Preparing

Essential Reading

Every page on this site cites its own sources at the bottom. This page is different: it pulls together the sources that show up again and again, across the Manual, the Skill Guides, and both companion manuals, into one curated list, plus a few sources worth reading that aren't cited anywhere on the site yet. It's deliberately not exhaustive: hundreds of narrow, single-fact citations and every state's own emergency-management agency stay on their own pages, where they're actually useful, rather than repeated here.

For the Manual specifically, Appendix C: References & Further Reading already lists every source behind each of its 15 chapters in full. This page is the shorter, cross-site complement to that: what's worth reading if you're starting from scratch, organized by type instead of by chapter, and including the Skill Guides and both companion manuals that Appendix C doesn't cover.

Where to start

If you read nothing else on this list, these are the sources this site itself leans on most, across the most different topics.

• CDC (cdc.gov): the single most-cited source on this site, spanning hygiene, water treatment, food safety, and cold/heat illness.
• FEMA / Ready.gov (ready.gov): the federal baseline for shelter-in-place vs. evacuate decisions, go-bags, and disaster assistance.
• American Red Cross (redcross.org): first aid, home re-entry, and pet evacuation guidance throughout the Skill Guides.
• NOAA / National Weather Service (weather.gov): weather radio, flash flood safety, and the climate-trend data behind The Act of Thriving's site-viability chapter.
• USGS (usgs.gov): the backbone source for earthquake, flood, and seismic risk across this site's state-by-state coverage.
• HHS Radiation Emergency Medical Management (REMM) (remm.hhs.gov): a federal disaster-medicine reference; this site currently cites only its mass-casualty triage page, but the full site covers radiological and mass-casualty medicine well beyond that.
• FLASH (Federal Alliance for Safe Homes) (flash.org): the primary source behind this site's earthquake-mitigation and safe home re-entry guides.
• A land-grant university extension service: this site leans on Utah State University Extension for water storage, food preservation, and emergency-fund guidance; every state has its own land-grant extension covering the same ground locally.
• Elinor Ostrom's commons-governance research: the Nobel-winning study of 800+ real cases behind The Act of Thriving's governance chapter. Start with the Nobel committee's summary of her work, or her own book, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Daniel P. Aldrich, Building Resilience: Social Capital in Post-Disaster Recovery (University of Chicago Press): the research behind The Act of Thriving's central claim that social capital, not aid money, predicts disaster recovery.

By type

Government & federal agencies

• EPA (epa.gov): water treatment standards, WaterSense fixture data, pet-waste water-quality guidance.
• USDA / FoodSafety.gov (foodsafety.gov): the refrigerator/freezer safe-time rules behind this site's power-outage food safety guide.
• FCC (fcc.gov): GMRS and amateur radio licensing.
• SAMHSA / 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (988lifeline.org): crisis support referenced in this site's psychological first aid guide.
• NHTSA (nhtsa.gov): vehicle safety data behind the vehicle emergency kit guide.

Medical & disaster medicine

• HHS REMM (remm.hhs.gov): see "Where to start" above.
• Stop the Bleed (American College of Surgeons) (stopthebleed.org): real, hands-on hemorrhage-control training, the actual source behind this site's trauma guidance, not a substitute for it.
• Hesperian Health Guides, Where There Is No Doctor / Where There Is No Dentist (hesperian.org): the standard lay-accessible medical reference texts this site's own medical-library guidance is built around.
• American Red Cross: see "Where to start" above.

Nonprofits & mutual aid

• Foundation for Intentional Community (ic.org): real community membership-process design, the source behind The Act of Thriving's founding chapter.
• Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (mutualaiddisasterrelief.org): mutual-aid operating practices referenced in The Act of Surviving's community chapter.
• National VOAD (nvoad.org): the umbrella network of real, joinable disaster-response organizations.
• ARRL (American Radio Relay League) (arrl.org): amateur radio licensing and the volunteer emergency-communication network (ARES/RACES).

University & extension resources

• Utah State University Extension: see "Where to start" above.
• University of Florida IFAS Extension (ifas.ufl.edu): water storage guidance cited alongside USU Extension.
• Every state has its own land-grant extension service covering food preservation, water storage, and home safety for that specific climate; this site's By State pages name the right one for wherever you actually live.

Standards bodies

• NSF International (nsf.org): the certification standards (P231, 53, 58) behind this site's water filter and purifier guidance.
• ATC-20 (Applied Technology Council) (atcouncil.org): the green/yellow/red post-disaster building safety tagging system.
• UL (Underwriters Laboratories) (ul.com): fire-resistance ratings for document safes and record-protection equipment.

Recommended additions

Sources worth reading that aren't cited anywhere on this site yet, listed here as recommendations rather than as sources actually behind any specific page.

• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1990): the primary source itself, worth reading in full rather than through the secondary summaries currently cited in The Act of Thriving.
• The Sphere Handbook (spherestandards.org): the global humanitarian-response standard this site currently cites narrowly for one water-quantity table; the full handbook covers shelter, food security, and health at the same rigor.
• Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable: a well-reported, non-sensationalist look at how people actually behave in disasters, a useful complement to this site's own practical, checklist-driven approach.