Nine steps everyone can name
Including the children. Say them out loud twice and the whole house is using the same list.
A handbook for parents
Your family will look at you first.
One calm, practical method for deciding what to do when something goes wrong: at home, on the road, in a storm, in a crowd. Nine steps, ranked by what being wrong costs you.
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- 402 pages, no DRM
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- 402pages
- 43chapters
- 17printable action cards
- 9steps to remember
The problem
Most families have never had the conversation.
Not because they are careless. There is never an obvious evening to have it, so the first real decision gets made under pressure, out loud, in front of the kids.
- The storm is three days out, one of you is watching the radar, and nobody in the room has new information.
- You checked into the hotel two hours ago and nobody has looked at where the stairs are.
- Your nine-year-old knows your face and the route home. Not one phone number.
- A man is standing between you and your car. He is not doing anything. He is just standing there.
None of that is a gear problem. Every one is a decision that was available in advance and got left until it was expensive.
The idea
One method. Nine steps. Every situation.
Most safety guides hand you a list of disasters. This one gives you a way of deciding, then applies it 43 times. Two ideas to learn, and both fit on a fridge magnet.
The Loop
How you process a situation.
- SEEWhat is actually happening? What changed?
- THINKIs this dangerous, or only unusual?
- DECIDEChoose one option from the Funnel. Not a plan.
- ACTMove decisively. Keep the family together.
- REASSESSIs the problem still there? Then back to SEE.
Run it fast, then run it again. A decision that was right ninety seconds ago can be wrong now, and families get into trouble by committing to one past the point where it still fits.
The Funnel
What you choose from, ranked by what being wrong costs you.
- 1 Awareness Notice it
- 2 Avoidance Don't be there
- 3 Distance Open the gap
- 4 De-escalation Lower the heat
- 5 Escape Leave, now
- 6 Shelter When leaving is worse
- 7 Emergency Help Bring in 911
- 8 Extraction Go get someone
- 9 Defensive Action Last resort
Leaving a restaurant when nothing was wrong costs you a dinner. Using force when something else would have worked costs you the rest of your life. The further down, the fewer options you have left.
You do not need certainty to move up the Funnel. You only need certainty to move down it.
Chapter 2, The Family Safety Funnel
What you get
Things your family can actually do this week.
Every chapter ends with a DECIDE NOW box: the decisions that get much harder once something is happening. Ten minutes an evening.
The argument, settled in advance
The Family Decision Matrix turns nine common situations into answers you agreed on calmly. Four seconds instead of forty minutes.
17 cards built to be photocopied
One page, instructions only. The chapters are for the couch. The cards are for two in the morning with the lights out.
Kits that match a timeline
A 15-minute bag, a 72-hour kit and a two-week plan, each built around how long you have, not a shopping list.
Scripts for talking to children
Words a parent actually says, matched to what a child of that age can hold on to.
How to find the law where you live
Self-defense, firearm transport, duty to retreat. The guide never tells you the law. It shows you how to look it up at the source.
How it works
From checkout to your first decision tonight.
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Download instantly
The PDF and the EPUB, together. No DRM, no app, on every device you own.
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Start tonight
Read Chapter 2, then do its DECIDE NOW box out loud. Ten minutes.
Peek inside
See the pages before you buy.
Real pages from the guide, exactly as they print. 43 chapters in 15 parts, plus three appendices.
