By Milan Adams
Preppgroup
February 28, 2026
You can't know with one-hundred percent certainty when a disaster will strike. In all probability, at least one disaster will occur in your lifespan. That disaster can range from natural to manmade. Often, one disaster will lead to another, and a cascading effect can occur that can lead to a prolonged grid-down situation. We hardly even stress anymore when the power goes out for a day or the water company issues a boil order, but what if these instances were wider in scope both geograpically and impacting an entire population ? If services are restored in the first 72-hours, it's just a lesson we can learn from and prepare better for it next time. Most won't. If it lasts for a week or more and no help is on the horizon, you will see chaos and lawlessness in the streets - stores looted and crime and violence like you have never seen before. If it lasts for two to three months, you may never see normal civil society restored in your location. All along the way, you have to continually evaluate your seven major preps. In this article, we will examine each of these preps, explain how they break down after SHTF, and how you should align your prepping to compensate and overcome their loss. You cannot overlook any of these seven fundamentals if you plan to survive, and you have to know not only how they will impact you but how the masses around you will react.
It's important to note that while preparation for emergencies is prudent, extreme doomsday scenarios are rare, and it's crucial to approach preparedness with a balanced and realistic perspective. Here are first general laws for surviving and preparing for emergencies:
SHELTER
Having a stable shelter when the world around you is plunged into chaos dramatically increases your odds of survival. Just having a tarp over your head in the driving rain may mean the difference between living or dying from exposure to the elements. The stability and security of your shelter, wherever that is, will be a massive factor in whether you survive any disaster and its aftermath. Assuming you have some warning of the coming catastrophe or time to prepare for it, you will need to make sure that your perimeter is as secure as possible. You should have the means to lock yourself into your home or apartment for at least three days. Some things you may associate with shelter, like food and water, are not part of what we mean by shelter.
The shelter is two-fold. First, it is the roof over your head and the walls you are huddled behind for safety. It's the structure you are in or you build, or you retreat to that protects you from the element, people, and chaos outside. Maybe that's your fortress of a house. Perhaps it is a tarp structure you built under a bridge. Maybe it's a rock overhang or cave you found in the wild. If the damage to people's homes is total, they will retreat to the structure of their vehicles. If their vehicles are of little use to escape or live out of because of their location, they'll find abandoned structures, occupied structures, overhangs, or set out for less populated areas. Structure, in this sense, is the physical barrier between you and the world. The second type of structure we are referring to here is the hat on your head, gloves on your hands, sunscreen, insect repellant, even the mosquito net you wear around you. While this type of structure is more of a personal nature, specific solely to you, it is still a structure because it is a barrier between you and the hostile environment around you.
Throughout your time in your structure and especially in the first few hours and days, you need to be assessing both inside and outside. When the intitial disaster occurs, how safe are you ? Think of this elementally: fire, earth, water, and air. Is your structure on fire ? Are fires near your structure ? Could you be burned out of your structure by others ? Do you have neighbors whose fires may impact your structure ? Think in terms of Earth, as well. Is there a debris field around your structure that will make escaping if you have to treacherous ? Are there other structural problems in your shelter or around your shelter that may force you to abandon it- gas leaks, water or sewer line breaks, or unstable or collapsing buildings ? The water here may not be the kind you drink. When it comes to your structure, consider line breaks, natural flooding, or excessive rains. Frozen pipes in some homes in Texas exploded and rendered some people's structures uninhabitable in freezing temperatures.
Just as you wouldn't pitch in a dry river bed during a rainstorm, consider how water might have a negative impact on your structure. Finally, consider the air. Fires near you may cause choking smoke. Industrial and chemical plant or train car leaks can kill you in seconds. Radioactive dust or volcanic ash could render your structure unlivable. Make these elements your first assessments of how stable your structure really is. If you live next to a river, the ocean, a chemical plant, in a high population density area, or other similar threat, evaluate whether staying or going is your best option. After the first 24-hours of a disaster, your window to stay or go may have closed.
Over the first week to three weeks after a disaster, constantly evaluate your structural security. If police, National Guard, or some other military force is going door-to-door to enforce evacuations of an area, you may be compelled to leave. Ensure you have some form of portable structure and the proper personal structure items like a hat, windbreaker, and shoes, so you are not as subject to being herded along with the desperate and competing masses. Listen on the radio and look as far into the distance out your windows as you can. Understand the threats you are under and the ones that are looming. After a week, people will be desperate. Any moral compass they may have lived their life under will be gone, especially if they perceive that you have shelter, water, and food. Follow whatever news you can to understand any action in the streets. Mark it on a map with the date, so you will know the areas that have been burned and looted, and you will be better able to determine escape routes. You will also learn how close the threats of others or fires may be to you. We'll address communication a little later. Suffice it to say here that even though you are hunkered down and locked in, you will want to be looking and listening to what is going on beyond your walls and windows.
