Ralph Harmon · prepping since 2009 · four extended outages, the longest nine days

The ten-minute check that buys you the first day

Three manuals on getting an ordinary household through an ordinary outage — 195 numbered checks, in the order I’d do them.

  • 72 checks for keeping the food safe, starting with why the freezer you own is the wrong shape
  • 71 checks for water, light, information and fuel — the week the food is fine and everything else is the emergency
  • 52 checks on the arithmetic nobody prints on the packaging — not sold separately
  • 17 diagrams drawn for these books — the parts that are easier to see than to read

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There are no prices inside these books. Everything in them is a decision, not a purchase.

Ralph Harmon
Ralph Harmon. Prepping since 2009, four extended outages, and a notebook after every one.
The three volumes fanned out, with The Math They Skip center-forward.

Three volumes · three printables · 195 numbered checks · 183 pages

Ralph Harmon · prepping since 2009 Ralph Harmon Books From the Ralph Harmon channel — youtube.com/@RalphHarmonYT

Why it runs out so fast

Everybody reads half of the official figure

FEMA and the CDC both publish the same figure: at least one gallon of water per person per day, covering drinking, cooking and basic hygiene. The CDC puts a number on the days as well — three — and then says to store two weeks’ worth if you can.

Read that second half again, because almost nobody does. Three days is the floor they will commit to in print. Two weeks is what they actually suggest. Most households have neither, and the events that make the news — a treatment plant down, a hard freeze splitting mains across a county — routinely run past three days.

That is the only statistic on this page. It is published by both agencies in those words, and it holds up if you go and check it.

And a gallon weighs eight pounds

Take the two weeks the CDC suggests, for a family of four. That is fifty-six gallons — well over four hundred pounds of water that has to physically exist somewhere you can reach and carry it.

That is the part that quietly kills the storage-only plan. Not the cost of the containers — the weight, and the stairs.

Before you buy anything

Two of the checks, free, right now

Three pages. One from Volume II, one from Volume III, both with their diagrams — so you can see exactly how these are written before you spend anything.

From Volume II

The valve that buys you the first day

Most people think a boil-water notice means something got into the reservoir. Usually it means the system lost pressure — and a depressurized pipe can draw contamination backward into itself.

Which means the clean water already standing in your own pipes stays clean only if you close the door on it early. Most households do not know where that door is.

From Volume III · collection only

The five places energy disappears

The watt-hour figure on the box is real, and it is measured in a laboratory with a slow steady draw. Your freezer is not that.

Five separate losses stand between the cells and the appliance. Stacked, they come to close to half the battery — before the compressor has spiked even once.

Get the free sample — no email

The claim, the mechanism and the diagram for each — what to actually do about them is in the books. That is two of a hundred and ninety-five. The other hundred and ninety-three are in the three volumes, and three printables come with the collection.

Where the money goes

Most of it gets spent in the wrong order

Generator before freezer

A generator makes several thousand watts. Keeping food cold needs a few dozen. It is a freight train hired to deliver a letter — and it runs on the one thing that vanishes first, because fuel pumps are electric too.

Bottles before a barrel

Storage is a buffer, and a buffer ends on a day you did not choose. The households that come through a long interruption comfortably are not the ones with the biggest pile. They are the ones with something that refills.

Battery before the arithmetic

The watt-hour figure on the box is measured in a lab. Five separate losses stand between it and your freezer, and together they are close to half the battery. Buying the biggest number on the shelf is how people end up disappointed at hour nine.

Choose your level

Start with one book, or take all three

Both single volumes are complete on their own. Instant download, nothing that expires.

Volume I · 72 checks

Save the Food, Not the Refrigerator

Save the food, not the refrigerator

Keeping a household’s food safe, and why the appliance you own is the wrong shape for it.

  • It’s a shape problem
  • The box itself, and buying one used
  • Thermal mass, which costs nothing
  • Topping it back up
  • The generator question
  • Test it on a Saturday
  • 6 explanatory diagrams

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All three volumes

What actually failed

Every check, every figure, plus three printables you cannot buy separately.