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Every chapter opens on a scenarioAlways marked hypothetical -
The Funnel, in fullChapter 2 -
One of 17 action cardsBuilt to be photocopied
See all 43 chapters
I The Family Safety Mindset
- Safety Is a Process, Not a Prediction
- The Family Safety Funnel
- Knowing the Rules Before You Need Them
II Situational Awareness
- Awareness Without Paranoia
- Recognizing Danger Before It Becomes an Emergency
III The Family Unit
- Family Roles
- Family Code Words
- Children and Emergency Conditioning
- Elderly, Disabled & Medically Dependent
- Pets
IV Escape & Extraction
- Evacuation Thinking
- Getting Out of Buildings
- Vehicle Safety & Mobile Family Operations
V Shelter & Home
- Shelter-in-Place
- Home Security
VI Medical & Physical Emergencies
- The First Five Minutes
- When Someone Is Missing
VII Dangerous People
- Dealing With Confrontation
- Layered Force
- Active Violence
VIII Environmental Emergencies
- Wind & Water: Hurricanes, Tornadoes & Severe Storms
- Flooding
- Fire & Smoke: Wildfire and Air Quality
- Temperature Extremes: Heat and Cold
- Earthquake
IX When the Systems Fail
- The Timeline: 4 Hours to 14 Days
- Power, Water & Fuel
- Communications, Payments & Supply
X Travel Safety
- Hotels
- Airports & Transit
- Theme Parks & Large Events
XI Digital & Information Safety
- Phones Are Part of Your Safety System
- Public Signals: Getting Information When the Network Fails
- Information Discipline
XII Preparedness
- The Family Emergency Inventory
- The 15-Minute Bag
- The 72-Hour Kit
- The Two-Week Resilience Plan
XIII The Family Playbook
- Family Emergency Cards
- The Family Decision Matrix
- Family Drills
XIV After
- Coming Home: Recovery, Records & Aftermath
XV The What-If Library
- The What-If Library
A-C Appendices
- The Family Playbook: blank cards, the matrix, checklists, a drill log
- Resources: real organizations, and what each one is for
- How to find the law that applies where you live
Read an excerpt from Chapter 2
Chapter 2: The Family Safety Funnel
Hypothetical. You are walking back to your car in a parking garage, third level, with your partner and your eight-year-old. A man is standing between you and your car. He is not doing anything. He is just standing there, and he has been standing there since you came out of the stairwell, and he is watching you walk.
Your partner has not noticed. Your child is talking about something that happened at school.
What you do next is not one decision. It is two, and telling them apart is most of what this book teaches.
The first is how you think about it: a loop you run, fast, and then run again when things change. The second is what you actually choose: one option from a ranked list, where the cheap options sit at the top and the terrible ones sit at the bottom.
The bands narrow, and that is not decoration
The further down you go, the fewer options you have left. At step 2 you have the whole world available to you. At step 9 you have one thing, and no ability to choose again.
In the garage, steps 2 and 3 are still fully available. You can go back into the stairwell. You can walk the long way around parked cars. You can stand where you are, in the open, and simply not approach. None of these require you to have decided what the man is.
The answer is almost certainly step 3. Not because the man is dangerous, you have no idea whether he is, but because distance is free, requires no judgment about him, and leaves every other option open. You walk back toward the stairwell with your family, you say the thing your family has agreed means come with me now, and you find out afterward whether it mattered.
People get this exactly backwards. They will demand proof before leaving a parking garage, then act on almost nothing at all once they are frightened.
Why it matters
The families who do well are not braver than yours.
They are the ones who already had the conversation.
Nothing here asks you to live as though something is about to happen. It asks for ten minutes at a time. Decide what "we're leaving" means in your house. Decide who may call 911, and agree that calling and being wrong carries no consequence. Write one card for one child.
None of those decisions are hard. They are only hard later. That is the whole argument of the guide.
How it was written
Every number says where it came from.
No figure appears in the guide unless it names the authority that published it. Where two authorities disagree, the guide tells you, and teaches you to act on the signs instead of the number.
Sources the guide cites by name
Water per person per day. How long a closed refrigerator stays safe. How deep water has to be before it moves a car. Each is attributed in the text, so you can check it yourself.
- FEMA
- National Weather Service
- National Hurricane Center
- NOAA
- American Red Cross
- Ready.gov
- CDC
- USDA
- EPA
- AirNow
- FCC
- CPSC
- NHTSA
- US Fire Administration
- NCMEC
What this guide is not
- Not legal advice. It never tells you what the law is where you live. It tells you which questions to ask and where to get real answers.
- Not medical training. The medical chapters stop short of clinical procedure on purpose. A class can teach your hands in an afternoon.
- Not a substitute for 911. Several chapters exist mainly to help you call sooner and describe the situation better.
