The First 30 Days — Your Step-by-Step Grid-Down Plan

Your objective is not to recreate normal life. Your objective is to keep six systems running, and to move each one from stored supplies to something that keeps working.

1 Water
2 Shelter & temperature
3 Food
4 Sanitation
5 Information & communication
6 Security

The order of priority changes as the days pass. In the first hours, you protect what you already have. In the first week, you live off reserves. From the second week on, you are running systems — or you are on a countdown.

Before anything else

If anyone is hurt, or you smell gas, or there is fire or flooding, call emergency services — 112 across Europe, 911 in North America. Instructions from your local authorities always override this guide, especially about evacuation, drinking water, extreme weather and public-health warnings.

Phase one · the first 24 hours

0–1 hour — don't do anything stupid

Preserve what you have before you find out what happened

Your first instinct will be to work out what happened. Before that, protect what you already have. Almost everything in this hour stops being possible later.

1. Confirm what you are dealing with

Is it only your home, or the whole street?Check your own fuse box and breakers first, then look outside.
Does mobile data work? Do calls work?
Does the tap still run, and with what pressure?
Are radio stations still broadcasting?
Are shops open? Do cards and ATMs work?

Do not assume civilization has collapsed. But start acting as though this could last several days — that costs you almost nothing and buys you everything.

2. Fill every clean container with water

If water is still flowing, this is the highest-value action available to you. Pumped supplies and upper floors lose pressure first.

Fill bottles, jugs, pots, food-safe containers and any water tank
Fill the bath for non-drinking usesRinse it first. This is flushing and washing water.
Know your hidden waterThe hot-water cylinder, the toilet cistern (never the bowl), and water sitting in the pipes, released from the lowest tap in the house.

Do the arithmetic once

Budget at least about 3.8 litres (1 gallon) per person per day for drinking and basic sanitation, and aim to keep a two-week supply where you can. Four people for 30 days is roughly 454 litres. That number is exactly why stored water alone is never a 30-day strategy: you need a renewable source and a way to treat it.

3. Stop opening the fridge and freezer

Don't stand there deciding what to eat. Every opening costs you hours of cold.

An unopened fridge keeps food safe for about 4 hours
A full freezer holds roughly 48 hours; half-full, about 24
Decide meals from memory, then open once

4. Preserve the battery power you have

Low power mode, lowest brightness, on every phone
Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth while they are uselessA phone hunting for a dead tower flattens itself in hours.
Pick one household phoneOne device on, one in reserve, the rest off.
Don't spend your remaining electricity scrolling for explanations

5. Unplug what you don't need

Unplug sensitive electronicsPower coming back can arrive with a surge.
Leave one light switched onSo you notice the moment electricity returns, even if you are asleep.

1–6 hours — the household command centre

Six questions, written on paper

Now answer six questions, out loud, as a household. Write the answers on paper. From this point on, keep a physical log — a notebook and a pen beat any app that needs charging.

Water: how many litres do we actually have?
Food: how many realistic meals, and how many days of calories?
Power: what still works without the grid?
Medical: what medication or powered medical equipment do we depend on?Names, doses, how many days are left, and what needs refrigeration.
Communication: what works with no internet?
Location: is staying here safer than leaving?

Cash

If card terminals are down but shops are open, small notes are worth more than a bank balance. Spend them on what you cannot store: fuel, batteries, water containers, medication.

6–12 hours — one inventory

Assume this might be real

Water

Write it down in this shape, and keep the page:

Drinking	_____ litres of water you would drink without treating it
Other	_____ litres usable for washing, cleaning and flushing
Per day	_____ litres your household needs each day (people × 3.8 L)
Days left	_____ days at that rate

Do not aggressively ration drinking water to stretch the supply — dehydration makes every other decision worse. Cut the water you use for washing and cleaning instead.

Food, in four piles

A — eat firstRefrigerated perishables.
B — eat nextFrozen food, as it thaws.
C — preserveShelf-stable food that needs cooking or water.
D — emergency reserveTinned, dried and high-calorie food that survives weeks. This pile is not on today's menu.

