About
About Self Reliant Basics
A small, independent website with one job: help ordinary households get calmly ready for storms, power outages and other common emergencies, with plans you can follow and numbers you can check.
What the site does
Self Reliant Basics publishes free guides for households that want to be ready without becoming "preppers": how much water to store and how, a 2-week food supply on a budget, what to do when the power goes out, keeping fridge food safe, a 72-hour kit, a family and pet emergency plan, safe home canning, cool storage and a first vegetable garden. Each guide turns published guidance from official and academic sources into a plan you can follow: numbered steps, real numbers, a table, troubleshooting and the point at which you should call 911, your utility or a local expert.
Who publishes the guides
The guides are published by Self Reliant Basics, an independent website with no staff writers or experts behind it. Guides are drafted with AI assistance, then checked against the sources listed at the bottom of every page before they are published, and a second automated check compares every claim with those sources and holds back anything they don't support. No emergency-management professional, food-safety specialist or extension educator reviews the guides, and we don't present the site as if one did. You can read exactly how a guide is made on how we write.
We don't put names or photos of invented experts on the site, and we never claim to have bought, used or tested a product, canned a recipe or built a project ourselves. When a guide uses an example, it is labeled as illustrative.
What we stand for
- Calm, not fearful. Real emergencies are storms, outages, floods, wildfire smoke and boil-water notices. We write about what to do, never about collapse or doomsday.
- Official sources first. Ready.gov and FEMA, the CDC, EPA, USDA, the National Center for Home Food Preservation, the American Red Cross, NOAA and the National Weather Service, and university Cooperative Extension services.
- Tested methods only. Home canning follows USDA and NCHFP tested methods. Generator and carbon monoxide warnings appear wherever outages come up.
- Clear limits. The site does not cover weapons or self-defense, foraging for wild food, or medical treatment and herbal remedies.
- Show the sources. Every number and rule in a guide links back to where it came from.
How the site is paid for
The guides are free to read. Some gear guides include labeled links to Amazon, and As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Product reviews may include a labeled affiliate link: if you buy, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. No company pays to be mentioned, a commission never changes what a guide says, and our reviews say plainly what a product's own pages claim, what we could check and who should skip it. The affiliate disclosure and how we review pages have the details.
What we can't do
We can't give advice for your specific home, emergency, health or legal situation, by email or any other way. In an emergency, call 911. For local hazards and shelters, contact your city or county emergency management office. If you spot an error in a guide, please tell us: corrections are handled as described on how we write.
Pick your starting point.
Kits and plans, power outages, or food and water: each path lists the guides in the order that helps most.