Companion Manual

Surviving

What to actually do, in order, from the first hour through recovery.

Preparing is organized by category and tier: what to own and know for water, shelter, communication, and the rest, at each duration. This companion is organized differently, by chronology: what do you actually do, in order, once something has actually happened. Same rigor, same sourcing standard, just sorted by the axis that matches how it actually gets used.

Four pages elsewhere on this site pull directly from this same sequence, re-skinned around the site's 5-phase framing: How to Not Die (Parts 1–2), How to Survive Immediately After (Parts 3–4), How to Survive When No Help Is Coming (Parts 6–7), and How to Thrive If No Help Ever Comes (Part 8 onward). Read this page instead of those for the full chronological narrative in one continuous sequence with sourcing included; it's the same substance, organized around the sequence itself rather than around when each part matters.

See the whole sequence on one printable page → Every stage from immediate safety through operating as a community, key points included, built to print and keep somewhere visible.

The sequence

Built around the "rule of threes" survival heuristic and FEMA/Red Cross's first-72-hours response baseline, not arbitrary time markers. Full reasoning on Part 1.

• Part 1 The First Hour: Assess Before you decide anything else, know what you're actually dealing with: check people, check for secondary hazards, account for pets, and send one message. This hour is about finding out, not fixing.
• Part 2 The First 3 Hours: Stabilize By the three-hour mark, shelter and immediate safety need to be actually secured, not assumed: re-check any sealed room, treat injuries properly, and count your actual water, food, and medication on hand.
• Part 3 The First 24 Hours: Take Inventory Move from reacting to operating: walk the house and count what's actually there, check on nearby family, document any damage before cleanup, stand up sanitation if needed, and make a first honest guess at how long this runs.
• Part 4 The First 3 Days: Settle In By the 72-hour mark, you're executing a real plan, not still reacting: an active rationing plan, FIFO tracking, scheduled communication check-ins, isolation if anyone's sick, and a real reassessment of how long this runs.
• Part 5 The First 14 Days: Extend or Stand Down Tier 1 is built to cover roughly this window. By the end of it, you should know deliberately, not by a slow drift, whether you're beginning recovery or transitioning into Tier 2.
• Part 6 Running the Extended Plan Tier 2 isn't Tier 1 lasting longer. It's a real shift from rationing a stored buffer to running a sustained weekly operation: water sourcing, cooking, sanitation, and fuel all need standing slots, and decision fatigue becomes a real cost of its own.
• Part 7 Sustaining Indefinitely Tier 3 trades the weekly rhythm for a seasonal one: planting, growing-season upkeep, harvest and preservation, and fuel-gathering ahead of winter, paced for an undefined horizon rather than a sprint, with real redundancy against losing the one person who knows how to do something critical.
• Part 8 Operating as a Community Once a household is genuinely stable at Tier 3, the next real lever is extending outward: who to approach first, the actual cadence of coordination once a group exists, and sustaining it without burning out the people who show up.
• Recovery Recovery Recovery isn't a fixed final chapter, it's reachable whenever things actually resolve, whether that's day 3 or much later. Re-entry safety and documentation come first, then the claims process, then feeding what changed back into Prepare.

Recovery isn't fixed at the end of this list, it's reachable from wherever your own situation actually resolves. Standing down after 3 hours and standing down after 3 weeks both land on the same page.