If the disaster's aftermath lasts a month or three, you have to assume that things will never be restored to their pre-disaster status. Your area may become completely uninhabitable simply because the remaining survivors have consumed all the available resources. If you can make it a month or more in your structure after a massive disaster, the good news is that you will have outlasted probably two-thirds of the population around you. A truly catastrophic disaster or series of disasters would immediately result in fatalities to one-third. Competition for resources, declining health issues, drugs, or violence spurned from the desire to survive will probably take out another 1/3 of the population. Your best option is always the shelter where your preps are. The second best is a plan and the equipment to bugout to a safer location.
WATER
The second rule of surviving is water. You need to have both stored water and a means to render water from the wild drinkable. You should also know how to collect and harvest water from the wild, whether pulling it from a stream, lake, pond, pool, or collecting rainwater. You won't be able to drink it in this wild state unless you also plan on joining the statistics I mentioned earlier about mortality rates. In the first hours and days after many disasters, the municipal water system will fail to either deliver water or can be tainted and toxic to consume. In a prolonged grid-down situation of over a week, no water will be flowing to you any longer. What you have stored is what you will have. If you live in an urban or suburban environment, it is very likely everything around you will be dry. There aren't many city or suburban wells, lakes, or streams. Knowing where water is in your environment and how to collect it will be of good use to you. After a week with no recovery in sight, every building will have been tapped with a Silcock key, and every hydrant opened, every fountain raided. A person can survive without water for about three days. Before that, though, on the second day of no water, they will do anything to obtain some.
In the moments leading up to a disaster, regardless of the type, fill as many containers as you can with water. If you haven't plugged in a solution to store at least one gallon, per day, per person in your shelter, you need to make this your utmost priority. Three weeks of water for three people would be 189 gallons. That's 3, one half 55-gallon barrels. If you immediately filled an emergency bathtub WaterBOB, that's another 42-100 gallons you can add to your inventory, enough for a minimum of five days. 5-gallon plastic containers or WaterBricks might be a means to store the water you need. The point here is that a couple of cases of bottled water or even a 5-gallon container of water isn't enough to get you through. You need to think long term solutions for stored water. You need at least 3-weeks worth. After that, you need a plan to obtain, filter, and treat water in the wild. Just realize that after 3-weeks, everyone surviving will be desperate for whatever clean drinkable water they can get. You may be in competition for resources. Aid from areas unimpacted by the disaster, if there are some, cannot be relied upon to deliver relief.
As a rule, store 3-weeks to 3-months of water, begin rationing water on day one of a disaster, fill as many containers and bathtubs as you can at the first sign of disaster, know how to tap your irrigation lines, water heater, toilet tank (not the bowl) and know the obvious and hidden sources of water along your bugout routes. Protip: never deprive yourself of water if you're running low. Drink what is needed now and figure out a plan to secure more later. Once you enter a state of dehydration, you will quickly begin having new sets of health problems quickly leading to death.
FOOD
The third rule is having enough food because you can survive on an empty stomach a lot longer than you can with no water or by being exposed to the elements. If you have looked at some of the other content here at City Prepping, you'll already understand that there are several food options ranging from simple canned food, to dehydrated and freeze-dried options, to seeds for sprouting and planting, and so much more. Approach any food in your long-term storage with nutrition and calories in mind. Can you prepare it easily if cooking options were limited ? Also, does the food you are storing have a calorie and nutrition density that will sustain you ? We always advise people to regularly consume and replenish their prepping supplies. Eat what you store and store what you eat. You don't want to discover that your body cannot eat beans for three meals a day after a disaster has occurred.
In the initial hours and days after a disaster, inventory your supplies. Double-check what you have and examine anything close to expiration dates. If you are locked down, replenish your bugout bag in case you might later need to leave your structure. Fill a few baggies or containers with rice, beans, or some other staple you have in abundance. You will want this in a separate bag you can grab and go. This separates your food a little to keep it safer. Also, do some meal planning. Calculate out the recipes, how much they will draw off your supplies, how nutritional they will be, and so forth. This will also serve to occupy your mind in the first days and a week or so after a disaster. As many discovered recently, lockdowns or bugging-in can take a mental toll on a person. Food is a distraction. That being said, you will want to begin rationing your supplies immediately and not just eat more as a stress-coping mechanism. Only make what can be consumed in one sitting.
Within the first week following the disaster when no relief is in sight and public order has disintegrated, all stores will be looted. Grocery stores are not allowed to sell meat and frozen vegetables if their freezers are down too long. Dumpsters will be raided. Vending machines will be raided. Even restaurants will be broken into. Unprotected gardens will be depleted, as well. Homes, where occupants are known not to be present, will be robbed of their food resources. Some, who may have lost their homes in the initial disaster, may squat in these new locations for the food resources in your neighbor's pantry. If your neighbor was out of town, you may wake up one morning in the second week after the disaster with brand new neighbors. I hate to say it, but after a month, even small pets will start to disappear. Lack of food will motivate many to ignore their moral compasses in favor of basic survival.
As a rule, store 3-weeks to 3-months of food, grow some food of some kind for nutrition supplementation to your daily meals, inventory, and ration on day one, and ready your bugout bag, separated food, and clothes if you have to suddenly flee.