CatastropheThe plan
Two adults, two cats, a rented house in Runcorn. Most emergencies are boring and short. A storm, a grid failure, a fortnight of empty shelves. You do not need a bunker. You need thirty days of supplies, a way to make water safe, and the discipline not to panic. The people who die in disruptions are rarely killed by the disruption. They are killed by the third day of their own bad decisions.
The three horizons
- Disruption (days to months). The lights flicker, shops empty, order holds but supply does not. Survivable at home if you planned. This is the one that actually happens, so it gets most of the effort.
- Breakdown (one to two years). Services limp or stop. Stock is thin and dear, power is intermittent. Habits, not hoards, keep you fed: growing, fixing, preserving, trading.
- Long collapse (indefinite). Nobody survives this alone. Community, food production, sanitation and written knowledge are what matter. The lone wolf is a story people tell themselves.
The 72 hour reality
A supermarket holds two to three days of stock and relies on nightly restocking. Cut the restock and the maths is done by Thursday. Bottled water clears first, then bread and milk, then anything tinned. The single biggest early advantage is realising what is happening a day before the neighbours do. Plan to already have what you need before the queue forms.
Disruption: the first thirty days
Fill every container with water while it still runs. Charge everything. Check on Will and the cats. Do not broadcast what you have. Then sit down and read the situation before you spend a cent. The full shopping list lives in Stores.
Breakdown: one to two years of degraded normal
A month of stores gets you through a shock. A year or two is a different problem: you are resupplying, not running down what you bought.
- Rotate and resupply. Cook from your stores now so it is a habit before you need it. Buy the boring staples deep and the treats shallow.
- Grow something. Renting means pots and quick wins: leafy greens, herbs, chillies, spring onions, cherry tomatoes. Save seed. A few pots will not feed you but they lift morale and stretch what you have.
- A renewable protein line. Lentils and besan you can restock, eggs if a neighbour keeps chooks, fish from Bulimba Creek (see Food), and barter for the rest.
- The barter economy forms. Your stored consumables and skills become worth more than cash. Being useful and reliable is the asset that compounds.
Long collapse: the honest version
Over an open ended timeline, the thing that keeps you alive is other people, a working local economy, sanitation, and knowledge that outlasts any single supply.
- Community. Shared labour, shared risk, shared defence, shared care of the sick. A group of trusted people beats any amount of gear.
- Food production. Not stores, production. Soil, seed, water, and the knowledge to turn them into calories year after year.
- Sanitation and disease control. Historically this kills more than violence ever does. Clean water, waste kept away from food and water, wound care, isolation of the sick.
- Knowledge preservation. Written down, on paper, shared. This guide is a start. Print it.
If it ever comes to the road: travel light, travel early, travel known ground. Move between known water sources, not between destinations. Direction and refuges live in Out there.
When it goes sideways: the basics
The rule of threes
Three minutes without air. Three hours without shelter in harsh conditions. Three days without water. Three weeks without food. Note that food, the thing everyone stockpiles first, is the thing that kills you last. The human body has clear priorities. Preppers frequently do not.
Order of operations
- Stop. Assess. Do not act on adrenaline.
- Immediate danger first (fire, flood, structural, heat).
- Temperature and shelter.
- Water, then a way to clean it.
- Then food, then everything else.
The cheapest survival tool
Calm. It weighs nothing, costs nothing, and is permanently out of stock when you need it most, which is why you stockpile it now. Panic burns energy, clouds judgement and makes people do expensive, dangerous things. The person who sits down and thinks for two minutes outlives the person who runs. Practise being that person while it is still just a queue at Woolworths.
Fire, cooking, sanitation
A camp stove and gas is the easiest off grid cooking; learn one backup. Never run any fuel burner indoors, carbon monoxide gives no warning. Soap or ash and water before touching food, waste in a dug hole away from water. This one habit prevents more death than any weapon.
Skills and currency
- Making water safe. The single most useful skill there is.
- First aid and wound care. You will be the paramedic.
- Preserving food. Drying, fermenting, salting, so a glut does not rot.
- Repair and making do. Sewing, patching, basic mechanical and electrical. Will's territory, expand it.
