work, we say clearly that it's an example, not a real household.

What we cover

Practical preparedness for ordinary households, mainly in the US, and written to work in the UK, Canada and Australia too. Where official advice differs between countries, for example on how much water to store or the dose of bleach, we give each country's figure and link it:

• Water: how much to store, how to store it and how to make questionable water safe.
• Food storage and off-grid cooking: a pantry that keeps, rotation, and cooking safely without the grid.
• Off-grid power and refrigeration: long-term solar and battery setups and keeping food cold, with the sizing math shown. For short outages and portable power stations, our sister site The Outage Planner goes deeper.
• Money and documents: emergency cash, what happens when banks or card systems go down, deposit insurance, and keeping your papers safe.
• Emergency plans and scenarios: sheltering in place versus evacuating, long grid-down emergencies, and what official agencies advise for national emergencies, including nuclear ones.
• Health, first aid and sanitation: kits, medicines and emergency toilets.

How we approach it

• Calm over fear. Worst-case scenarios are worth planning for, but panic sells gear, not safety. We start with the likely emergencies and build up.
• Official guidance first. When an agency gives a dose, a time or a distance, we use it and link it. When sources disagree, we show both.
• Say what doesn't work. Every method has limits. A filter that doesn't stop viruses, or bleach that can't touch chemical contamination, gets said plainly.
• No weapons content and no politics. We don't cover weapons, and we don't comment on current conflicts. We cover how to keep a household safe, fed and watered.
• Honest about cost. If a stack of water jugs from the grocery store beats an expensive kit for your situation, we say so.

How the site is paid for

The guides are free to read. We may earn a commission from links, at no cost to you, and we may show ads. That never changes what our guides say. See our affiliate disclosure for details.

Corrections

Guidance and products change, and we make mistakes. If you spot something wrong or out of date, please tell us with the source and we'll fix it and note the change.