The Field Guide to Getting Home

Most preparedness plans assume you are already home. What happens when you aren't?

Every day, people leave home for work, school, appointments, vacations, and ordinary errands with the expectation that getting back will be routine.

Usually, it is.

But a snowstorm, vehicle breakdown, road closure, power outage, wildfire, flooding, civil unrest, or countless other disruptions can suddenly turn an ordinary day into an unexpected journey home.

The Field Guide to Getting Home is a practical preparedness manual for navigating that journey safely.

Written for ordinary people with no specialized training, this guide focuses less on predicting specific emergencies and more on developing the judgment needed to respond when circumstances change. It provides a practical framework for observing conditions, evaluating information, preserving options, managing limited resources, and making deliberate decisions under uncertainty.

Inside you'll learn how to:

• Recognize developing problems before they become emergencies
• Decide whether to leave, wait, continue, or turn back
• Prepare your vehicle and everyday travel habits for unexpected disruptions
• Evaluate alternate routes and navigate when familiar systems are unavailable
• Manage fuel, water, food, daylight, money, and other limited resources
• Respond to vehicle breakdowns and transportation failures
• Adapt to severe weather and changing environmental conditions
• Communicate and gather reliable information during disruptions
• Reduce unnecessary attention and avoid preventable conflict
• Make safer decisions when traveling on foot
• Recognize when stopping is safer than continuing

Although the book focuses heavily on personal vehicles—the most common form of long-distance transportation in the United States—the principles apply whether you are traveling by car, on foot, by bicycle, public transportation, or other means.

At the heart of the guide are five principles:

Think Before You Move.
Preserve Mobility.
Preserve Options.
Manage Resources.
Solve the Next Problem.

You cannot predict every disruption. You do not need to.

You need a framework for making better decisions when the situation you expected is no longer the situation you face.

The objective of this book is not to prepare for a specific emergency. It is to prepare for the moment an ordinary day unexpectedly becomes a journey home.