The idea of a 30-Day “Prepper” Plan is to get you established with the bare bones essentials you’d need to “make it” for a month, completely on your own. Sounds easy, right? Well – maybe if you live like a retired Force Recon commando on some remote mountain side. For most of us however, just getting the 30-Day Plan in place requires a lot of thinking through things we’ve never thought about. Putting in the effort to make it a reality requires a concerted commitment, but not an overwhelming one. You just have to think it through, and stay focused.

Your 30-Day Plan goal is to equip yourself (and immediate family) with the essentials you need to get by in reasonable comfort for roughly thirty days – staying put, just where you are. This is usually assumed to be your home, however some folks set this up in a nearby “retreat” location, often called the Primary “Bug-out Location” (BOL). We’ll discuss BOL’s in more detail in the 90-Day Plan. For now, lets just assume you’re staying put at your current residence.

Start Thinking – Stay Focused
Here’s a little exercise to get your mind working in the right direction. Just take a deep breath, and then imagine what it would be like if your regional power grid suddenly shut down for an extended period of time.

Such a thing could occur for any number of reasons, including; electromagnetic interference from the sun, an attack on the power grid (either physical or electronic), a catastrophic weather event, earthquakes, floods, alien invasion (!) Just checking to see if you’re paying attention.

Here’s what you’re facing in the first 36 hours:
- You can’t cook food using your electric oven.
- The food in your fridge won’t last more than a couple of days.
- Your heating and AC no longer function.
- If you’re on city water, it’ll take 24-36 hours before contamination becomes an issue. Water will still come through the pipes for awhile, but it won’t be suitable to drink, use for bathing, or cooking. (Flushing is okay!) In a week or less, water pressure will flow to a trickle, and then all taps will run dry.
- If you’re on a well, your taps are dry instantly because the pump that pulls your groundwater up is electric, and therefor dead.
- ATMs won’t work, so you can’t get any cash.
- Stores & restaurants will close and lock their doors, so you can’t buy anything.
- Even gas stations will have to close, because the power to the pumps is gone. No way to buy gas to get you to the closest place with any power (a couple states away, give or take.)

Here’s what comes in the first and second week:
- However many people are in your city, town, hamlet – they are all in the same situation as you are.
- Within 3 or 4 days, people start getting really agitated.
- People are out on the streets because they cannot watch their televisions. They’re bored and they are frustrated.
- Due to the lack of generally available information, rumors start to spread. Maybe they are true, maybe they are not. It doesn’t matter after awhile. Soon, some people start acting as if all the worst rumors are true.
- Is there looting going on? Maybe. People start to bring out guns as they watch over their families and neighborhoods.
- In other neighborhoods, people have heard that the folks across town are protecting stockpiled food and water with guns.
- People are suffering. They’re cold, hungry, thirsty, and becoming angrier with every passing minute.
- The police are as hamstrung as everyone else. They can’t keep up with all that is going on. As in Katrina, pretty soon, some cops start to over react.
- Fires that start in the city cannot be put out, due to no water pressure in the fire hydrants. Fires start to spread and may damage or destroy parts of the town while helpless firefighters can do little more than watch.
- Pretty soon, neighbors start knocking on one anothers doors. Groups of people go out together and start scavenging for what they can find – by any means necessary in some cases.

Two weeks into this power outage, things are intense, dangerous, and getting worse. Now the question for you is, where are you in the whole mess? You can be prepared, safe, well fed and in good shape – or you can be one of the lost masses desperately awaiting relief. The choice is yours.

As you start to think on the problem, it helps to prioritize the challenges.

- You’ll die within 72 hours without clean water.
- You’ll die faster from extended exposure to the elements. (In this case, we’re assuming your home is habitable and intact, and you have clothing, shoes, and essential First Aid gear. Other articles will deal with creating emergency shelters for extreme situations.)
- You can go up to two weeks without any food at all, but that would not be very pleasant (and it will leave you with precious little strength to fight off those looters headed down your street.)
- If you can’t flush your toilet, wash your hands or your body, you’re going to be dealing with some very nasty bugs within just a few days. These are the kinds of bugs that a healthy person can defeat easily. A dehydrated, stressed out person is gravely susceptible to them. Children and the elderly are at an even more elevated risk.
- Those looters that are at your door, they are not believing that you are sick, thirsty, and starving. They want to know where you’re hiding the swimming pool full of fresh, cool, clean water.

Your 30-Day Emergency Planning Priorities Stack Up As Follows:

Priority #1 – Water collection, capture, containment, and purification
Priority #2 – Shelter from the elements. If it’s wintertime, you need a means of keeping yourself warm. If its summertime, you need a means of keeping yourself cool. Both pose unique challenges, depending upon your residence location and neighborhood.
Priority #3 – Sanitation & waste disposal
Priority #4 – Food & food preparation
Priority #5 – Security

After you have addressed all of the above for your particular dwelling and situation, your biggest problems from this point on are All About Quality of Life:

- Heating and / or cooling and ventilation
- Bugs, critters & Vermin
- Lighting (It’s now a completely dark city. No ambient light and your “canyon” type dwelling may make the days very short.)
- Information & communication
- Not going completely nuts holed up between four walls in isolation for that long.
- Neighbors; Do’s & Don’ts