Family Blackout Plan

Units

Switches every number on this page. Remembered in this browser.

Who and how long

Babies and children are counted separately because their needs are not the same as an adult's.

Adults (13+)

Children (1–12)

Babies (under 1)

Days to cover — 3

3 days is the published minimum for evacuation. 14 days is the at-home target. Both figures are the Red Cross and CDC positions.

Climate

Heat doubles water need. Cold raises the calorie figure. Both changes come from published guidance, not from us.

Where you are, right now

Animals

Weight drives the numbers for dogs, cats and other companion animals. Livestock uses a per-head figure instead.

Medication and special needs

Prescription medication — days on hand

Leave at 0 if nobody takes any.

Baby formulaAdds the safe-water and preparation rules Insulin or fridge-dependent medicineAdds the FDA unrefrigerated window Mobility aidSpare parts, charger, manual backup Contact lensesSolution, case, backup glasses

What do you want to calculate?

Your call, not ours. Only the boxes you check appear in the results, the shopping list, the wall card and the PDF.

Your first 72 hours, by pillar

Shopping list

Exact quantity per item, in your chosen units. Sourced figures carry a mark; your own figures say so. Check a box as you buy it — the check marks are saved in this browser and travel in the JSON export.

Wall card

One page. Big type. What you do, hour by hour. Tape it inside a cupboard door.

Every shopping-list line and every action on the wall card gets a square box in the PDF, drawn as a line rather than a typed character, so it survives whatever font your printer substitutes. Export PDF carries your check marks across: what you have already bought prints with a cross through the box, so the paper agrees with the screen. Print a blank checklist gives you the same list with every box empty — for handing to somebody else, or for starting the shop again. Add reminders to my calendar downloads a .ics file your calendar app imports: the six-month water change, one reminder per dated item on the Rotation Tracker, and any cycle you set yourself. Its settings live on the Rotation Tracker tab.

Read this once. This list is saved in localStorage, which belongs to this browser on this device. Clearing site data, using private browsing, or switching to another browser or phone loses it. The JSON export is the real backup. Export it after every change and keep the file somewhere you trust.

Add an item

Anything with a date on it: water, canned food, batteries, medicine, filters, fuel stabilizer.

Item

Qty

Expires / replace by

Your stock, most urgent first

Expired past the date Eat this month within 30 days Replace this month within 90 days Good beyond that No date you did not set one.
Those windows are this tool's own convention, not an official standard. The dates on your items are what matter.

Calendar reminders

One .ics file, built in this browser and downloaded like the PDF. Open it and your calendar (Apple, Google, Outlook) imports the reminders. From then on your phone does the reminding: offline, for as long as you keep them, with no account and nothing sent anywhere.

Replace stored water every 6 monthsCDC: replace water you bottled yourself every 6 months. Repeats until you delete it.

Days before each expiry date

One reminder per dated item in the list above, this many days ahead. The 7 it starts at is this tool's placeholder, not anybody's recommendation. An item that has already expired gets no reminder; it is already flagged above.

Cycles nobody publishes

No official body publishes how often to check spare batteries, re-read a plan or test a lamp. So these start off, and the interval is yours: check one and type a number of months. The field is empty on purpose.

Backup

A plain .json file. Readable, portable, and yours.

Family Blackout Plan

Your own figures

Your devices

What you have added

Your first 72 hours, by pillar

Shopping list

Wall card

Your stock, most urgent first

Cycles nobody publishes

Backup

Where these numbers come from

Device battery capacities

Where there is no number