Southern Missouri · 2026 Edition

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Field Manual · No. 1

The Prepper’s Survival CodexField Manual

The cheap, old-school plan that keeps my family ready for whatever comes.

Get your family ready for the blackout, the storm, the empty shelves and the long collapse, for about $20 a payday, using old-school methods that have kept families fed, warm and safe for generations. Now in one 731-page illustrated field manual. Most families earn the $37 back the first time the power goes out, just from keeping the freezer shut and eating the food in the right order.

See the Survival Codex Read the math
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Mike Dawson at his kitchen table at night, beside a lit camp lantern
Not for living in a bunker. For keeping your family safe and your money in your pocket. Mike Dawson · Southern Missouri

The Codex

One book. Fifteen emergencies. Ready on $20 a payday.

Being ready doesn’t take a bunker or a $5,000 generator. It takes the right cheap moves, in the right order. Forty-seven chapters and fifteen step-by-step playbooks, each with what to buy, what it costs and what to do first, so your family stays safe, warm and fed while the neighbors are still in line at the store. Start this weekend with a $25 CO alarm and the 40 gallons of clean water already sitting in your water heater.

The cover of The Prepper’s Survival Codex by Mike Dawson

Illustrated field manual · 731 pages · 2026 edition

The complete plan to get your family through any emergency, for about $20 a payday.

The two-week pantry from a regular grocery store. The 40 gallons of water hiding in your water heater. The one warm room. The $25 alarm that stops the outage killer. The bucket toilet that works for weeks with no running water. The cash drawer for the day the cards quit. The 14-day home kit, built one bin a month. Fifteen playbooks for the day it hits, from a power outage to a nuclear accident. Most families earn the $37 back the first time the lights go out.

$37One payment · no subscription

What you get for $37:

  • The Prepper’s Survival Codex: the 731-page illustrated field manual. 47 chapters, 15 emergency playbooks, 81 illustrations, store-by-store buying lists.

    $47

  • Bonus 1 · The Large-Print Playbooks: the Start Here plan and all 15 playbooks in big 16-point type, to print and keep by the door.

    $19

  • Bonus 2 · The Field Pack: 8 field cards, 8 checklists, 7 worksheets and the yearly calendar, one per sheet, to print and post.

    $14

Total value$80

You pay today$37

Get the Survival Codex · $37

Instant download · Pay once · Yours forever

The Math

What being caught unready costs. And what you can stop paying.

Think about the last storm that took the power for days. On the left is what it can cost a family that wasn’t ready, plus what the fear industry sells them afterward. On the right is the same family, ready the Codex way.

The expensive way One bad storm

  • Water damage from a burst pipe (average claim)$15,400
  • Whole-house standby generator, installed$5,000+
  • One ambulance ride (average bill)$1,400
  • Hotel for 3 nights while the house is cold$482
  • A freeze-dried “survival” food bucket$400
  • Fridge and freezer food thrown out$100+

Total$22,782+

Triple-I average water-damage claim, 2019-2023 · HomeAdvisor and PowerOutage.us install costs, 2025 · MedPAC ambulance base rate · CoStar average hotel rate, 2025 · consumer surveys on spoiled food

The Codex way One bad storm

  • Main shut off, pipes drained, photos for the insurer (Ch. 15)$0
  • Hot-water bottles and one warm room (Ch. 15)$20
  • Stick-on night lights for the dark hallway (Ch. 37)$15
  • Staying home, warm and safe (Playbook 2)$0
  • The payday plan: CO alarm, water, headlamps, food, toilet kit, radio (Ch. 4)$175
  • Freezer kept shut, the fridge eaten first (Playbook 1)$0

Total~$210

Every line has a chapter in the Codex, with the steps and the shopping list.

The gap: about $22,500.

It depends on where you live, what hits and how much of the plan you put in place. And the biggest saving doesn’t fit in a table: nobody in your house gets hurt.

What’s Inside

Exactly what you get for $37.

Forty-seven chapters in thirteen parts, fifteen step-by-step playbooks, and a toolkit of cards, checklists and worksheets. Each chapter gives you plain words, what to buy and what it costs, what to do first, and an honest note on what works and what doesn’t. Every chapter ends with a short Do This Now list, and at least two things on it cost nothing. Start with what fits your house and your budget. You don’t have to do all of it.

The truth about disasters · 4 chapters

Know what really hurts families, and fix that first, cheap.

  1. The $25 alarm missing from basements full of ammunition
  2. Why three days of supplies was never the real number
  3. Your family plan on one sheet that works when every phone is dead
  4. Two weeks of supplies on a fixed income, $20 a payday
  5. Why “survival” buckets can hide a fraction of the food you need

Water · 3 chapters

Clean water for two weeks, even when the taps die.

