Forty years on the back of a fire truck taught me one thing: when the power goes and the road's cut, the expensive gear isn't what gets you through — a plan is, and most Australians haven't got one.

If you came here from the link in the description, the pinned comment or the code on screen in my video — this is the book I was talking about. In the videos I just call it my plan. Its full name is The Emergency Plan, Australian Edition: the calm, practical know-how that gets a household through ten days without power, running water or the shops — heatwave, bushfire, flood or storm. No expensive gear. Just the steps, in the right order.

By Col Hartigan — volunteer firefighter, 40 years, East Gippsland  |  Updated: October 2026

You know me from the videos. I've lived my whole life on a beef-and-sheep block outside Bruthen in East Gippsland, and I joined the local brigade the winter after Ash Wednesday, back in '83. Forty years of grass fires, house fires, car smashes, storms and floods. Then came Black Summer. On New Year's Eve 2019 the embers came through, the power and phones went across the district, and the Princes Highway east of Bairnsdale was shut from New Year's Day until the fourth of February. Five weeks. The bread and milk were gone from the shop in town inside two days.

I knocked on a lot of doors that summer, and here's what I saw, plain as I can put it: the fire didn't break people. Being caught short did. The family with a plan had a hot meal on the third night, water in the laundry and a torch for every room. The family without one sat in the dark with the phone on 3 per cent, scared to open the fridge.

US$29 is about A$45 — your bank converts it automatically. Or read the whole case below first. Four minutes. The price is the same afterwards.

The fear business (and why it leaves you unprepared)

Type “grid down” or “collapse” into YouTube one night. You know what comes up: burning cities in the thumbnail, countdown clocks, “WATCH BEFORE IT'S DELETED,” the end of the world in capital letters. I call it the fear business — and as a bloke who's actually stood in front of a fire front, here's what gets under my skin:

Fear is a subscription. Know-how is a tool.

The fear business doesn't sell you know-how. It sells you a feeling — that it's five minutes to midnight, that you're already too late, and that salvation is whatever's on special this week. A frightened buyer comes back. Have a look at what it leaves behind in Australian sheds and garages:

• The A$2,500 inverter generator — with no fuel plan. Nobody mentioned that petrol goes stale sitting in the jerry can, that it has to run outside away from every window, or that plugging it into the house needs a licensed sparky.
• The A$1,800 “portable power station” that keeps the fridge going for about a day — and then sits there, the most expensive doorstop in the street, while the rooftop solar you paid for switches itself off because the grid's down.
• The A$399 “72-hour survival kit” off the internet — never opened, half out of date, packed with what the maker wanted to get rid of, not what your family eats.
• A$250 of panic buying every storm warning — toilet paper, candles, batteries, tins nobody likes. Remember March 2020? Same again next time, because nobody remembers where it all went.
• 200 hours of doomsday videos — and at the end of it, nothing written down, nothing on the shelf, nothing practised.

That's close to A$5,000 in fear money — and on day four without power, the family still couldn't put a safe tea on the table or keep Nan cool through a 43-degree afternoon. If that list sounds familiar, hear me out: it isn't your fault. Everywhere you looked, someone sold you gear where knowledge was missing.

She'll be right isn't a plan. And a bigger battery isn't one either.

The only “preppers” who actually lived through it

Our grandparents never watched a survival video. They got through the Depression, the war years, the '67 Tasmanian fires, Cyclone Tracy, droughts that went on for years. No supermarket around the corner, no fridge in a lot of houses — a Coolgardie safe on the back verandah and a cupboard full of Fowlers jars. Not because they were tougher than us. Because they knew how to do things we've let ourselves forget. Nobody makes money teaching it, so nobody teaches it. It didn't disappear because anyone banned it. It disappeared because it went quiet.

The Emergency Plan is that calm know-how, sorted into seven sections an ordinary Australian household can follow — built on the official advice (Get Ready Queensland, the state emergency and fire services, BoM, Healthdirect) and stretched to ten days. A few samples, with page numbers, so you can see it isn't a book full of waffle:

• 🥫 The 10-day rule — how much food is really enough, counted in kilojoules like the labels, and built from what you already eat (page 7).
• 💧 How much water you really need — plus tank water after smoke and ash, and what happens when the pressure pump stops in a blackout (pages 14–20).
• 🌡 The cool room — how to get through a heatwave without power, the hazard that has killed more Australians than any other; with heat exhaustion vs heatstroke on one page (page 22).
• 📻 The radio that warns you — ABC Local Radio, Emergency Alert, and how to read Advice, Watch and Act, Emergency Warning and the Fire Danger Ratings (page 31).
• ➕ The first-aid kit that counts — including the heavy bandages for a snakebite that most kits leave out (page 35).
• 🔥 The tin-can stove and the simple water filter — made yourself, from things most people have; with the Total Fire Ban rule in red (page 40).
• ⏱ The first three hours — what to do when the power drops out and nobody knows when it's coming back (page 45) — plus cash and documents for when EFTPOS dies, the leave-early bag and a summer car kit.

And now the sentence the fear business will never say, because there's no monthly subscription in it: none of these things works on its own. A pantry without rotation is rubbish with a best-before date. A torch without spare batteries is dark by Friday. Tank water after a fire is a gamble. It's the combination, in the right order — and that's exactly what's in the book. Calm's cheaper than gear. It was true on the fire ground for forty years and it's true in your kitchen.