Power, and its priority order

List every power bank, battery, solar charger, power station, generator, vehicle, fuel can, torch and radio. Then assign the order in which they get used:

Medical devices
Communication
Lighting
Information
Everything else

Entertainment is no longer a power priority.

12–24 hours — prepare for night one

Everything in one room, before it gets dark

You want the household working before darkness, not during it. Choose one central living area — the easiest room to keep warm or cool — and put everything there.

Drinking water, torches and headlamps, spare batteries
First-aid kit and all medication
Radio, phones, power banks
Shoes and warm clothing, by each bed
Fire extinguisher, and a carbon monoxide alarm if you have one
Important documents, in one bag you can carry
Everyone knows where all of it is, including children

Avoid candles where you can. Battery lighting removes the single most common cause of house fires during outages.

The generator rule — this one kills people

Never run a generator, barbecue, charcoal grill, camping stove or any petrol engine inside a home, garage, basement, tent or other enclosed space — not briefly, not with the door open. Carbon monoxide is invisible and odourless and kills without warning. Generators go outside, well away from every door, window and vent. Never heat a home with a cooker or oven.

Day 2 to Day 30

Get the rest of the plan, free

The remaining 29 days cover water systems and treatment, the energy budget, sanitation, the weekly audits, redundancy, your street, the routine, the failure list, the evacuation decision, and the final Day 30 audit. Enter your email and the rest unlocks here.

Phase two · the first week

Day 2 — consumption becomes conservation

Yesterday you used what you had. Today you build systems

Do the morning arithmetic

Water remaining ÷ people ÷ daily requirement. For example: 60 litres for 4 people is 15 litres each, and at 3.8 L per person per day that is about 4 days. Now your problem is obvious and dated, instead of vague.

Set water priorities, in this order

Drinking
Cooking
Essential hygiene — hands, food surfaces, wounds
Cleaning

Never flush a toilet with water you could drink.

Set up the toilet system

If the sewer still works and nobody has warned against it, flush sparinglyUse bath, rain or grey water, and let anything that doesn't need flushing wait.
If sanitation has stopped, start a separate waste system todayA lined bucket with a tight lid, heavy-duty bags, and something dry to cover each use — sawdust, soil, cat litter.
Keep human waste far away from food, water and where people sleep
Protect hand hygiene above almost everything elseSoap and a small amount of water, or alcohol gel. Diarrhoeal illness with no clean water and no pharmacy is one of the most dangerous things that can happen in week two.

Day 3 — where tomorrow comes from

Your stored supplies are no longer the plan

Three questions decide the rest of the month:

Where does tomorrow's water come from?
Where does next week's food come from?
Where does tomorrow's energy come from?

If the answer to any of them is "what I have stored", that system is not yet sustainable — it is a countdown.

Build the water system

Identify at least two possible sources, and walk to them before you need them:

Stored bottled water
An official distribution pointWhere, what hours, how much per household, and how you would carry it.
RainwaterClean collection surface, covered storage.
A well or spring
Surface water that must be treatedRiver, lake, pond — never your first choice, and never without treatment.
The hot-water tank, and melted ice from the freezer

Then finish the chain, because a source alone is not a system: source → collection → transport → treatment → storage. Water is heavy: 20 litres weighs 20 kg, so work out how you would actually carry it.

Making water safe

Clear water is not the same as safe water. Where it is practical, boiling is the most reliable method: bring clear water to a rolling boil for one minute (three minutes at high altitude), and let it cool. Filters and chemical disinfection work too, but only against what they are rated for — read what yours removes, and keep a second method.

Boiling cannot fix everything

Water that may contain fuel, toxic chemicals or radioactive material cannot be made safe by boiling, filtering or disinfecting — boiling concentrates some chemicals rather than removing them. If contamination is possible, you need a different source, and you follow local public-health instructions.