- Growing from seed, and saving seed.
- Cooking well from plain stores. Morale is a survival skill and good food is how you defend it.
Forget gold. Nobody in the history of any disaster has ever eaten an ingot. The currency is consumables people need and cannot make: medicines, batteries, hygiene items, seeds, fuel, salt, coffee, alcohol, clean water, and above all skills and labour. Coffee deserves special mention. In week three, the person holding coffee sets the exchange rate.
Security, the realistic threat model
The marauding gang is the least of your problems. The things most likely to hurt you, in order: accidents, infection, dehydration, heat, fire and bad water. Fix those first.
- Do not advertise what you have. Grey, quiet, unremarkable is safety. Cook smells travel, lights are visible, and a generator announces your address to every hungry person within two suburbs. Manage all three.
- Your actual defences: not looking worth robbing, a group that looks after each other, good doors and a habit of locking them, situational awareness, and the discipline to de escalate. A fight you win still costs injuries you cannot treat.
- Trust is built slowly and in advance. The network (see Out there) is your security, far more than any lock.
Realistic framing for two people
You cannot grow all your food, treat every injury, defend a perimeter, and stay sane, all at once, alone. That is not a gap in the plan, it is the reason the plan is a network. The most valuable thing you own is being someone a group wants: useful, steady, fair, and good to have around when things are grim.
Stores
The thirty day floor for two adults. A floor, not a target. Rotate everything and eat it normally. A stockpile you do not eat from is not a stockpile. It is a museum of expiry dates.
| Store | Qty for 30 days | Approx energy | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| White rice | 6 kg | ~21,600 kcal | Base carbohydrate, cheap, keeps for years |
| Atta (wholemeal) | 5 kg | ~17,000 kcal | Roti and chapati, no oven needed |
| Besan (Grewal) | 3 kg | ~11,000 kcal | Protein, Australian supply chain, versatile |
| Rolled oats | 3 kg | ~11,300 kcal | Breakfast, fibre, eats cold if it must |
| Red lentils | 3 kg | ~10,000 kcal | Protein and iron, cooks in twenty minutes |
| Ghee (Cook tins) | 2 kg | ~16,000 kcal | Fat is calorie dense. Tins beat the bucket for heat and freshness |
| MTR Minute Meals | 20 pouches | ~7,000 kcal | Hot food with zero fuel. Priority buy, also morale |
| Tinned fish and beans | 15 tins | ~6,000 kcal | Protein you can eat straight from the tin |
| Sugar and honey | 1 kg | ~4,000 kcal | Energy, preserving, tea, morale |
| Milk powder | 1 kg | ~5,000 kcal | Calcium, calories, and the difference between tea and sadness |
| Total | ~115,000 kcal | Roughly 1,900 kcal per person per day. Add treats and spices, they matter more than you think |
| Use case | Litres p/p/day | 2 adults, 30 days |
|---|---|---|
| Drinking, bare survival | 2 L | 120 L |
| Drinking and cooking (realistic) | 4 L | 240 L |
| Plus basic hygiene | 6 L | 360 L |
| Comfortable (washing rationed) | 10 L | 600 L |
Renting with limited space means you will not store 600 litres, and any plan that requires you to is a plan for a different house. Store what you can, rotate bottles, and treat your ability to purify (see Water) as the real supply. Brisbane rain is your resupply. It is the one delivery service that keeps operating.
Also on the shelf
- Power and light: torches, a decent power bank, spare batteries, a way to charge phones off the car
- Cooking off grid: a gas camp stove and spare canisters. Never run it indoors. Carbon monoxide has no smell, no colour, and no interest in your plans
- Cash in small notes. Card networks go down with the power
- Documents: copies of IDs, insurance, scripts, the cats' records, somewhere waterproof
- The med kit and the wellness stores (Health & cats)
| Who | Number / channel | When |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | 000 | Life in danger, fire, serious injury |
| SES | 132 500 | Storm and flood damage, roof, trees, sandbags |
| 13 HEALTH | 13 43 25 84 | Nurse advice when a GP is out of reach |
| Poisons Info | 13 11 26 | Anything swallowed that should not have been |
| Energex | 13 62 62 | Power outages and fallen lines, southside |
| ABC Radio Brisbane | 612 AM | The official emergency broadcaster. A battery or wind up radio makes this work with no grid |
| Brisbane disaster dashboard | disaster.brisbane.qld.gov.au | Road closures and alerts, while internet holds |
| BOM warnings | bom.gov.au/qld | Storms, floods, heatwaves, before they arrive |
Phones die and networks jam. This table is only useful if it also exists on paper, stuck to the fridge and folded into the go bag.