- Not drawn from real families. Every scenario is hypothetical and marked as such.
A first edition, with no reader reviews yet. Rather than borrow anyone else's, read the Chapter 2 excerpt and judge the writing for yourself.
The author
Russell Benzing
Russell has spent more than twenty five years building software and taking systems apart to see how they work. He leads a development team at CallMiner and co-founded SWFL Hackerspace.
He is not a first responder, and the guide never pretends otherwise. What he does for a living is find the one decision that governs a complicated system and write it down so someone else can use it under pressure. A family in an emergency is that kind of system. So the Funnel ranks nine responses by what being wrong costs you, and every figure names its source, because that is what an engineer does instead of guessing.
Questions
Before you buy.
Who is this guide for?
A parent or guardian responsible for a household. It assumes no military, law enforcement or medical background, and it is written for the adult who, if something goes wrong on an ordinary Tuesday, is the one everyone else will look at.
Is this a prepper guide?
No. The guide argues that preparedness is ordinary rather than paranoid, and most of what it asks of you costs nothing: leaving earlier, parking differently, agreeing on one phrase, writing a card. There is no bunker, no stockpiling doctrine and no collapse fantasy. A chapter you finish should leave you steadier, not more frightened.
What will I actually learn?
How to notice a situation developing, how to choose the cheapest response that solves it, and how to get your household to agree on that in advance. Then the applications: getting out of buildings, vehicles, storms, floods, fire and smoke, heat and cold, earthquakes, long outages, hotels, airports, crowds, phones, kits, drills, and what to do in the weeks after something has happened.
How long is the guide?
402 pages. 43 chapters in 15 parts, plus three appendices, and 17 one-page action cards built to be printed and kept somewhere useful.
Is it suitable for beginners?
It is written for beginners. Parts I to III are short and should be read in order, because everything after them depends on them. After that the guide is reference: read the chapters that match where you live and how you travel.
What format do I receive?
Both. A PDF, typeset at 6 by 9 inches for reading on a screen and printing at home, and an EPUB for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo or any other reader. One purchase, both files, no DRM.
How is the purchase delivered?
Stripe hands you straight to a download page carrying both files, and the same link goes out with your receipt so you can come back to it. The link stays valid for 30 days and works on as many of your own devices as you like.
Is the payment secure?
Yes. Checkout is handled entirely by Stripe, one of the largest payment processors in the world. Card details are entered on Stripe's own secure page and never touch this website, which never sees or stores them.
What is the refund policy?
Before you download, a full refund, no questions asked. After a download has been recorded against your order there is no refund, because a file cannot be returned once you have it.
Every download is recorded against the order, so which of the two applies is never a matter of opinion, and you can see it on your own download page. If you paid and changed your mind before downloading, write to me@russellbenzing.com and the payment goes back.
Why is the guide $19.99?
It is priced like the paperback it was typeset to be. 402 pages, 43 chapters, 17 printable cards, and a sourcing policy that took longer to satisfy than the writing did. It is meant to be used rather than admired, which is also why it is priced to be bought without a discussion.
Is the guide specific to the United States?
The method works anywhere. The specifics are American: the agencies cited are US agencies, the emergency number is 911, and the legal chapters describe how US state law varies and how to look yours up. A reader elsewhere will find the framework useful and the references less so.
Get the guide
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Instant download
The Family Safety & Resilience Guide
Digital edition, PDF and EPUB
$19.99USD
- All 43 chapters, 402 pages, 15 parts and 3 appendices
- 17 one-page action cards, built to be printed
- The Family Playbook: blank cards, the decision matrix, checklists and a drill log
- PDF and EPUB together, no DRM, on every device you own
- Every figure attributed to the agency that published it
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Refunds, plainly. Change your mind before you download and you get all of it back, no questions. Once a download is recorded against your order there is no refund, because a file cannot be returned. Your download page shows you which applies.
Have the conversation on a calm Tuesday.
Not on the night it matters, tired, in front of the children. Ten minutes an evening, one chapter at a time.
PDF and EPUB. Instant download. Secure checkout by Stripe.