Medical-dependent household — start here

This page is for any household where at least one person depends on medication, refrigeration, a powered device, close supervision, or another caregiver to stay healthy. That covers five distinct sub-profiles: chronic conditions (diabetes, asthma, heart disease, dialysis, anticoagulants, cancer treatment), elder care (aging parents, dementia, mobility limitations), infants and toddlers (formula, age-tiered fever thresholds, dehydration risk), power-dependent medical devices (CPAP, oxygen concentrators, dialysis cyclers, powered wheelchairs, refrigerated medications), and multi-profile households that combine two or more of these. You don't need to read every page on this site. Use the sections below to find your starting point.

Before you start

Run the Preparedness self-assessment — a 10-minute scorecard that surfaces your three weakest areas across all 12 Foundations. For medical-dependent households, the any-1 tiebreaker applies: Medical, Water, and Energy are Wave 1 priorities. If your household is clinically elevated — anyone on a life-sustaining device or insulin — start with the Medical leg before moving to Water and Energy. The self-assessment will confirm or redirect.

If someone in your household has a chronic condition

Chronic-condition preparedness is not a standard kit problem. It is a household-specific planning problem: you need to know what happens if insulin loses refrigeration, inhalers run out, a dialysis session is missed, or a pacemaker's remote-monitoring service goes offline. Each of those failure modes has a different timeline and a different response.

Start here:

Chronic conditions in emergencies — the foundational page for this sub-profile. Covers insulin storage temperatures, respiratory condition management under air-quality events, dialysis disruption protocols, powered-device backup sizing, and the Chronic Conditions Card you build once and keep in every go-bag. If you read only one page for this sub-profile, read this one.
Cold chain during power outages — covers the specific temperature windows for insulin, biologics, and refrigerated medications, including brand-specific room-temperature stability windows and the cooler workflow that keeps medication safe when the refrigerator goes down.
Long-term medication strategy — covers what to do when supply chains fail over days or weeks, not just hours. Priority framework for building a buffer, managing withdrawal risk, and navigating pharmacy limits.
Medication stockpiling — shelf-life data, rotation schedules, and quantity targets for 30-day and 90-day supply gaps across common chronic-condition medication classes.
Medical-dependent household preparedness — the full-length guide that synthesizes all four sub-profiles. Return here after you've worked through the foundational pages above.

The single most important action for this sub-profile: Build the Chronic Conditions Card described in chronic-conditions.md this week. One page per household member. Every medication, every device, every prescriber contact, and what happens if a dose is missed. Put a copy in every go-bag and one in a waterproof document binder.

If you're caring for an elder

Elder-care preparedness involves more variables than any other sub-profile: medication management for someone who may not remember to take their own medications, routine continuity for dementia patients who decompensate without structure, mobility limitations that make standard evacuation plans unworkable, and caregiver coordination when a single caregiver cannot sustain a 72-hour event alone.

Start here:

Elder care and caregiver preparedness — covers medication management for cognitively impaired adults, fall prevention, dementia routine continuity, advance-directive instruments (Living Will, Healthcare Proxy, POLST), caregiver burnout warning signs, and what to do when the primary caregiver is also stressed by the same event.
Emergency planning with disability and access needs — evacuation planning when mobility is limited. Covers powered mobility aids, stair evacuation, shelter-in-place adaptations, and how to communicate access needs to emergency services before an event.
Vulnerable household members in crisis — addresses how your neighbors and local community network fit into elder care under disruption, including registries, buddy systems, and when to call for external help.
Family Emergency Playbook — Chapter 12 covers elder care specifically, including dementia wandering risk, hearing-aid battery stockpiling, CMS 42 CFR 483.73 facility evacuation requirements, and the caregiver sleep-rotation rule for events lasting more than 48 hours.

The single most important action for this sub-profile: Identify today who takes over if the primary caregiver is unavailable. Name that person. Give them a copy of the elder's medication list and a key to the house. Document this in the household emergency binder.

Field note

Dementia patients often remain calm if their medication and meal times stay the same — even when everything else is disrupted. A battery-powered alarm set to normal medication times is cheaper than almost any other intervention and more effective than most. Pre-position comfort objects and nightlights before an outage. Brief all secondary caregivers on the 15-minute rule: if the person cannot be located indoors within 15 minutes, call 911 immediately — wandering after dark in an emergency area is a medical emergency.

If you have an infant or toddler

Infants and toddlers cannot communicate what's wrong. They dehydrate faster than adults, their fever thresholds by age are clinically meaningful (not just uncomfortable), and their nutrition is often tied to a supply-chain-dependent product — formula — that may not be available during a regional disruption. These are not minor complications; they are the planning problem.

Start here:

Infant and toddler emergency preparedness — the complete reference for this sub-profile. Covers the Infant Emergency Card, age-tiered fever thresholds (neonate ≥100.4°F / 38°C is an emergency regardless of other symptoms), dehydration recognition including sunken fontanelle and per-age wet-diaper counts, formula stockpiling and the Cronobacter safety rule, breastfeeding under stress, and the 72-hour infant go-bag.
Special diets and emergency pantry — covers formula stockpiling logistics, infant allergen avoidance, and how to plan an emergency pantry when a household member cannot eat standard emergency rations.
No power + medical-device household — quick playbook — relevant if your infant or toddler uses a medical device (apnea monitor, nebulizer, feeding pump). The device-power timeline applies regardless of the patient's age.
Family Emergency Playbook — Chapter 8 covers infant preparedness in full, including infant CPR differences from adult CPR, the Cronobacter danger admonition for formula preparation, age-tiered water rules (no supplemental water under 6 months), and the 3.8 L (128 oz) maternal hydration target for breastfeeding under stress.