  1. The 40-plus gallons already hiding in your house
  2. The $30 tub liner that holds up to 100 gallons
  3. The $10-15 bag of pool shock that treats nearly 13,000 gallons
  4. The under-a-penny step your water filter is missing
  5. One inch of rain on your roof: hundreds of gallons

Food · 6 chapters

Two weeks of real food from a regular grocery store.

  1. One jar of peanut butter holds more calories than 24 cans of green beans
  2. The $10 thermometer that can save hundreds of dollars of food
  3. Sealed rice that keeps 30 years, bought for a few dollars a pound
  4. The one can you always throw out, whatever its date says
  5. Finish supper in a picnic cooler, on no fuel at all
  6. Fridge, then freezer, then pantry: days of meals already paid for

The house without the grid · 5 chapters

Heat, light and cool air when the power quits.

  1. Why your CO alarm may die the moment the power does
  2. One warm room, and when a 62-degree room turns dangerous
  3. A heated blanket on a tenth of a space heater’s power
  4. The few-dollar bedsheet trick that cools a hot room
  5. The $20 meter that tells you what power station you really need
  6. The wiring shortcut that can kill a lineman down the road

Health · 5 chapters

First aid and medicine when no ambulance is coming.

  1. The $1 bar of soap that cuts the risk of diarrhea nearly in half
  2. A $30 bucket toilet that works for weeks with no running water
  3. The look-alike tourniquets that failed the test, and what a real one costs
  4. Two weeks of every daily medicine, the legal way
  5. Most insulin keeps up to 28 days without a fridge, and the clay-pot cooler

Security · 5 chapters

Make yours the house burglars and looters skip.

  1. What burglars told researchers about the houses they pass by
  2. Fix a weak door for a few dollars and an afternoon
  3. A $25 motion light over your darkest door
  4. Your address is for sale, and how to take it off the shelf
  5. The five hiding places burglars check first
  6. Defending your home, and what the law really allows

Together · 2 chapters

Your street is your first rescue squad.

  1. Why the first help in a disaster lives next door
  2. The free class that teaches you to stop serious bleeding in an hour
  3. Sharing, trading and trust when the stores are closed

The stockpile · 4 chapters

Stock up before the shelves empty, at everyday prices.

  1. Why the first shelves to go bare hold cheap, boring things
  2. The one word on a bucket that raises its price
  3. Free food-safe buckets from the bakery counter
  4. Buy each season’s gear the week the season ends
  5. Two weeks of cash, in bills a store can break

Kits · 5 chapters

The 14-day kit, the go-bag and the car kit, without the big bill.

  1. The 14-day home kit, one bin a month, on a fixed income
  2. The $35 car kit for the night you’re stuck on the highway
  3. Prepping after 60, or on your own
  4. Babies, kids and pets, and the shortcut that can hospitalize a baby
  5. The $20 can rack that keeps your pantry fresh by itself

Stay or go · 2 chapters

Know when to stay put, and when to run.

  1. Why home is usually the right call, until the hour it isn’t
  2. The evacuation where most of the deaths came from leaving
  3. The free phone video your insurer will want

Skills · 2 chapters

Old skills that beat the gadget aisle.

  1. A $10 fire starter that still sparks after a dunk in the creek
  2. The cotton-ball trick that lights damp kindling
  3. The shutoffs everyone should know, each one an afternoon’s practice
  4. The one valve you should never turn back on yourself

When it hits · 2 chapters

The long blackout, and war at home.

  1. The power is only the first thing to go: what goes next
  2. A free four-hour blackout drill that shows you what stops
  3. The blackout habit that cost Ukrainian families next to nothing
  4. The first thing rationed after Pearl Harbor wasn’t food

After · 2 chapters

Get your money and your life back.

  1. The second insurance check many families never ask for
  2. How a 2% wind deductible becomes $6,000 out of pocket
  3. Up to $500,000 in disaster loans, no payments the first year
  4. What got families through when it didn’t come back

15 emergency playbooks

Ready for everything, from a blackout to the day it all comes down.

  1. Power outage
  2. Winter storm and deep freeze
  3. Heat wave
  4. Hurricane
  5. Flood
  6. Wildfire
  7. Tornado
  8. Earthquake
  9. Pandemic
  10. Riots and unrest
  11. Job loss and money crisis
  12. Bank holiday and cyberattack on the grid
  13. EMP
  14. Nuclear: plant accident or attack
  15. Chemical spill and boil-water notice
Mike Dawson in a camo cap and olive T-shirt, arms crossed, in front of shelves of stored water jugs, food buckets and supply bins

About the Author

Mike Dawson.