Day 4 — stop thinking in meals

Start thinking in days of energy

Count what you have as days of calories for the whole household, not as recipes. Walk the cupboards and write the list: rice, pasta, oats, flour, beans and lentils, tinned meat and fish, tinned vegetables, nuts, peanut butter, oils, sugar and honey, powdered food, long-life milk, protein powder, snacks.

Eat in this order

Perishables from the fridgethenthawing frozen food
Short-life foodthenshelf-stable food
Everything elselastthe emergency reserve

Cooking

Prefer meals that need little or no cookingEvery meal you don't cook is fuel you keep.
Cook once for several mealsOne fire, one pot, one heating — not three.
Count your fuel in meals, not in bottles
Only use outdoor cooking equipment outdoorsSee the carbon monoxide rule above. It applies every single day.

When in doubt, throw it out

Never taste food to decide whether it is still safe. Discard anything that was above roughly 5 °C for more than a few hours, and anything with an unusual smell, colour or texture. Food poisoning without clean water, a pharmacy or a working hospital is a genuine emergency.

Day 5 — the energy budget

Stored electricity always runs out. Generated electricity doesn't

Write down every device that needs power and put it in one of three groups:

Essential

Medical equipment · one phone · radio · emergency lighting

Useful

Laptop or local computer · rechargeable tools · a second phone

Luxury

Television · games · decorative lighting · everything that makes the day pleasant but not survivable. These run only from surplus.

Work out your autonomy

Battery capacity ÷ daily consumption = days of autonomy. For example, with a 1,000 Wh power station:

Phone	15 Wh per day
Radio	10 Wh per day
Lighting	40 Wh per day
Laptop	60 Wh per day
Total	125 Wh per day → roughly 8 days, before conversion losses, cold weather and ageing batteries take their cut

The goal is not a bigger battery. The goal is generation ≥ consumption. Solar changes the problem from stored electricity to renewable electricity, which is the difference between a countdown and a system.

Day 6 — information on a schedule

Assume the networks get worse, not better

Constantly checking a phone burns the battery and your nerves for nothing. Put information on a timetable instead:

08:00	Radio and news check
13:00	Communications check — messages out, messages in
19:00	Radio and news check, and write down what you learned

Write these on paper, one copy per adult

Family meeting point, and a second one further away
Nearest medical facility, and the one after that
Nearby relatives and the neighbours who may need help
Your local water source, and the official distribution point
Emergency services numbers and the local radio frequencies
Evacuation route out of the area
An out-of-area contact everyone can relay messages through

Day 7 — the first audit

Week one you consumed reserves. Week two needs systems

Score every system honestly. Red means it fails within days, yellow means it works but depends on something you cannot replace, green means it keeps working.

System	Score	The question that decides it
Water	R / Y / G	Can we get and treat water indefinitely?
Food	R / Y / G	How many days remain, and what comes after them?
Power	R / Y / G	Do we generate, or only spend?
Sanitation	R / Y / G	Can we manage waste safely for three more weeks?
Medical	R / Y / G	Medication left, and who can treat an injury?
Communication	R / Y / G	Can we get real information without the internet?
Security	R / Y / G	Is the home sound, warm enough, and are we on good terms with the street?

Fix red before you improve green. Most households want to buy more of what they already have; the gain is always in the red row.

Phase three · week two

Days 8–10 — redundancy

One solution is not a system

For every life-critical need, aim for two ways to solve it:

WaterPrimary source + backup source. Treatment method + backup treatment. Fixed storage + containers you can carry.
PowerSolar or generator + battery. Main lighting + a torch per person.
CommunicationPhone + radio. Online information + the same information offline.
CookingPrimary method + backup method, and fuel for both.
Heat or coolingOne warm room you can hold + a plan for where you go if you cannot.

Never let one device be the only answer to a question you must answer every day.

Days 11–14 — stop being an isolated household

The strongest system on your street is the street

Find out who nearby has medical knowledge, tools, water, transport, mechanical or electrical skills, food production, radio equipment or solar power — and who is elderly, alone or vulnerable.

