What is BEAST?
Build · Event · Assessment · Strategy · Tactics
BEAST is how families turn uncertainty into action. It is how the pros think in a real emergency — turned into plain steps any family can follow. Know what you have. Know what's coming. Know how it hits your family. Pick your plan. Do the steps.
Being prepared is not one big checklist. It is a way of deciding. BEAST walks your family through five steps, starting with your home and ending with actions someone actually does.
B · Build
Get your home ready before anything happens.
Who lives in your home, what they need, and what you have. Think: kids and their ages, medicine, pets, your car (or no car), stored water and food, flashlights, meeting places, and the people you could call for help.
E · Event
Know what can happen — or what is happening right now.
What usually happens where you live, what the official warnings mean, and the problems that follow — power, water, and roads often go down one after another, like dominoes.
A · Assessment
See how it would hit your family.
The same event hits every family differently. A power outage is one thing for most homes. It is a much bigger deal if you have a baby, medicine that must stay cold, or live on the 14th floor. Assessment asks one question: what would this mean for us?
On this site: your readiness snapshot and household vulnerabilities →
S · Strategy
Pick your family's plan.
Every emergency comes down to four choices: Stay home, Shelter in the safest room, Leave before it's too late, or Reunite if the family is apart.
T · Tactics
Do the steps that make the plan work.
Who does what. What goes in the car. Which way you go. When you start. How everyone checks in. And your trigger — the sign that tells you "it's time." Example: "If the power is still out at dark, we go to Aunt May's." A plan without steps is just a wish.
On this site: tasks, roles, and triggers in the Family Ops Center →
Why this framework exists
BEAST comes from more than twenty years in U.S. Army medical logistics and federal emergency response — over 100 missions and exercises, including major hurricanes, H1N1, Ebola, COVID-19, and mpox. The lesson never changes: plans fail when families skip the decisions that must be made before help arrives.
BEAST is not another checklist. It asks about your family — where you live, who's in the house, what medicine you need, how you get around. Then it turns your answers into a plan: who does what, and when.
Stage 1 takes three minutes and costs nothing.