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Prepped & Ready Weekly, Issue #28
The antiseptic rule most first aid kits get wrong, the 4 hour fridge clock, and 7 dinners that need no stove
Logan Pierce
November 12, 2026
In partnership with
Morning. 6 new guides went up on the site since Monday, and they cover a wider spread than usual: what actually belongs in a wound care kit, what to eat when the stove is dead, and how to plan a second way out of your own house. None of it needs a big purchase or a free weekend. Most of it is a 10 minute check of something you already own.
3 quick things this week
Keep the peroxide away from open cuts. The American College of Surgeons says hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol and iodine are more likely to damage tissue than help it heal. Mild soap and water is the answer.
An unopened refrigerator holds about 4 hours. That's the FDA figure for a power outage. A full freezer holds roughly 48 hours, a half full one about 24.
Every room needs 2 ways out. The American Red Cross asks for 2 escape routes from every room of the house, and a household that can get outside in under 2 minutes.
This week
Thanksgiving is 2 weeks out, which means your refrigerator and freezer are about to be the fullest they will be all year. That's also the stretch when the first real winter storms start taking down power lines. Worth 5 minutes this weekend: find the flashlights, confirm the freezer is actually sitting at 0 degrees F, and skim the keep or toss list in the no-cook piece below. A packed freezer holds its cold about twice as long as a half empty one, so a full house is working in your favor for once.
Wound Care Supplies: The Complete List for a Home Kit
Most first aid kits get built once and then sit in a closet until the day somebody needs one. That's usually the day you find out it holds 30 of one bandage size and none of the size you actually want.
The American Red Cross publishes exact counts for a family of four, down to how many 3 by 3 gauze pads and how many yards of cloth tape. We put the full list in one place, so you can audit what is in your closet in about 10 minutes and write a short shopping list for the gaps.
The part worth reading twice is the timing. There is a published window for how long after a cut you can still get it closed, and a 5 year and 10 year rule for tetanus that decides whether a scrape is a shrug or a phone call. Both are easy numbers to carry, and surprisingly few of us know them.
No-Cook Meals for Power Outages: 7 Recipes That Need No Heat
When the power goes, a clock starts on the most expensive food in the house. The refrigerator gives you roughly 4 hours with the door shut, which sounds generous until you count how many times a day your household opens that door out of pure habit.
This one is built around eating in the right order: what to use first, what can wait, and what University of Illinois Extension actually recommends as a no-heat menu rather than a sad pile of crackers. 7 meals, no stove, no camp burner.
It also answers the question most of us get wrong once the lights come back. A package that looks fine and smells fine proves nothing, and the FDA has one specific test for whether thawed food goes back in the freezer or into the trash.
Ever wonder how they afford that? Check the receipts.
Admit it. You’ve wondered, how much money do they make?
Money is our last true taboo. We talk about therapy and bad dates, but guard our bank statements like classified files.
The podcast What We Spend blows the safe wide open.
In every episode, real people share their actual, unedited transaction histories. You'll hear about the secret credit card debt, the reckless impulse buys, and the hidden sacrifices nobody talks about at brunch.
It’s revealing, intimate, and strangely validating to finally hear the truth behind other people’s bank accounts.
Cheap Emergency Meal Recipes: 7 Dinners From a Shelf-Stable Pantry
Shelf-stable doesn't have to mean grim. These are 7 dinners built from cans and dry goods you can pick up on any ordinary grocery run, and 3 of them never touch a stove at all.
Every number in it comes from USDA, FEMA or a university extension service, which matters more than it sounds. Canned food is already cooked and safe to eat cold, but it turns perishable the moment the lid comes off, and there is a hard limit on how long the leftovers can sit on the counter.
There is also one ingredient in the dry goods aisle that needs a step most slow cooker recipes skip entirely. Utah State University Extension is blunt about why, and it's the kind of thing you want to know before a long simmer rather than after.
Alternative Escape Routes: How to Plan a Second Way Out Before You Need It
Two different agencies answer this question at two very different scales, and both land on the same plain idea: never have only one way out.
At the house scale that means 2 exits from every bedroom, which for most bedrooms means the window, and a household that can be standing outside in under 2 minutes. At the regional scale it means knowing your evacuation zone by your real street address instead of a guess, and picking several destinations in different directions so one closed highway does not end the whole plan.
The piece walks through how to look up your own zone, what the fuel rule is before you ever need to leave, and the one road condition that quietly cancels a route you were counting on.
Rainwater Collection System Parts: The Components That Decide If It Works
Most rain barrel setups fail at the cheap end. The tank is the part everybody shops for, and the parts that decide whether the system works are a screen, a diverter and an overflow that together cost less than dinner out.
One number sizes the whole thing: how many gallons an inch of rain drops on a square foot of roof. Once you have it you can work out what your own roof would really yield in a wet month, and how much of that you lose before it ever reaches the tank.
It also settles the mesh question, which is really the mosquito question, and the roof question, which is really the drinking water question.
Barn Flooring Materials: How to Choose for Livestock Comfort and Drainage
If you keep animals, this one is for you. If you don't, skip it with a clear conscience and we will see you next issue.
The trouble with most barn floor advice is that it quietly blends horse specs and dairy specs into one set of numbers, and they're not the same numbers. Slope, thickness, psi, groove spacing: each has a published figure, and each figure belongs to a particular animal.
We separated them and labeled every one, including the common concrete finish that looks professional and turns a stall floor into a skating rink.
No stove, no problem. This is what a quiet evening looks like when the shelf was ready before the lights went out.
Worth a watch
Dr. Joseph Alton and Amy Alton run Doom and Bloom, one of the few genuinely credentialed voices in preparedness medicine. Their walkthrough of skin prep and draping for wound closure pairs well with the supply list above, and it's a good reminder that technique matters just as much as what is in the kit: Wound Closure: Skin Prep and Draping.
Before you go
That's Issue 28. If something in here saved you a trip to the store or settled a question you had been carrying around, forward it to one person who would use it. That's still the best way this thing grows.
And if somebody passed this to you, you can get the next one yourself right here: subscribe to Prepped and Ready.
Stay ready,
Logan