Don't announce your whole inventoryDiscretion is not the same as isolation.
Make small, concrete arrangements"I'll check your house each morning." "If either of us needs medical help, we tell the other." "If the radio says anything, we pass it on."
Trade skills and labour before you trade supplies

Day 14 — the brutal question

Two-week checkpoint

Are we surviving because of what we stored, or because our systems work?

If the answer is stored supplies, you are still on a countdown, and you now know roughly when it ends. Everything that matters from here is in five lines: renewable water, renewable energy, a reliable way to get food, safe sanitation, and reliable information. Everything else is secondary.

Phase four · weeks three and four

Days 15–18 — a routine, because chaos wastes resources

Predictable days use less of everything

07:00	Wake, household check — is everyone well?
07:30	Water check: what is left, what gets collected today
08:00	Information and radio
08:30	Breakfast
09:00–12:00	Maintenance, water collection and treatment, repairs
12:00	Energy check: what was generated, what was spent
13:00	Main meal
14:00–17:00	Supplies, community, work, teaching the children something
18:00	Inventory, written in the log
19:00	Information check
20:00	Prepare for darkness: lights, water by the bed, shoes
22:00	Sleep

Adjust for your weather, season and daylight. Give everyone, including children, a job that is genuinely theirs.

Days 19–21 — what breaks next

Prepare for the failure of your backups

By now the obvious problems are handled and the next failure is a small part: a filter cartridge, a solar cable, a battery, cooking fuel, medication, shoes, a torch, a water container, radio batteries. Your weakest replacement part can disable an otherwise excellent system.

Write a failure list

System	What can break?	Can I repair it?	Spare?	If not, then what?
Water
Power
Cooking
Heat / cooling
Medical
Information

Day 21 — three-week checkpoint

Your home should now run like a small independent system

You should be able to answer all nine of these without hesitating. Any one you cannot answer is tomorrow's priority.

Where does tomorrow's water come from?
How will I make it safe?
How much food is left, in days?
How much energy do I generate each day?
How will I cook?
How am I handling waste?
How do I receive information?
Who around me can help, and who needs help?
Where do I go if staying becomes unsafe?

Days 22–24 — build the go decision

Preparedness does not mean refusing to leave

Decide now, calmly, what would make you leave. Leaving is right when staying is more dangerous than moving: fire, flooding, extreme heat or cold you cannot hold, structural damage, an official evacuation order, the loss of essential medical support, or a water problem you cannot solve.

One bag per person

Water and compact, high-calorie food
Medication and a small first-aid kit
Torch, power bank, charging cable, radio if practical
Warm and waterproof layer, spare socks, sturdy shoes
Hygiene supplies
Copies of documents, cash in small notes
Paper local map, and the written contact list

Know both routes before you need them

Route A and Route B out of the areaOne of them must work without fuel — on foot or by bicycle.
Destination A and Destination BSomeone expecting you beats somewhere you hope is open.
What you take in the last two minutesWritten on the bag, because nobody thinks clearly at that moment.

Days 25–27 — cut the dependencies

What am I still waiting for someone else to restore?

Go through them one at a time — electricity, internet, tap water, deliveries, fuel, cloud services, information — and ask the same question of each: can I create a local alternative?

Tap dependencybecomesstored + renewable water
Grid electricitybecomessolar generation + storage
Supermarket dependencybecomeslong-term reserve + local supply
Streaming informationbecomesradio + a downloaded library
Internet knowledgebecomesoffline knowledge you can search
Cloud servicesbecomeslocal computing you own

This is the day the plan stops being about supplies and starts being about independence. The parts you cannot replace with a purchase — knowing how to treat the water, fix the panel, dress the wound — are the ones worth building first.

Days 28–29 — test it

Find the hidden dependencies while you still have alternatives

Take away your easiest option, on purpose, for 24 hours at a time:

No primary water sourceLive entirely on your backup, including collection and treatment.
No primary power source
No mobile internet

The point is not discomfort. The point is that every failure you find becomes a line on your list while shops, spares and neighbours are still available. A setup nobody has ever tested is an assumption, not a system.