  • Volume I — Save the Food, 72 checks
  • Volume II — The Outage, 71 checks
  • Volume III — The Math They Skip, 52 checks
  • The Hour One Card — one sheet, tapes to a door
  • The Load Sheet — measure your own appliances
  • The Rotation Calendar — four ticks a year
  • 17 explanatory diagrams across the three volumes

Volume III is only in here

52 checks on the arithmetic nobody prints on the packaging — where the five losses go, and how to size any of this so it does not surprise you at hour nine. It is the volume that makes the other two work, and it is not sold anywhere else.

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183 pages · 17 diagrams

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Volume II · 71 checks

The Outage Nobody Plans For

The outage nobody plans for

Water, light, information and fuel — the week the food is fine and everything else is not.

  • We think about water backward
  • The water already in your house
  • Filtering and storing
  • Light, and information
  • Fuel is a behavior problem
  • The cheap fixes, ranked honestly
  • 6 explanatory diagrams

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Who wrote this

Four extended outages, and a notebook after every one

“I put my name on this channel, Ralph Harmon, because I want you to be able to hold me to numbers like these, instead of vague reassurance.”

I have been prepping since 2009. Four extended outages, the longest of them nine days. After every one I sit down and write out what actually failed, instead of what I planned for on paper.

These three books came out of those notebooks. Every one of the 195 checks says what it will not do, as well as what it will — because that is the part I would want if somebody were selling this to me.

Ralph Harmon
2009Prepping since
195Numbered checks
17Explanatory diagrams
60Day guarantee

What’s inside

Three manuals. 195 things nobody was going to write down.

Countable, numbered, and in the order I’d do them. Every check carries the honest limit.

Seventeen diagrams · drawn, not stock

The things that are easier to see than to read

Some of this is physics, and a paragraph is the wrong tool for it. Why cold air pours out of one freezer and stays in another. Where the five losses go between the box and your appliance. Why a hose stops eight inches down a filler neck.

So seventeen of them are drawn. Every diagram was made for these books — none of it is stock artwork, and none of it carries a price or a brand, so nothing in it goes stale.

Six in Volume I, six in Volume II, five in Volume III. Two of them are in the free sample, so you can judge the standard before you spend anything.

Cold air pouring out of a front-opening freezer and staying inside a top-opening one.
Figure 1, Volume I. The whole argument of the first volume, in one picture.
Save the Food, Not the Refrigerator

Volume I · 72 checks · 9 modules · 66 pages

Save the food, not the refrigerator

Cold air is heavier than warm air, so it behaves like a liquid. Everything else follows from that.

  • Why cold air behaves like a liquid
  • The twenty-minute inspection, before money changes hands
  • The picnic cooler with a power cord
  • Heat is a tax you pay every day
  • Water jugs instead of empty air
  • Blanket on when the power drops — and off when it returns
  • Surge rating, not just the continuous number
  • Your vehicle as a generator you already own
  • Running a chest freezer as a refrigerator
  • What actually goes in the box, and what does not
  • Carbon monoxide — the one instruction I will not soften
  • The Saturday test, and the one thing it always finds
The Outage Nobody Plans For

Volume II · 71 checks · 9 modules · 63 pages

The outage nobody plans for

The one where the food is fine and the real emergency is a dead screen, a dry tap and a bag on the pump handle.

  • Read the second half of the official figure
  • The water heater nobody counts
  • The tank behind the toilet — never the bowl
  • Find your main shutoff, and turn it once
  • Two buckets and a certified element
  • The diverter that removes the deadline
  • Stale is not the same as unsafe
  • Grab a flashlight is not a plan
  • Why cell service goes patchy, not dark
  • Fill at half, every time
  • The twenty-two gallons behind a locked door
  • The cheap fixes, ranked — including the ones barely worth doing
The Math They Skip

Volume III · 52 checks · 7 modules · 46 pages Collection only

The math they skip

The arithmetic nobody prints on the packaging. Written because both of the other volumes tell you to size something.

