Author of How to Prep When You’re Broke and Bloom Where You’re Planted online course
There is something incredibly powerful about advance knowledge of an event. If you have an early warning, you can take important preparedness and safety steps before those around you even know there’s an issue. You have a better chance of keeping your loved ones safe. You won’t drive right into an emergency while it’s happening.
Selco has talked about missing his window to leave the city when the SHTF occurred. If he and his family had realized at the time how serious the situation was, his story would be a whole lot different.
There are a few ways to set up your own advance warning system about local and world events using the technology that is practically omnipresent in our modern society.
News alerts
There are all sorts of places where you can sign up for local news alerts. If you are a Google user, you can use Google News set to your location. I used this all over the world while traveling and managed to avoid a number of heated protests and transportation glitches.
There are apps like Google News, AP News, and Fox News that will notify you when something important is going on. The problem I’ve found with these is that there are too many notifications. I can’t handle my phone constantly pinging at me to let me know about something that isn’t actually that important to my survival. You can dabble with your settings but I ended up removing all that stuff from my device.
Local alerts
When I lived in California, there were numerous natural disasters we faced, such as wildfires, landslides, and other crazy events.
I signed up with both my local sheriff’s department and CalFire to receive direct alerts to my phone warning me about road closures, evacuation notices, and changes in the fire. This helped me to make my decisions on when to bug out and often got me on the road ahead of others. It aided me in navigating around closed roads and was incredibly valuable.
Check your local municipal websites to see if your area has something similar.
Checking the news
You can also bookmark some trusted websites with local news, national news, and world news. I have a huge list of these and I spend a while each morning and evening looking at them and reading pertinent information.
The downside is that unless you are looking for it, you won’t get this information in a timely fashion. While I don’t recommend being “on” 24/7, there are some things that I want to know immediately.
I’ve discussed previously the dangers of spending too much time sucked into the news. I set a time limit and I have specific times of day that I check the news.
Alerts USA
The secret weapon that I’ve used for years is a service called Alerts USA. This is a service that sends text message alerts directly to your phone when an event of national significance occurs. You get Homeland Security threat and incident notifications straight to your device. (Obviously, these are the unclassified warnings.) I have found this to be completely unbiased and factual. Here are some alerts I received this weekend.
(These are the screenshots from my phone.)
I generally know something is happening long before the news is reporting on it. I was actually watching a live stream when President Trump was shot in Pennsylvania and within minutes I had a notification to my phone – this was long before any news source was providing information. I know because I was looking and trying to find out what had happened and how seriously he’d been injured.
Some of the notifications provided by Alerts USA are terror attacks, warnings and advisories, mass shooting incidents, travel alerts and embassy messages for major destinations, threats to transportation and critical infrastructure, emergency declarations at nuclear power stations, tsunami warnings, and much more. I’ve used this service all over the world to warn me of areas from which I need to steer clear.
I’ve also been able to warn loved ones about events happening in their areas. When my daughter had a doctor’s appointment in Vancouver, I was recently able to direct her around an active event occurring in the city.
You can subscribe here for $99 a year. It is one of the most worthwhile subscriptions that I have, and I’m happy to continue paying for it year after year.
I can also vouch for their customer service. Over the years, I have changed phone numbers with ease, and I had one small issue with notifications. The assistance was prompt, courteous, and efficient. This is an American company with an American managing any issues you may encounter.
Of course, if you don’t have a smartphone, this is not an option that will work for you, though they do follow up with an email. If it’s not in the budget, other options listed here can help. There’s no pressure from me for you to subscribe – I just wanted to share something that has worked for me.
With events in the world speeding up, I didn’t want to keep such a valuable resource to myself.
What about you?
How do you keep up with current events and breaking news? How do you get your most important alerts? Have you ever used any of the suggestions in this article?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites. 1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2) The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.
Daisy is the best-selling author of 5 traditionally published books, 12 self-published books, and runs a small digital publishing company with PDF guides, printables, and courses at SelfRelianceand Survival.com You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Gab, MeWe, Parler, Instagram, and Twitter.
good info, what are some other alerts you trust, for free, since lots cant afford any extras at present time….great work Daisy, stay well and safe. love you keep us posted!!!
It is possible to get a text-message “phone number” for your computer. That would allow services such as you describe. I haven’t done it yet, however.
When I lived in Los Angeles; and the app works in other large U.S. cities as well; I found the freeway traffic app SigAlert very useful. It’s free.
It will let you know what is going on with freeway traffic, telling you if it’s an accident, road construction, and perhaps a life-saving one, a protest.
I used it to route around troubled areas, and I would call friends that I knew commuted on those roads if a dangerous situation was developing.
I signed up for AlertsUSA a few years ago and can agree that it’s quite useful. I often know things before anyone else does. And they do not inundate you with unnecessary junk!
This account is based on memory alone.
Mobile home residents in Portage, Michigan, were able to get to safety during the tornado on May 8, 2024 due to an early warning system. Many homes were destroyed or damaged but there were no deaths.
Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe ist ne feine Sache. Das ihr das ansprecht ist in Ordnung! Nur sie nutzt mir nichts wenn die Staatsmacht selbst keine Hilfestellung leistet außer für ihre Eliten Schutzbunker zu bauen. Mich auf eine bevorstehende Katastrophe vorzubereiten ohne mich selbst schützen zu können, ist ein schier unmögliches Unterfangen. Und das gilt für normale Menschen. Was machen Alte, Behinderte, Kranke und Kinder? Wenn ich eine Warnung auf dem Handy oder per Sirene bekomme, kann ich mich nur in einen Keller oder auf die Straße begeben und anderswo versuchen Schutz zu bekommen. Wenn auf den schutzsuchenden Keller ein Haus steht und getroffen wird, ist es mein Grab. Auf der Straße reicht schon ein Steinschlag. Und in beiden Fällen hat meine Vorsorge nichts genutzt.
Early warning or any kind of warning is one of the points I try to make in Dear Jessica. The lack there of after “the power went out,” how we would not have even a heads up for a polar vortex, a heat dome, duration of either, how long a drought would last, flash flooding conditions, tornado conditions. Some of the most devastating hurricanes occurred before modern weather forecasts, and satellites in terms of fatalities. Now, we know a full week, perhaps longer when one has formed, its strength, track it’s path and have computer models to predict it’s path giving millions of people time to evacuate.
We have the radio on for a local station pretty much all day. I keep NOAA tab open from first thing in the morning.
Funny, I just read that Chevron is pulling workers of their oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, as NOAA reports Tropical Storm Francine, is expected to organize and become a hurricane by Tuesday and make landfall on Wednesday long the LA coast.
Better fill your gas cans now! We just had a strike at the Marathon refinery in Detroit, so the prices have jumped up some. Almost 5o cents in Flint, although in Ann Arbor, the Sam’s club didn’t speculatively raise their prices like some other stations did.
google translation of Jürgen Karsten comments
Helping people to help themselves is a great thing. It’s fine that you mention it! But it’s no use to me if the state itself doesn’t offer any help other than building protective bunkers for its elites. Preparing for an impending disaster without being able to protect myself is an almost impossible undertaking. And that applies to normal people. What do the elderly, the disabled, the sick and children do? If I get a warning on my cell phone or by a siren, all I can do is go into a basement or onto the street and try to find shelter somewhere else. If there’s a house on top of the basement I’m looking for shelter in and it gets hit, it’s my grave. On the street, even a rockfall is enough. And in both cases, my precautions were of no use.