Who writes here
An ordinary household, not a gear retailer.
I am not a firefighter, a paramedic or a survival instructor. I am someone who read his government's household preparedness guide cover to cover, lives where winter storms knock the power out every year, and decided to do the work properly: read the official guidance, run the numbers, compare the spec sheets, and write down what I wish I had found. This site sells neither fear nor bunkers. It explains what an ordinary household can put together in a weekend, and in what order.
The name comes from that. A refuge is not a fortress: it is the place that holds while the outside sorts itself out. Seventy-two hours is the number FEMA and its European counterparts settled on, because that is roughly how long it takes for help to reach everyone when a lot of people need it at once. Everything on this site follows from those two ideas.
This edition is written for the United States, and it is not a translation of the French one. The sources are different, the units are different, the hazards are different, and the insurance rules are very different — flood damage in particular works nothing like it does in France. Pages are rewritten, not converted.
The rules I hold myself to
- 01
I start from official guidance, and I link to it
Ready.gov and FEMA, National Weather Service watches and warnings, CDC guidance, the American Red Cross: that is the base of every article, with the link. When I run a calculation — gallons, calories, watt-hours — I show the method so you can redo it for your own household.
- 02
I am not a physician, an electrician or a first responder
On medication, on a prescription you cannot interrupt, I point you to your doctor and your pharmacist. On wiring a generator into a panel, I point you to a licensed electrician and a transfer switch. On whether to evacuate or shelter in place, I point you to your local authorities. That is not caution for its own sake: on those three subjects it is the best advice I have.
- 03
No guns, no bunkers, no doomsday
A lot of what gets called prepping online sells fear and the gear that goes with it. This site prepares an ordinary household for what actually happens: a hurricane that takes the power out for three days, a flood, a heat wave, a boil-water notice, a long outage. Three days, two weeks, a month. Past that, it stops being household preparedness.
- 04
I say what is not worth buying
Some of what sells in survival stores does not do what it claims, and some of it works fine but is useless to a household in a city apartment. Saying so is the only thing that makes the rest of the site worth reading — including when the item in question sells very well.
- 05
How this site makes money
One way, with nothing hidden. Links to Amazon earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. That is disclosed on every page that carries them, as the FTC requires. There is no paid placement: no brand has ever paid to appear here, and no product is recommended because it pays better.
Spotted an error, or a piece of official guidance that has changed? Write to info@bs-media.fr. Corrections sent in by readers are applied and dated.