I spent my boyhood summers on my grandparents’ farm in the Ozarks. My grandmother lived through the Depression. She canned everything and kept a bacon-grease can by the stove. My grandfather heated with wood and never threw away a nail. They never called it prepping. They just never got caught short.

Then twenty years in the Army, most of it as a supply sergeant, keeping soldiers fed, watered, warm and equipped. Then seventeen years on a county school district’s maintenance crew, keeping the boilers and generators running and the high-school gym open as the town’s storm shelter. These days I teach it all on YouTube, where 1,500,000+ viewers have watched.

This Codex is all of it, organized. 731 pages, in the order you should do it, with what to buy and what it costs. Read it once, do the cheap things first, and stay ready for good.

This isn’t a book about bunkers and the end of the world. It’s a book about keeping your family fed, warm and safe, and your money in your pocket, when things go wrong.

Watch the channel

Order the Codex

$37 once. No subscription. Yours forever.

Instant download the minute you pay. Read it on any phone, tablet or computer. Print it at the kitchen table if you want. 7-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If it’s not for you, email me and you get your $37 back.

The cover of The Prepper’s Survival Codex by Mike Dawson

Illustrated field manual · 731 pages · 2026 edition

The Prepper’s Survival Codex

Forty-seven chapters and fifteen emergency playbooks that keep your family fed, warm, healthy and safe through any emergency, with the shopping lists, the prices and the step-by-step. Do the cheap things first. Skip what doesn’t fit your house.

$37One payment · no subscription

What you get for $37:

  • The Prepper’s Survival Codex: the 731-page illustrated field manual

    $47

  • Bonus 1 · The Large-Print Playbooks: every emergency plan in big type

    $19

  • Bonus 2 · The Field Pack: cards, checklists and worksheets to print

    $14

Total value$80

You pay today$37

Get the Survival Codex · $37

Secure checkout · Pay once · Yours forever

  • Secure checkout
  • All major cards
  • Instant PDF download
  • 7-day refund

FAQ

Questions buyers ask before they click.

Will this work where I live?

Yes. The Codex is written for ordinary American homes: ice storms up north, hurricanes on the coast, tornado alley, wildfire country and the hot Southwest. The fifteen playbooks take each emergency on its own, and the cheap moves, like the water, the food, the CO alarm and the one warm room, work the same everywhere. City apartment or farmhouse on a well, there’s a version for you.

I’m not handy, and I’m not young. Is this still for me?

That’s who I wrote it for. Plain words, short chapters, and nothing that needs a workshop. The first weekend’s moves cost nothing and none takes more than an afternoon. There’s a whole chapter on prepping after 60 or on your own, and the Large-Print Playbooks put every emergency plan in big 16-point type.

I’m on a tight budget. Can I afford to prep?

Yes, and that’s the point of the book. About $20 a payday for four months gets a household of one or two close to two weeks of supplies, at everyday grocery prices. No $400 buckets, no bunker. Every chapter ends with a Do This Now list, and at least two things on it cost nothing.

I rent, or live in an apartment. Can I still use this?

Yes. Most of the plan fits in a closet: the water, the pantry, the CO alarm, the go-bag, the cash and the family plan on one page. Where an apartment changes things, like no generator and no grill, the book says so and gives you the swap.

Is this one of those doomsday books?

No. It starts with what actually happens to most families: the power outage, the winter storm, the boil-water notice. Then it goes all the way: the long blackout, a money crisis, a cyberattack on the grid, an EMP, a nuclear accident and war at home. Calm, plain and practical. No fear, no politics.

What format is it? Can I print it?

It’s a PDF. Download it the minute you pay and read it on any phone, tablet or computer, or print it. The two bonuses are print-ready, one sheet per page. Want to look inside first? Read Chapter 14 free.

What if it’s not for me?

Then email me within 7 days and you get your $37 back. No questions asked.

Last Call

Being ready costs $20 a payday. Being caught unready costs thousands.

$37 once. Instant download. 7-day money-back guarantee. Most families earn the $37 back the first time the power goes out. 731 pages, 15 emergency playbooks, two print-ready bonuses.

Get the Survival Codex · $37

Earn the $37 back the first time the lights go out.

The Codex starts with the cheap moves that save the most: the freezer rule, the one warm room, the $25 alarm. $37 once, instant download, 7-day refund.

Get the Survival Codex · $37