Day 30 — the final audit

You are no longer preparing for an outage. You are running a household system

Water

Can we obtain water indefinitely? Can we make it safe? Do we have two treatment methods?

Food

How many days remain, and where does food come from after that?

Power

Can we generate it? Store it? Live without it if both fail?

Shelter

Can we stay safe through this season without grid heating or cooling?

Sanitation

Can we handle waste and hygiene safely, for as long as it takes?

Medical

Do we have the medication we depend on, and someone who can treat an injury?

Information

Can we receive news without the internet, and look things up offline?

Community

Who are the 5–10 people we can rely on, and who relies on us?

Evacuation

What exactly would make us leave, where would we go, and how would we get there?

The 30-day rule

Preparedness isn't owning 30 days of supplies. It's reaching Day 30 without needing the grid to come back.

A pile of food eventually disappears. A battery eventually empties. A water tank eventually runs dry. The whole objective is to turn stored resources into renewable systems:

Stored waterbecomesrenewable water + treatment
Stored electricitybecomesrenewable generation
Stored foodbecomesa resilient supply
Internetbecomesoffline knowledge
Cloud AIbecomeslocal AI
Individual preparednessbecomesa resilient household and street

GenesisBox solves one part of that transition: offline computing, a private local AI and essential knowledge that still work when the internet, the cloud and the grid do not. Everything else on this page you can start today, with no hardware at all.

See how GenesisBox works →

Where the numbers come from

The water, food-safety, carbon-monoxide and hygiene figures in this guide follow public emergency guidance. Your local authority's instructions always take priority over anything here.

Ready.gov — emergency water supply (how much to store per person per day)
CDC — how to make water safe in an emergency (boiling, disinfection, and what treatment cannot fix)
CDC — keeping food safe after an emergency (fridge and freezer times, when to discard)
CDC — carbon monoxide poisoning (generators, stoves and engines)
CDC — what to do during a power outage
CDC — hygiene basics (why hand hygiene matters most when water is short)
Ready.gov — power outages

Could you survive 30 days?

Answer 16 questions about your own home and this plan marks the parts that matter most for you, with a tip after every answer.

Take the test →

General preparedness guidance, not a substitute for professional, legal or medical advice. Always follow the instructions of your local emergency services and public-health authorities. GenesisBox is a product of FINQUP Technology OOD, Sofia, Bulgaria.

The first 30 days.

Where this plan matters most for you

The 30 days at a glance

0–1 hour — don't do anything stupid

1. Confirm what you are dealing with

2. Fill every clean container with water

3. Stop opening the fridge and freezer

4. Preserve the battery power you have

5. Unplug what you don't need

1–6 hours — the household command centre

6–12 hours — one inventory

Water

Food, in four piles

Power, and its priority order

12–24 hours — prepare for night one

Get the rest of the plan, free

Day 2 — consumption becomes conservation

Do the morning arithmetic

Set water priorities, in this order

Set up the toilet system

Day 3 — where tomorrow comes from

Build the water system

Day 4 — stop thinking in meals

Eat in this order

Cooking

Day 5 — the energy budget

Essential

Useful

Luxury

Work out your autonomy

Day 6 — information on a schedule

Write these on paper, one copy per adult

Day 7 — the first audit

Days 8–10 — redundancy

Days 11–14 — stop being an isolated household

Day 14 — the brutal question

Are we surviving because of what we stored, or because our systems work?

Days 15–18 — a routine, because chaos wastes resources

Days 19–21 — what breaks next

Write a failure list

Day 21 — three-week checkpoint

Days 22–24 — build the go decision

One bag per person

Know both routes before you need them

Days 25–27 — cut the dependencies

Days 28–29 — test it

Day 30 — the final audit

Water

Food

Power

Shelter

Sanitation

Medical

Information

Community

Evacuation

Preparedness isn't owning 30 days of supplies. It's reaching Day 30 without needing the grid to come back.

Take it offline

Where the numbers come from

Could you survive 30 days?