What it looks like in an ordinary home

You don't need a farm or a bunker. Most readers live in a unit, a townhouse or a brick veneer in the suburbs, with a linen cupboard and not much spare time. What changes is smaller and quieter than you'd think.

Shopping stops being a race. When the cyclone watch or the flood warning comes, half the town empties the shelves. A pantry done the old way was full three months earlier — bought calmly, on special, one weekend at a time.

Before the storm

Already home

Same afternoon, two households. On the left, the shelves when everyone has the same idea on the same day — it happened in Darwin and Alice Springs in 2022 and in Mount Isa early this year. On the right, the pantry that was full three months earlier.

A 44-degree blackout stops being dangerous and becomes a routine. Don't try to cool the whole house — set up one room, the cool room, before the heat of the day, and keep the people who matter in it.

Day 1, 3 pm

Prepared

Same room, two heatwave afternoons. On the left, the sun beating on the glass and an air conditioner that can't run. On the right, the outside blinds down, wet towels, water within reach and the couple resting — the difference isn't a gadget; it's section three of the book.

And if the warning ever says go, the leave-early bag is already by the door — before the smoke shows up, not after:

Nothing ready

Out in 5 minutes

Same door. On the left, nothing at hand while the Watch and Act comes through on the phone. On the right, the bag on its hook — water, torch, radio, documents, medicines, a woollen blanket and a wide-brim hat — packed in spring, not in the panic.

Who this book is for

Instant download · 30-day money back · no subscription

Let's talk money — straight

Here's the fear-business shed one more time, next to what the calm way costs:

The book isn't competing with zero. It's competing with the pile of gear — and with the years of “I'll get round to it” that the pile costs you.

Get The Emergency Plan

🤝 TOTAL VALUE US$197 — YOURS TODAY FOR US$29, ONE TIME

The complete handbook and the four free bonuses — pay once, keep forever.

US$197US$29

about A$45 — charged in US dollars, your bank converts it automatically

one time · no subscription · no fine print

Instant download through the secure checkout — on your phone in two minutes:

• 📘 The Emergency Plan, Australian Edition — seven sections, illustrated: pantry · water · heat & cold · light & information · health · do it yourself · the plan, with 68 step-by-step photos and four print-out checklists (value US$97)
• 🎁 FREE: The Big Pantry Shopping List — the ten-day stockpile to tick off, for two and four people, in metric, with the stuff you actually find at Woolies, Coles, Aldi or IGA (value US$25)
• 🎁 FREE: Edible Wild Plants on Your Doorstep — twelve plants that grow in Australian backyards, paddocks and roadsides, identified safely, with the deadly look-alikes like hemlock (value US$25)
• 🎁 FREE: The Fridge-Door Emergency Plan — print it, fill it in, stick it on the fridge: numbers, warning levels, your leave-early trigger (value US$25)
• 🎁 FREE: Making Food Last — how our grandparents kept food in an Australian summer with no fridge: bottling like Nanna, drying, corning, and the Coolgardie safe (value US$25)
• 💰 Total value: US$197 — today: US$29, one time.
• 🚫 No subscription. No follow-up charges. No monthly fear. You buy the book, you own the book.

Yes — I want the plan, US$29 →

30-day money back, no ifs or buts Read it. Set up the cool room, fill the first water containers, print the checklists. If you don't reckon the plan's worth every cent within 30 days, you get the full amount back — one email does it. The risk is mine, not yours.

Secure checkout · instant access · 30-day money back · I may earn money from this sale

What you might be wondering…

“Col, you've been a firey for forty years — why a book and not a gadget?”
Because forty years showed me what actually holds up. A gadget buys you a day. A plan carries your family through the week after. The gadget comes last — the plan comes first.

“I rent a unit in Brisbane. Is this worth it for me?”
Especially then. The pantry maths scales down to a cupboard, the water and cool-room sections work in any home, and the first-hours plan is written for an ordinary household. Floods, storms and heatwaves don't skip the suburbs.

“Is this just bushfire stuff?”
No. Bushfire is where I learned it, but the book covers the heatwave blackout, the storm that takes the towers down, the flood that cuts the highway and the cyclone up north. Different hazards, same problem: no power, no shops, no help for a while.

“Is this another end-of-the-world book?”
No — and that's exactly why my name's on it. It's about the storm, the fire season, the flood, the week the line is down. Our grandparents weren't frightened of hard times. They were practised. The book turns it into practice, not panic.

“If it's that good — why's it only US$29?”
That's about A$45 — the checkout charges in US dollars and your bank does the conversion, same as buying anything online from overseas. Fair question, though. The answer's boring: it's a file, not a printed book. No paper, no warehouse, no postage. The tenth copy costs me the same as the first — nothing. A price tag isn't proof of quality either way. Try it for thirty days and then decide.

“Why order through your page?”
The price is the same — the button goes to the official secure checkout. If you order through it, I earn money from it and the videos stay free. If not, that's fine too. What matters is you end up with a full shelf.

“And if it's not for me?”
Thirty days, one email, full refund. You've seen in the videos how I handle promises: I don't make any I won't keep.

Two ways off this page

US$29 one time · 4 free bonuses · 30-day money back