  • Why the number on the box is real and still wrong
  • The inverter, and what conversion costs
  • The reserve the display never shows you
  • Cold — the biggest thief, arriving exactly on cue
  • Standby drain across a week of doing nothing
  • The surge that looks exactly like a flat battery
  • Plan on 60 to 65 percent, and why
  • Reading a spec sheet instead of box copy
  • If they will not show you the chart, that is information
  • Where these come from, and how to judge one
  • Measure your own appliances, not the nameplate
  • Run the test again on a genuinely cold day

Nothing in here expires

The one page with prices on it

Every number I have ever put in a video went stale, and quickly. Somebody finds it eight months later and writes to tell me the figure is wrong, and they are right.

So there are no prices in these books — this page is the only one with prices on it. What is in the books instead is the shape of the decision: which of two things to buy, which specification actually matters, and what the box will not tell you. That stays true after every price on the shelf has changed.

And one thing that does not fit in a book

After every outage I write out what actually failed instead of what I planned for. When something goes into that notebook that belongs in these books, you get the new check, free.

That is what the list is for, and it is the only thing I will ever send you.

60

Sixty days. Zero risk.

Read all three. Run the two free checks. If it has not paid for itself, write to me and I will refund it.

No questions. No hoops. And you keep the printables.

Last call

It all sits on top of a decision you make months earlier

Without them

You buy the generator, then the fuel cans, then the biggest battery on the shelf — and on night three you find out the freezer was the wrong shape, the second vehicle will not give up its fuel, and the battery quit at forty percent.

With them

Ten minutes tonight tells you where your water shutoff is and which vehicles are sealed. Then a Saturday. Then one thing a week, until it is ordinary instead of a project.

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Instant download · 60-day guarantee · three volumes and three printables

Questions from the driveway

Honest answers

Is this about the end of the world?

No. It is about the stuff that happens to ordinary households during ordinary disasters — the power going out, the tap stopping, a freezer full of food going warm. Not the scenarios nobody actually lives through.

Will it tell me what everything costs?

No, and that is deliberate. A price printed in a book is wrong within a year or two. The books teach the shape of the decision instead, which is still right in five years. Go and find out what things cost in your own town, in the week you are actually buying.

Does it tell me what the rules are where I live?

No. Fuel storage limits, rainwater collection, electrical permitting and plumbing rules all vary by state and county, and I am not going to state yours. What the books do is name every category that varies and tell you exactly who to call — usually your fire department’s non-emergency line, which will answer in about four minutes.

I rent. Is any of this for me?

Much of it. The free checks, the water already in your building, the light and information modules, the fuel habits and all of Volume III apply whether you own the place or not. The parts about installing a diverter or moving a freezer are for people who can do that.

Can I buy Volume III on its own?

No. It only comes with the collection. It is the arithmetic underneath the other two volumes, and it is the reason the collection exists rather than being three separate books.

Somebody in my house depends on a medical device. Is this enough?

No, and I say so in the books rather than pretending otherwise. Volume III shows you how to size a battery honestly against a known figure. It cannot tell you what that figure should be or whether your answer is sufficient — those are questions for the device’s manufacturer and the clinician who prescribed it.

What if I have already done most of this?

Then run the two free checks first. They cost nothing and they take ten minutes. If you already knew both of them, you probably do not need these books, and I would rather tell you that here than take your money.

Are there pictures, or is it just text?

Seventeen diagrams, drawn specifically for these books — six in Volume I, six in Volume II, five in Volume III. They are there for the parts that are genuinely easier to see than to read: why cold air pours out of one freezer and stays in another, where a battery loses close to half of what the box promised, why a siphon hose stops eight inches down a filler neck. None of it is stock artwork and none of it carries a price or a brand, so nothing in it goes stale. Two of them are in the free sample.

Digital or physical?

Digital. Three PDFs plus the printables, delivered the moment you buy. The printables are meant to be printed on ordinary paper — the Hour One Card fits on a single sheet so it can be taped inside a cabinet door.

Will it go out of date?

Not in the way a book full of prices and product names does. There are no prices and no brand names in any of the three volumes, which is why nothing in them expires.