Download the drill
The 72-Hour No-Utilities Drill: a two-page printable checklist for a household that cannot evacuate — 72 hours, no grid, no running water, no pharmacy. Tick the box, or write what broke. Print it double-sided: the front is setup and hours 0–12, the back is hours 12–72 and the debrief.
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What it covers
- Ten stop conditions, checked before the clock starts. A drill correctly abandoned passes; a drill run over an exclusion fails.
- Roles, filled in before hour 0 — water, food and the fridge clock, heat or cooling and the CO alarm, sanitation, medicine, the door, and a log keeper who writes the number rather than the feeling.
- The first hour: write down the time the utilities went, shut the fridge and freezer, test the alarm, fill every clean container while pressure lasts, take the medication inventory, send one message to an outside contact.
- Hours 1–4: water counted in gallons with dates and a days-of-supply figure, the warm room chosen, the handwash station standing up, the door protocol read out loud.
- Hour 4 — the fridge decision: read the thermometer, not the food; coolers out if the outage has passed four hours; cook the thawing food first; medicine cooler labelled and nothing frozen.
- Hours 12–72: the trigger checks — water down to one gallon per person per day, water that cannot be made safe, sanitation untenable, heat stroke signs, a device or medicine that has run out of road.
- The debrief: what was saved, what was thrown, what it cost, and one line per thing that broke. Stopping is recorded as an outcome, not a failure.
The stop conditions, in short
Do not start the clock unless all of these are true: nobody is on mains-powered equipment (oxygen concentrator, home dialysis, infusion pump, CPAP, powered chair) and no cardiac, seizure or insulin medicine is uncovered; CO alarms are installed and tested today; there is no cold snap or heat wave and the indoor temperature is under 90 °F; a written fridge and freezer plan exists; the water heater is isolated and no shared building system will be drained; nobody may be in the lift; there are no candles and every member has an LED light; an outside check-in person is named with a phone number; every adult has said the abort rule out loud; and everyone knows that an official evacuation order or a fire in the building ends the drill and you go.
Each of those lines carries its chapter and section in the PDF, so you can see why it is there rather than taking it on trust.
What it will not print, on purpose
The book refuses a number where it could not verify one against a current source, and the checklist refuses the same numbers in the same words:
- No toilet-building method, no waste volume per person per day, and no disposal rule. Call your health department and write their answer on the card (Document 04, §4.6.5).
- No salt-and-sugar rehydration ratio, ever — not even as a warning. Sachets, as the packet says (Document 06, §6.3.1).
- No "your insulin is good for X hours at Y degrees" figure. The label and your prescriber carry it (Document 06, §6.2.3).
- No target room temperature, no carbon-monoxide ppm threshold, and no minimum survival calorie level (Document 04, §4.1.2 and §4.2.3; Document 03, §3.1).
- No fire-extinguisher specification. Ask your fire department (Document 04, §4.2.5).
If that reads as a list of gaps, it is meant to. A checklist that invents a figure is worse than one that tells you who to call.
How to use it honestly
Run it in a week when nothing else is happening, with the outside contact already briefed and the abort rule said out loud by every adult. Run the fridge drill before the 72-hour drill, so the drill does not cost you a freezer full of food. And read the three companion guides — they cover the questions the checklist makes you answer, in the order people usually ask them.