The go bag, if you have to walk out the door in five minutes
- Water bottles and purification tablets
- Documents folder (copies), cash in small notes
- Meds for both of you, a small first aid kit
- Torch, power bank, battery radio, spare batteries
- Change of clothes, hats, sturdy shoes already by the door
- Cat carriers, a day of their food, their records and photos
- This guide, printed
Water
Brisbane has water everywhere and almost none of it is safe to drink as found. Finding it is easy. Making it safe is the entire job.
The one rule
Treat every source. Clear it, filter it, then boil or chemically treat. Clear water is not clean water: the pathogens that flatten you are invisible, and the subtropical warmth breeds them fast. Store treated water covered and away from light.
Making it safe
Boiling, the gold standard
A rolling boil for one full minute, three if unsure of the source. Kills everything living that can hurt you. It does not remove chemicals, so pick the cleanest source you can first.
Chemical treatment
Unscented household bleach: roughly two drops per litre of clear water, four if cloudy, wait thirty minutes. It should smell faintly of chlorine. Purification tablets are cleaner and worth stocking.
Filtering
Filter first to clear the grit, then treat. Cloth removes debris, a proper hollow fibre filter removes the bugs. Cloth alone does not make water safe, it just makes treatment work better.
SODIS, when you have nothing
Clear PET bottle, filled with clear water, laid in full Brisbane sun for six hours. UV does real work. It is the only survival technique in this guide that consists entirely of putting a bottle on the ground and walking away, and it still outperforms optimism.
Close to home
Rain is your best source and Brisbane gives you plenty. A tarp, a clean sheet, any large surface funnelling into a clean container catches the cleanest water available. Off a roof, skip the dirty first flush. Creeks like Bulimba carry urban runoff, never drink them untreated. The lower Brisbane River is tidal and brackish, do not bother, salt water only hurts you. Still or stagnant water is a last resort and always needs full treatment.
The wider region
Tap a source for where it is and how hard to treat it.
Rainwater tanks Domestic roof capture, everywhere outside the city centreBest first▶
Farm dams Roughly 1,700 across the region, Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim especiallySecond▶
Lake Baroon Baroon Pocket Dam, Obi Obi Creek, near MalenyHinterland▶
Lake Wivenhoe Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane River, ~80km NWHinterland▶
Lake Somerset Somerset Dam, Stanley River, ~100km NHinterland▶
The river network Brisbane, Bremer, Logan, Stanley, MaryLast resort▶
Food
Foraging bridges the gap between a failed pantry and a working garden. It will not, on its own, keep you alive. Treat it as supplement and morale, not strategy. The bush does not care whether you starve politely.
The one rule that keeps you alive
Never eat anything you have not positively identified, and never eat anything with milky sap unless you are certain what it is. When in doubt, go without. A wrong guess with no hospital is not a mistake you get to learn from. Learn identification from a real guide, in daylight, before you are hungry. Hunger is the worst possible teacher.
