Scale: 1 Family | Timeframe: First month
Phase 1 is the one month where a family turns a 72-hour camp into an actual homestead, and Water is the one domain here that has to come before the rest — its own description states it plainly: locating, lifting, storing, and purifying water happens before anything else gets built. The other seven domains then split into what keeps the household alive day to day (Food, Energy, Medicine) and what keeps the site itself functional and growing (Shelter, Sanitation, Salvage, Clothing).
Water comes first because everything downstream needs it clean and reliable: a shaduf or ram pump to move it, and the tests that confirm a source is safe, have to be settled before the camp commits to a location. Shelter and Sanitation then turn that chosen site into something permanent. Shelter covers foundations, framing, roofing, and chimneys on the way to a weatherproof structure, while Sanitation keeps toilets, greywater, and soap-making on the opposite side of the line from that same drinking water, once there’s a fixed structure around it to manage.
Food, Energy, and Medicine sustain the household once the site itself is working. Food turns raw harvests into storable, calorie-dense staples — grinding grain, baking bread, fermenting, pressing oil, processing dairy. Energy covers the low-tech side of staying warm, fed, and lit once the grid is gone, from oil lamps to heat-retaining cookers. Medicine is the safety net underneath both: hygiene and infection control, herbal preparation, wound care, and the apothecary skills a family needs with no pharmacy to fall back on.
Salvage and Clothing are the two material-supply tracks that feed the rest without being load-bearing on their own. Salvage pulls lumber, metal, and hardware out of damaged buildings and stripped vehicles once nothing new can be bought or built from scratch — material the shelter and energy work both draw on. Clothing runs fiber from raw fleece and flax through spinning, weaving, and dyeing to a finished hand-sewn garment, one process at a time, on its own timeline separate from the rest of the month.
Site and Water
Securing a safe water source, then turning the camp around it into a permanent, sanitary structure.
Sustaining the Household
Turning harvests into stored food, keeping the household warm and lit, and the hygiene and medicine that keep everyone working.
Material Supply
The two tracks that feed raw material and finished goods into everything above, on their own separate timeline.