Emergencies and worst-case scenarios aren’t fun to think about. The sun is shining, let’s worry about it later. Do it now, go through this checklist with me, and then back into the sun!
Everything that follows highly depends on your living situation, so take it as inspiration to start thinking with, not a set-in-stone checklist.
How not to die
Your basic home setup
Don’t skip the boring stuff. Fire, water, and accidents are still pretty frequent and all easy to manage if you take the right precautions.
Fire: Have working alarms in and outside of each bedroom and floor. Test them monthly, replace them every ten years. You can also get self-testing alarms. Also get CO alarms. Check your fire extinguishers. Have an escape plan.
Water: Water won’t kill you but can drown you financially. Best way to prevent this is to get an in-line shut-off sensor. These monitor the total water flow in the house and shut off if there is a leak. At minimum, know your shutoff valve.
Accidents: The most frequent accident at home is falling. Prevent by having non-slip mats and something to hold on to in bathroom, low clutter, nightlights. Second is cuts. Make sure you have a first-aid kit and know how to use it.
Some friends of mine rented out a cabin in the mountains and wanted to smoke there, so they took down all fire alarms. Luckily they overlooked one because when that one got off during the night they barely managed to escape before the whole cabin burnt down. The fireplace had somehow caught fire. Don’t be them. Get fire alarms.
Christoph
Security that works
This section highly depends on where you live. I am lucky to live in Amsterdam where the biggest worry is getting your bike stolen. I also used to live in Chicago and Nairobi where the stories were a bit different. These basics should always hold:
Build community: When your neighbors know you, they can double-check with you if a moving truck shows up without you having ever told them that you’ll move. Neighborhood chats also work, however might make you more stressed.
Make it hard: Just be more difficult to break in than the next guy. The basics: Decent locks, a bolted down safe, landscaping that doesn’t allow for hiding. At night, lock doors and windows, turn on exterior lights.
Digital security: Don’t re-use passwords. Use passkeys if supported, after that a password manager, multi-factor authentication, printed backup codes. Keep your email account extra safe. Have an offline backup of your key files. Don’t trust anybody calling you, AI can now imitate any voice.
Trump’s twitter got hacked twice. How did it happen? The first time, somebody used the publicly available password from a large-scale LinkedIn breach:
yourefired- turns out Trump had re-used his password and didn’t rotate it after the breach. The second time somebody just randomly guessedmaga2020!, which could’ve been prevented by having set up two-factor authentication. Don’t be like Trump, follow the rules above.Christoph
Prep for the worst case
The Netherlands recently sent a flyer to every household asking them to prep for emergencies with specific instructions. Prepping isn’t a weird thing weird people do but a reasonable thing you should also do.
Three-day stock: That’s 9 liters of water per person, non-perishable and high-calorie food. Water purification tablets. Fuel if you have a car. If you have the space for it, stock for two weeks incl. sanitization bags/litter & camp stove.
Backpack: First aid kit, IDs and insurance docs, cash in small bills, 1 week of prescription medication, battery-powered radio, N95 masks, charged! power banks, pocket knife, map. Consider having a version of this in your car/office.
A plan: Some emergencies come fast, like a power outage, others slow, like a war. Get some friends over, think through a few scenarios, and make a plan what to do in which case, including which events will trigger action.
A simple way I have handled prepping is by focusing on the bare essentials first: food and water. I already had a Huel subscription, so every few months I added one extra bag to my order. Over time, that built up a small surplus in case of an emergency. I also picked up multipacks of large bottled water. There is plenty more you can do, but covering basic food and water is a great 80/20 move that gives you resilience without much complexity.
Cameron
Let’s get started
Perfect is the enemy of good here, just get started with something. Better to have a fire alarm than having spent one week researching the best and given up.
Block some time in your calendar to prep
Subscribe to the newsletter to get a reminder to review in a year.
Already did the basics? Go down this rabbit hole
Learn how to change
Bet money on your change
Discuss this in our community
Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version.
I question the suggestion to check smoke alarms monthly. The number of micromorts that you save by doing that cannot possibly justify the extra time and effort. If the goal of this blog is scientific life advice, where is the science that supports this recommendation?