The Brisbane Big Eight, edible weeds
These grow in southside lawns, gutters and vacant lots.
| Weed | Eat | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cobbler's pegs (Bidens pilosa) | Young leaves and tips | Everywhere. Cook the older leaves. The seeds are the sticky burrs on your socks |
| Flatweed / false dandelion (Hypochaeris) | Leaves, roots | The yellow flower in every Brisbane lawn. Bitter raw, better cooked |
| Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) | Leaves and stems | Succulent, lemony, high in omega 3. See the lookalike warning below |
| Chickweed (Stellaria media) | Whole plant | Mild, cool season. A single line of hairs runs down the stem |
| Sow thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) | Young leaves | Common, mild, softens with cooking. Older plants get tough and bitter |
| Warrigal greens (Tetragonia) | Leaves, blanched | Native spinach. Must be blanched to shed oxalates, do not eat raw in quantity |
| Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) | Leaves and flowers | Garden escapee, peppery like rocket, easy to spot |
| Amaranth / pigweed (Amaranthus) | Leaves, and seeds | Cook the leaves. The seed heads are a genuine grain if you are patient |
Dangerous lookalikes
Purslane vs spurge
The important one. Prostrate spurge grows in the same spots and looks similar low down, but it has thin milky sap and is toxic. Purslane has thick, smooth, waterlogged succulent stems and no milky sap. Snap a stem. Milky sap means put it down.
The carrot family
Avoid anything that looks like wild carrot, parsley or fennel with feathery leaves and umbrella flower heads, unless you are an expert. Hemlock lives in this family and it kills. Not worth the risk.
Milky sap, generally
A lot of Brisbane's toxic plants leak white sap when cut: some spurges, oleander, frangipani, milkweeds. None of the Big Eight do. Sap test everything low growing before it goes near your mouth.
Ornamentals that kill
Oleander, angel's trumpet (Brugmansia) and cape tulip are common in Brisbane gardens and all are seriously poisonous. Pretty is not safe. Stick to the list you know.
Bush foods of the wider region
The SEQ hinterland is one of the richest bush food regions on the continent, the natural home of the macadamia and the bunya. Tap to expand. Green means edible, coral means do not eat.
Macadamia Macadamia integrifolia / tetraphyllaEdible▶
Bunya nut Araucaria bidwilliiEdible▶
Finger lime Citrus australasicaEdible▶
Midyim berry Austromyrtus dulcisEdible▶
Warrigal greens Tetragonia tetragonioidesEdible▶
Lilly pilly Syzygium / Acmena spp.Edible▶
Wattleseed Acacia spp. (edible species only)Edible▶
Native ginger Alpinia caeruleaEdible▶
Black bean / Moreton Bay chestnut Castanospermum australeDo not eat▶
Cycad / zamia palm Cycas / Macrozamia spp.Do not eat▶
Fishing Bulimba Creek
A tidal creek on your side of town, and a renewable protein line if you learn to read it. It moves salt and fresh with the tide and holds estuary fish. It is urban water, so the catch is food you must cook thoroughly, not a clean wild stream.
When and where
Fish the run of the tide, not the slack: the hour either side of the change is when they feed. Structure holds fish: bridge pylons, snags, drop offs, the mouths of drains.
What is in there
Bream are the mainstay, reliable and everywhere. Flathead sit on the sandy bottom on the drop of the tide. Sea mullet school through and take a cast net. Estuary catfish turn up too; their spines are venomous, handle with care and cut the line if unsure.
Bait and method
Prawn, worm and cut fish will catch bream. A cast net feeds you mullet without a rod at all, worth learning now. Light line and a small hook out fishes a heavy rig in a creek. Mud crabs and the odd blue swimmer move through: a witches hat or baited hand line gets them. Know the size and sex rules while there still are rules, never take a berried female.
Eat it safe
Urban runoff means bacteria. Cook everything through, never eat it raw, and gut fish away from your water and food. If a fish looks or smells wrong, it goes back.
Out there
Runcorn is southside. That is the good news: you never need to cross the river to get out. Read the city as bottlenecks and open ground, and the region as a ring of high ground around a hot, crowded plain. The map is the one piece of equipment that does not stop working.
The principle
Bugging in is almost always safer than bugging out. You leave only if staying is more dangerous than the road, which is a high bar. If you go, go early, before everyone has the same idea, or late, after the surge. Never in the middle of the rush.
Reading the map
- Avoid the CBD, the river crossings, the Gateway and the major motorways in a crisis. That is where crowds and trouble concentrate. Brisbane's chokepoints are the river and its bridges.
- Toward help. The network sits mostly south and west of you, away from the river bottleneck. That is your direction.
