Before Day Zero
A free calculator that tells a household how long it would last without water, power or payments — and a county-level index that says how likely that is in the next 90 days.
What was broken
Preparedness content sells fear or hands out checklists, and neither tells a household where it actually stands. People buy a case of water, feel briefly better, and still have no idea whether that's two days of coverage or ten, or whether the risk in their county is unusual or ordinary. The market also runs on subscriptions and push alerts — every incentive pushes toward alarm rather than a number a person can act on once and revisit.
How we built it
The entry point is a calculator, not a signup. Eleven questions about people, water, food, power and prescriptions produce one figure — days of supply — plus the shortest path to a bigger one. No account, nothing stored.
The Day Zero Index answers the other half: the modelled chance of a 72-hour disruption to water, power or payments in a given county within 90 days. Built on public data, with every input and weight published, and a track record on the page. It's a forecast, not a prediction, and it moves a protocol target rather than firing an alert.
The account layer turns a snapshot into a tracked figure: protocols with dated targets, threat briefs at five levels, a go bag with expiry tracking, circles for households on the same street, certifications for completed drills, and a weekly Dispatches briefing.
Where it is today
Live at beforedayzero.com. The index model covers all 3,143 US counties, with sample figures published for eight states. iOS is shipped; Android and Amazon Appstore are on a waitlist.