Water Essentials
Learn from an Air Force SERE survival instructor and the founder of The Prepared. This course covers everything about a critical resource — from preparing in advance to surviving emergency situations.
9 Chapters | 23 Lessons | 7+ Hours of Video
Don’t mess around when it comes to water. You can only survive three days without it, and you’ll start to feel the crippling effects within hours.
Yet most people have no idea how to survive without depending on clean water from the tap. And your local supply is not as dependable as you might think — just ask the people in Flint, Michigan or Austin, Texas what it’s like to suddenly be told “don’t use the tap water!”
Natural disasters and droughts are becoming more common and severe. Your local infrastructure might collapse and cause a humanitarian crisis. We interviewed the Portland Water Bureau, for example, and they expect the Cascadia earthquake will leave over a million people without water for months.
Good news: After just a single day of learning in this course, you’ll be able to handle almost any situation imaginable.
Don’t be a victim — learn how to protect yourself, your family, and your community while reducing strain on the system when emergencies happen.
GET PEACE OF MIND
Prepare ahead of time
You can get your household ready for the vast majority of emergencies with a few simple and cheap steps — even if you’re on a tight budget or in a tiny apartment. You’ll learn about:
- Containers ranging from <1 gallon to >1,000 gallons
- Where to store water in & around your home
- Rain catchment systems
- When to use preservation chemicals, and how much
- How much to store & how often to rotate
- What kinds of purifying products to buy
- Using the same filters in daily life for healthier water
THRIVE WHEN OTHERS FAIL
Survive the emergency
You’ll be able to handle common emergencies just by using what you’ve stored ahead of time. But if things are serious, you might need to find more water, make it safe to drink, and deal with the chaos. You’ll be able to:
- Use every major kind of water treatment product
- Make your own filters & purifiers from random stuff
- Know where to look for water in any climate or environment
- Improvise ways to catch rain, dew, & humidity
- Conserve precious water when cooking & cleaning
- Notice & treat dehydration without professional help
Meet Your Instructors
Jessie Krebs was an Air Force SERE instructor (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) that taught aircrews how to survive if they went down behind enemy lines. Now she teaches civilians through her Colorado-based school and consults for a variety of wilderness survival TV shows. Jessie’s experienced with Wilderness Therapy and particularly likes teaching women and other underrepresented groups.
John Ramey is the founder and chief editor of The Prepared. He’s credited as the leader of the “modern prepper movement”, with over a decade of teaching and advocacy. John previously served as an advisor to the White House, including co-founding the Defense Innovation Unit for the DOD, and has worked in over 30 countries on related issues like climate change and social unrest. John also worked as a Silicon Valley innovator and investor.
Course Content
FAQ
- Who’s this for?
- Total head-in-the-sand beginners, weekend warriors, all the way through experienced preppers advancing their skills. For example, the knife sharpening course isn’t going to make you a professional bladesmith, but it’ll get you close!
- But I’m not a “prepper”
- Are you a responsible adult? Gone are the days when most preppers fit into stereotypes. All that matters is you’re aware enough to know life can be hard and smart enough to do something about it. You’ll join a diverse community of kind, like-minded people.
- Are there politics, conspiracies, preaching, etc?
- None. There are plenty of other places for that. This community prefers to keep that stuff separate.
- Can I talk to the teachers?
- Yep, either them or someone like them. There are discussion areas on each topic, or you can email privately.
- Can I get my money back?
- Sure! If you’re not happy, just let us know within a month and you’ll get a full refund.
- How long do I have access? What about updates?
- Lifetime access, including free, automatic upgrades for anything we add or change in the future to that course.
- What emergencies do you cover?
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Modern, sane prepping means focusing first on things that are more likely than a doomsday zombie fantasy… fun as those might be 😉
Prepping is about anything that could majorly disrupt your life, which might be as simple as a car accident or sudden job loss. Natural disasters are another biggie, as are things like pandemics, economic crashes, civil unrest, and worse. Here’s more.
These courses are meant to apply to normal life as much as possible, but they also explain what to do in the really bad scenarios.
- What are the courses like?
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No boring slideshows with someone talking into a cheap webcam! Many scenes are shot on location so you can see things ‘for real’. Some classes are more like an in-person course, where it feels like your teacher is talking to a small room of students to explain concepts before getting into demonstrations.
Courses are broken into lessons (eg. “Dehydration”) and their topics (eg. “Symptoms” or “Treatment”). You move through at your own pace and in whatever order you want. Most topics have a main video with additional pictures and text beneath.
- How much / what will I learn?
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Prepping can be overwhelming in general — and you shouldn’t have to dive into the deep end of a topic just to learn the basics. We focus on Pareto Preparedness, based on the 80-20 “Pareto rule,” so you get the right info you need and none of what you don’t. That way you can get back to enjoying real life … just a lot smarter!
Once you finish a course, you’ll know enough to get you through the vast majority of emergency scenarios you’ll face and you will be better prepared than 99% of people around you.
- But Youtube is free?
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How often have you wasted hours browsing through videos to not really learn anything or get a clear answer you’d trust with your life? The old adage “you get what you pay for” is definitely true in prepping.
You’d be shocked at how much dangerously-wrong “advice” is taught online. Skip the rambling amateurs, extremist hermits, and ineffective lessons that don’t actually make you safer.
Even if you can find good free needles in that massive haystack, it will take days of hunting just to come close to these high-quality, professionally-taught courses — and you won’t get the ‘whole package’ of a structured, memorable flow built specifically for modern preppers.
- Online vs. in-person lessons
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We won’t offer an online courses unless we think it’s just as good as an equivalent in-person weekend course. Some are even better than a week-long 24/7 course.
In-person learning is great, especially for getting dynamic feedback as you practice your skills. And for hanging out with other people. Here’s a list of local training centers. Many of our video instructors also offer in-person lessons. But physical classes are often multiple times more expensive than these online courses, require you to travel, and you can’t go at your own pace.
You might want to take an online course so you can warm up at your own pace before your limited and expensive in-person time. Maybe you want to try the cheaper online version first before deciding if you want to go to a more advanced physical course. Or maybe you’ve taken an in-person course and want the digital version as a refresher you can go back to over the years.
Testimonials & Press
Don’t just take our word for it
“The Prepared runs more in the scouting-for-adults vein rather than towards stockpiling for the zombie apocalypse.”
“The Prepared offer[s] useful, non-alarmist advice on disaster preparedness.”
Risk Free
Lifetime Access & Upgrades
Whether you’re totally new or just want a refresher, we’re confident you’ll be a successful student.
