Survival: Away from Home

Survival: Away - Practical Preparedness for Families Caught Away from Home

What happens when borders close, flights vanish, and card readers go dark while you are three time zones from home?

Survival: Away is not about bunkers, cosplay, or playing soldier. It is a straight-talking field guide for short to medium disruptions when you are not at your base: a strange city, a distant state, or another country entirely. It shows you how to buy calm fast, move quietly through broken systems, reunite with your people, and either get home or stabilize without drama.

Inside you will discover:

• How to spot the exact moment a "minor delay" tips into a real crisis when you are traveling
• The three-tier distance model (drivable, across the country, in another country) and how to switch tiers without panic
• Hotel-dark setup that turns any room into a safe, five-minute-exit base
• The hub triangle method to rebook flights, rail, and bus from a chair while others stand in stalled lines
• Clean money tactics under stress: card first, quiet cash later, and a receipt trail that gets claims paid
• Paper over pixels: the document packet, point cards, and one-line scripts that win yeses at desks and windows
• Border and consulate playbooks for fees, questions, lost IDs, and emergency travel documents
• Reunification moves for kids and elders when schools, clinics, or caretakers wobble
• Language barrier tools that actually work: numbers, maps, receipts, and seven-word requests
• Situational awareness and personal security that keep you boring, fast, and safe in crowds and transit hubs

Each chapter blends stand-alone travel vignettes with clear breakdowns, "Did You Think About This" reflections, and drills you can actually run. The appendices go deeper with printables and pocket playbooks: ready scripts and consent examples (lawyer review required), rally ladders and route cards, offline tech setup, field health and food safety, money and receipts, personal security, beds and bases, movement across shaky systems, borders and consulates, and clean communication under language gaps.

Whether it is a system outage, weather cascade, labor stoppage, political flare-up, or the next event that strands families far from home, this book shows you how to:

• Anchor fast in a staffed place, then move at dawn
• Rebook across a failing system using options, not hope
• Keep kids and elders steady while you solve paper and routes
• Decide when to go home and when to stabilize
• Cross borders cleanly and get new documents moving if you lose the old ones

You do not need to memorize phrases or live on the road. You need a simple plan that works when the app goes gray, the counters jam, and the rules change mid-journey. This book gives you one.