Frequently Asked Questions

FEMA provides excellent general guidelines, but they are not personalized to your specific situation. BePreparedSolutions.co takes FEMA’s best practices and combines them with your location, family size, housing type, and local risks to create a customized plan. Learn more in our free preparedness guides.

Not at all. BePreparedSolutions.co is built for everyday families who want to be responsibly prepared, and experienced preppers are welcome too. Our plans focus on practical, realistic preparedness that fits into normal life. Think of it as having a fire extinguisher and smoke detector: smart preparation, not fear.

Not at all, because our questionnaire uses plain language and guides you through every step. If you can fill out an online form, you can create your emergency plan, and no preparedness experience is required.

Your BeAware report includes a detailed intelligence assessment for your specific address: active threats, utility outage status, FEMA IPAWS alerts, a seasonal risk calendar, and monitoring thresholds calibrated to your location.

We monitor 6 live alert categories around the clock: FEMA IPAWS emergency alerts, National Weather Service watches and warnings, outage feeds from the utilities we cover, wildfire perimeters, internet and cloud outages, and air and water conditions. Counting your address report, BeAware draws on 20+ authoritative data sources. Federal and weather alerts are checked every two minutes.

You'll receive alerts when conditions change at or near your address — new outages, FEMA alerts, or significant weather events. Frequency depends on real-world conditions. During calm periods you may receive nothing; during active events you'll get timely updates.

County alerts cover broad regions and only fire for the most severe events. BeAware matches each alert to your address using the official area it covers, and monitors a much wider range of conditions including utility outages, infrastructure status, and lower-severity events that county systems ignore.

Our AI analyzes real-time data from NOAA, FEMA, USGS, and local emergency management agencies to understand the specific risks in your area—earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, etc. Explore our emergency-specific guides to learn about local risks in your region.

Update your address in your account settings and your BeAware monitoring will immediately recalibrate to your new location. All thresholds, risk profiles, and alerts adjust automatically.

FEMA checklists are generic — one-size-fits-all guides for the general public. BeReady builds a plan around your household, your location, your concerns, and your budget. It's the difference between a template and a plan that's actually yours.

Answer a short set of questions about your household and location. Your AI-generated plan then takes up to 6 minutes to build. You can start reviewing recommendations and taking action as soon as it's ready.

Our AI covers a wide range of emergency scenarios including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, winter storms, power outages, and more. Your plan focuses on the specific threats most relevant to your location and situation.

You’ll get a step-by-step action plan broken into manageable tasks you can complete at your own pace. Track your progress on your dashboard, access gear recommendations, and update your plan as your family’s situation changes. Browse our skills and drills library for ongoing learning.

Our plans adapt to your living situation. We provide renters-friendly recommendations that don’t require permanent modifications and focus on portable, apartment-appropriate gear. You’ll also get evacuation strategies specific to multi-unit housing and storage solutions that work in limited space. Check out our guides for renters and apartments for space-saving storage solutions.

Update your plan anytime your situation changes — new family members, a move, different concerns. Your plan regenerates based on your updated information so it always reflects your current reality.

Available for BeReady and Combo members, this feature generates AI-powered evacuation plans with personalized routes based on your specific scenarios and location. You get multiple route options with waypoints, shelter locations, and timing recommendations tailored to your household.

We curate every kit ourselves — selecting widely available products for their specifications, reviews, and real-world fit for a specific scenario, with hands-on experience of many of the items. These aren't random Amazon kits. We don't independently lab-test every product, so we can't warrant them, but we won't include gear we wouldn't rely on ourselves — always check that an item suits your situation and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

The kit images are AI-generated, representative illustrations — they show what a kit is for and the kind of items it includes, not photographs of the exact brands you'll receive. We do this on purpose: because we curate our kits continuously, swapping in the best-fitting products as price, availability, and reviews change, illustrating a kit lets us keep improving it without leaving you looking at a stale photo. You'll always see the specific products in your kit, by name, before you check out.

If an item in your kit needs a size, you'll be able to select it — such as gloves or a rain poncho. Some kits allow you to configure it for a length of time and add additional people to it.

That's no problem: choose "Build Your Own Kit" and work through the prompts to arrive at exactly what you need, with no duplicates.

Your BeReady plan recommends kits based on your household, location, and concerns, or you can browse by category and choose what fits.

We do not add a markup to Amazon's price for BeEquipped kits, as a standing policy. As an Amazon Associate we may earn a commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. That means there is no separate Combo discount to give. Combo members still get BeAware + BeReady together for one price, plus discounts on BeAdvised consulting.

Returns are handled by Amazon under their standard return policy, since you purchase your kit directly on Amazon. We are not the seller of record and cannot process returns ourselves.

Amazon ships the items in your kit directly to you. Wherever Amazon ships, we deliver — including standard Amazon Prime options when you have a Prime membership.

You talk with the expert you choose when you book: Brian Burk or Tiran Dagan, the founders, or another member of our expert panel. You can read each expert's profile before you book.

Each BeAdvised session runs 60 minutes.

No. Anyone can book, at $175 per session. Combo subscribers pay $149.

We have a list of topics to choose from, and the BeAdvised page shows every one of them. See all topics →

Create your own topic: tell us what's on your mind, and we'll build the session around it.

Just answer three things: your questions, your concerns, and the outcomes you want.

You share your questions, concerns, and desired outcomes, and we review everything before we meet.

You get a follow-up with links to articles and skills that directly address your situation.

Reschedule for free up to 24 hours before your session. Within 24 hours, you can cancel and your payment becomes a credit toward a future booking (valid 12 months).

Yes. Book as many as you need, at $175 per session or $149 as a Combo subscriber.

Yes, you can change your plan at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately, and downgrades apply at the end of your billing period.

We accept all major credit cards through our secure payment processor, Stripe.

No. Kit recommendations are optional. Our marketplace gives you access to curated, pre-vetted kits, sold at Amazon's price with no markup from us. As an Amazon Associate we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

Yes, there are no contracts or cancellation fees. You keep access until the end of the period you paid for. After that, your plans are kept but locked until you subscribe again, and you can export your data from your profile at any time.

Yes: your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and we never sell your personal information. Your address and household details are used only to provide your alerts and your plans. Read our full privacy policy for detailed information.

We need it to scope your intelligence report to your specific location and calibrate monitoring thresholds to what's near you. If you would rather not use your own address, a nearby one works too, such as a cross street on your block; your alerts and report then cover that spot.

We store your address, your notification preferences, and the alert history we've sent you. If you use BeReady, we also store the household details your plan is built from. It is all encrypted in transit and at rest, and it is never linked to advertising profiles.

No. We never sell your address, share it with data brokers or advertisers, or use it for anything beyond delivering the service you subscribed to. There are no ads and no data brokering: you pay for a service, and we deliver it. That’s the entire business model. See our Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Cookie Policy.