- Open ground. Further south and west is the Scenic Rim and the ranges: space, water, distance from density.
- Know two ways to every waypoint, because one will be blocked.
- Flood is the region's signature disaster. The Brisbane River and the Lockyer Valley flood catastrophically and repeatedly: 1974, 2011, 2022. Never shelter on a floodplain, however fertile.
- Heat is the quiet killer. Elevation buys you degrees; the hinterland is meaningfully cooler than the plain.
The ring of high ground
- D'Aguilar Range. The forested spine north west of Brisbane. Close, wet, timbered. First refuge from the city.
- Scenic Rim. The southern arc (Mount Barney, the border ranges). High rainfall, real farmland in the valleys, thin population.
- Toowoomba escarpment. The western wall. Climb it and you are on the Darling Downs: grain, grazing, Crows Nest.
- Bunya Mountains. The far north western highland. The deep refuge.
The highways (Warrego west, Cunningham south west, New England to the Downs, Bruce north) are arteries and chokepoints both: fast when open, a trap when everyone has the same idea. The map is the one thing that does not stop working. Learn it now, while it is still just a nice drive.
The network
Two people cannot cover everything. These are the people worth coordinating with, what they bring, and where they are. Talk to them now, quietly, before anything happens. This is the real survival plan; the rest is logistics.
Practical and hands on, handles maintenance and repair. Your second pair of hands and the person who fixes what breaks. The core of the household.
Close by and on your side of the river. A second base and a short, low risk move if you ever need to consolidate east.
The partner has an entomology and nature background. Genuinely valuable: foraging, ecology, insects as protein, reading the land. The knowledge node of the network.
Biosecurity Queensland, invasive species. Land and pest management, plant and animal knowledge, and a location with more room and more distance from the city. Your best southern run if density becomes the threat.
Places worth the journey
Six real locations across the region, each with the horizon at which it becomes worth the trip.
Green Harvest Maleny, Sunshine Coast hinterlandPriority▶
Lockyer Valley farms Gatton and Grantham corridor, west of BrisbanePriority▶
Tamborine Mountain Distillery Tamborine Mountain, Gold Coast hinterlandHigh value▶
Crows Nest Soft Drinks Crows Nest, Darling Downs, half an hour north of ToowoombaSupply▶
Scotty's Garage Flagstone Creek, Lockyer ValleyHigh value▶
The Bunya Mountains North west edge of the Darling Downs, about three hours outRefuge▶
Already gone
Cloudland Ballroom, demolished at dawn by wreckers before anyone could stop them. Bullen's African Lion Safari, its rusting archway still standing over nothing. The Bauple Fairy Shop, and Flights of Fancy on Tamborine, both closed when the people who dreamed them up could dream them no longer. Places do not need a collapse to disappear. Remember them anyway.
Health & cats
When there is no help coming, you are the paramedic. You cannot store health, but you can store what gets you through the common problems: dehydration, gut trouble, pain, fever, infection. The dramatic injuries are rare. The ordinary ones are certain. The cats get a plan too.
Heat is your first real threat
A Brisbane summer with no power is dangerous before hunger ever is. Heat kills quietly, especially with a body that already runs a bit dysregulated.
- Flip your day. Rest through the heat, work at dawn and dusk.
- Close the house up in the daytime, open it at night for cross flow.
- Evaporative cooling: wet a shirt and sit in moving air. Damp cloth on neck and wrists, feet in cool water.
- Drink to thirst but take electrolytes too, not just plain water. Heavy sweating plus plain water can drop your sodium dangerously low.
- Know the escalation. Heat exhaustion is heavy sweat, nausea, cramps, dizziness: that is the warning. Heat stroke is confusion, hot dry skin, sweating stops: that is an emergency. Cool the person fast.
- You have the manual BP cuff. Use it. A big drop standing up, or a racing pulse with dizziness, is a flag to stop, cool down and rehydrate.