The single most important action for this sub-profile: Build the Infant Emergency Card described in infant-care.md. Write down the infant's age in weeks, current weight, any known allergies or conditions, the formula brand and concentration, and your pediatrician's emergency line. Tape it to the inside of the go-bag.

If someone depends on a powered or refrigerated medical device

This is the highest-urgency sub-profile on this page. The mortality window for some device-dependent conditions is measured in hours, not days. A CPAP user can safely skip one night. An oxygen-concentrator patient cannot go eight hours without supplemental oxygen. A home-dialysis patient running a peritoneal cycler has a narrower window still. The gap between "the power just went out" and "this becomes a medical emergency" may be shorter than it takes to buy a generator.

Start here:

No power + medical-device household — quick playbook — this is the essential first read for this sub-profile. A step-by-step 72-hour response protocol starting from the moment power goes out. Covers device triage by battery runtime, CPAP and BiPAP power sizing, oxygen concentrator cylinder backup, dialysis cycler emergency procedures, powered-wheelchair continuity, refrigerated medication cooler workflow, and the utility medical-baseline registry that prioritizes restoration for registered addresses. If you read only one page for this sub-profile, read this one — before the event.
Portable power stations — how to size a portable power station for medical device loads, including capacity ratings, battery chemistry, and pure-sine-wave requirements for sensitive medical equipment.
Generators — for longer outages where a portable battery station is insufficient. Covers transfer-switch connections, fuel storage, runtime calculations, and the CO safety rules that kill more people than the underlying outage.
Whole-home off-grid energy system design — for households where a device-dependent member's needs justify a permanent backup power system rather than emergency equipment.
Cold chain during power outages — the specific protocol for keeping refrigerated medications (insulin, biologics, EpiPens) within their stability windows when the refrigerator goes down.

The single most important action for this sub-profile: Read no-power-medical-device.md today and write down your device's battery runtime. If that runtime is shorter than the likely outage window in a regional event in your area, close that gap before the event — not during it.

If you have multiple profiles in one household

Many households combine two or more profiles — an elder on insulin and a toddler, a CPAP user whose spouse has a chronic condition, a caregiver household where the caregiver is also managing a pregnancy. The planning challenge is sequencing: which dependency do you address first when the event starts and you cannot do everything simultaneously?

Use the any-1 tiebreaker mortality-window ordering:

Profile 4 — Power-dependent device users (mortality window: hours). If anyone in the house depends on a machine to breathe, dialyze, or receive continuous medication, that device's power continuity is addressed in the first 15 minutes of any outage.
Profile 1 — Chronic-condition household members (mortality window: days of medication reserve). Insulin, anticoagulants, seizure medications, and dialysis-schedule management are addressed once devices are stabilized.
Profile 3 — Infant and toddler members (mortality window: days before acute dehydration or nutrition risk). Formula access, fever monitoring, and hydration assessment are addressed in the first few hours of an event, not the first few minutes.
Profile 2 — Elder care members (mortality window: days to weeks for most chronic elder conditions, shorter if dementia-related wandering or medication non-compliance is a factor). Routine continuity, caregiver relief, and medication administration can be organized after immediate device and nutrition needs are covered.

This ordering is a triage framework, not a value judgment. A healthy 85-year-old and a healthy toddler are both fine for the first hour of an outage. A ventilator-dependent person at any age is not.

Start with the Medical-dependent household preparedness guide — it is built specifically for multi-profile households and walks through the dependency mapping, documentation kit, and power-sizing steps in one integrated flow.

Cross-cutting essentials — every medical-dependent household

Regardless of your sub-profile, these four actions apply to every medically complex household:

Medication stockpiling — Build at least a 30-day supply of every life-critical medication before any event. Know the shelf life of each. Rotate them. The page includes quantity targets and rotation schedules.
Vulnerable household members in crisis — Tell two neighbors about your household's medical dependencies before an event. They do not need clinical details — they need to know that if the lights are out and no one answers the door, it matters. Consider registering with your local utility's medical-baseline or life-support program.
Documentation and document preservation — Build a medical document binder: one waterproof copy per go-bag, one stored offsite. Contents: every household member's medications and doses, prescriber contacts, device serial numbers and power requirements, insurance cards, advance directives, and emergency contacts. This binder is what emergency responders need if you are incapacitated.
Preparedness self-assessment — Run the 10-minute scorecard. Medical-dependent households almost always discover a gap in Energy (backup power for devices) or Water (medication interactions with contaminated water) that the household had not considered.

What to read this week

If you take only one action from this page, read the following:

If someone in your house depends on a powered or refrigerated medical device: open No power + medical-device household — quick playbook today. The 72-hour protocol is written for the moment the power goes out, but it needs to be read before that moment — when you have time to identify your devices' battery runtimes, locate your prescriber contacts, and close any power gaps.

For all other medical-dependent households: open Medical-dependent household preparedness — it is the canonical long-form reference that synthesizes every sub-profile above into a single integrated plan. Read the profile section that matches your household first, then work through the documentation kit and backup-power sections.

The rest of this site is here when you are ready for it. Start with the page that matches who lives with you.