The wellness stores
| For | Have | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dehydration | ORS sachets | DIY works too: 6 tsp sugar plus half a tsp salt in 1 litre of clean water |
| Nausea and vomiting | Ondansetron | Preferred, dissolves on the tongue. Metoclopramide is the fallback |
| Diarrhoea | Loperamide | Not if there is fever and blood. Then you want the infection out, not held in |
| Pain and fever | Paracetamol, ibuprofen | Go easy on ibuprofen when dehydrated, it is hard on the stomach and kidneys |
| Allergy and sleep | Antihistamines | Reactions, bites, and a bad night |
| Wounds | Antiseptic, dressings, tape, tweezers | See field medicine below |
Antibiotics, straight up
They need a prescription. Some people source them grey market, and the risks are real: wrong drug for the bug, counterfeits, an allergy with no help nearby, and driving resistance. The better play is to ask your GP about a genuine just in case course, and to actually know the signs of infection that need them: spreading redness, heat, pus, fever, red streaking from a wound. Most cuts do not.
Chronic meds
Keep a buffer where you can. Know which of your medications are safe to taper and which are not, and talk to your GP about a bridge supply so you are not caught short. Worth a real conversation before you need it.
Shelf life: most tablets keep two to five years past the printed date if stored cool, dark and dry. Capsules and liquids age faster. Rotate.
Field medicine
When there is no help coming, you are it. Most of what will hurt you is not dramatic: infection, dehydration, a wound gone bad, a gut bug, heat. Master the ordinary and you handle most of what comes.
Bleeding
Direct pressure, hard, and keep it there. Do not keep lifting to look. Elevate if you can. A serious bleed that will not stop with pressure is the one true tourniquet situation: high and tight above the wound, note the time, and understand it is a limb versus life decision.
Wounds and infection
Clean it out properly, this is the whole game. Irrigate with clean or boiled water under pressure until nothing is left in it. Cover it. Watch for spreading redness, heat, swelling, pus, and red streaking running from the wound. That last one is serious and moving fast.
Gut trouble
Diarrhoea and vomiting kill through dehydration, not the bug itself. Rehydration salts are the treatment (6 tsp sugar, half a tsp salt, 1 litre clean water). Ondansetron holds nausea, loperamide slows diarrhoea, but not if there is fever and blood, because then you want it out.
Burns
Cool running water for twenty minutes, as soon as possible. No ice, no butter, no cream. Cover loosely. Anything deep, large, or on the face, hands or joints is bad and needs more than you can give.
Breaks and sprains
Rest, immobilise, support. Splint a suspected fracture in the position you find it if there is no deformity cutting off blood. Elevate, and manage the pain and swelling.
The honest limit
You are not a hospital. Anything internal, anything spreading despite your best care, anything needing surgery, is beyond a field kit. Knowing the edge of what you can fix is itself a skill. Give the comfort you can, and be straight with yourself about the rest.
Charlie and Pishi
They are family, so they get a plan too.
Their stores
- Dry food keeps well, so store a buffer. Tins are heavy but the water content helps if water is tight.
- Store their water alongside yours. They dehydrate fast.
- Litter alternatives: sand, dry dirt, shredded paper, torn cardboard all do the job.
- Any regular medications, a buffer of those too.
Keeping them safe
Keep them inside. Outside they can be lost, hurt, taken, exposed to disease, or become prey. A current photo and some form of ID matters if they bolt in chaos. If you have to move, a secure carrier each is not optional: a frightened cat will run and not come back. A cat's contribution to your survival plan is morale, pest control, and a daily reminder that at least one member of the household is not worried. This is worth more than it sounds.
If it comes to the hardest thing
Nobody wants to write or read this part, but leaving it out helps no one. In a scenario with no vet and no way to get one, a cat can reach a point of suffering that cannot be treated or relieved. A catastrophic injury. An illness with no cure and no comfort left to give.
If that point comes, the kind thing, the loving thing, is to not let the suffering continue for your sake. First, be honest about whether it truly is that point, or whether there is still comfort and time to give. Pain relief if you have any. Warmth, quiet, dark, your voice, being held. Most of what a suffering animal wants at the end is to not be alone and not be afraid.
Choosing to end an animal's suffering when there is no other mercy left is not a failure. It is the last act of care you get to give them. If you ever face it, know that in advance, so grief does not tell you otherwise.