Version 1.0 · adopted July 25, 2026
The rules we answer to.
This Constitution governs Cascadia.me, NowWePlan.com, HurricaneCoast.me, and SanAndreas.me. It is short on purpose. A rule that never costs us anything is probably just a preference wearing a tie.
Purpose
Make ordinary life less brittle.
The network exists to help ordinary people understand the places where they live, prepare for interruptions without organizing their lives around fear, recover faster when systems fail, and build the relationships that make recovery possible.
The binding part
Twelve articles.
These govern the work even when a different choice would be easier, more dramatic, or more profitable.
Consequences before causes.
Hazards differ; their domestic consequences overlap. We organize preparation around water, sanitation, temperature, air, information, food, medication, movement, dependents, staying, leaving, and reconnecting. Hazard-specific guidance stays where specificity matters: the first minutes, the building, the route, and the local authority.
Accuracy in both directions.
We don’t intensify risk for attention or soften it for comfort. We state delay, duration, difficulty, and uncertainty honestly. Help may take days or weeks to organize across a large region; recovery can last months or years. Neither “no one is coming” nor “everything will be fine shortly” belongs here.
No shame.
We don’t use fear, guilt, urgency, scarcity, contempt, or condescension to persuade. Urgency may come only from the real usefulness and timing of an action.
No transfer of institutional failure.
Households aren’t responsible for unsafe buildings, fragile infrastructure, poverty, inadequate transit, or failed public systems. When no meaningful individual action exists, we say so and name the collective or institutional action that would matter.
Unequal capacity is assumed.
Advice for a homeowner with a garage, vehicle, flexible job, and spare money isn’t universal. When private capacity is limited, the community and public layers become more important—not less.
The authority boundary.
Official agencies issue alerts, orders, forecasts, and emergency instructions. Qualified professionals assess buildings, health, and insurance. We help readers find, understand, and act on those sources. We don’t impersonate them or diagnose a specific situation from a distance.
Live conditions override us.
During an active or imminent event, current official instruction comes first. The affected regional site must route readers to the responsible authority before offering its own material.
Money never moves editorial.
No affiliate, sponsor, partner, or sale may influence what we recommend, how we rank it, or what we cover. Commercial relationships are disclosed where a recommendation appears. Purchased gear is never treated as proof of preparedness or competence.
Trust before conversion.
Each regional site must be complete and useful on its own. None may be weakened into an advertisement for NowWePlan. Private household information doesn’t pass to NowWePlan or any third party without the reader’s explicit, informed action.
Reachability.
Content must work for the people most likely to need it: on old devices and poor connections, in print, and with assistive technology. A page that can’t be read during an outage has missed the point.
Currency.
Every substantive page carries a visible review date. Official sources, routes, and instructions are checked on a fixed schedule. Material errors are corrected openly, in place, and noted.
Fiction is labeled.
Fiction is identified as fiction. Composite circumstances aren’t presented as testimony or reporting. Safety-relevant material is grounded in credible evidence and kept visibly separate from the story. Suffering is never the attraction.
Before we publish
The governing test.
- Does this help someone understand their place or preserve ordinary life?
- Does it clarify consequences, or merely dramatize causes?
- Does it increase agency without manufacturing fear?
- Does it hold up for a reader with less money, mobility, or time than we assumed?
- Does it strengthen connection rather than isolation?
- Are the authority and evidence boundaries visible?
- Does it help shorten recovery, not only survive the event?
- Can the reader act on it and then set the subject down?
Work that fails these questions doesn’t belong in the network, regardless of how well it might perform.
Amendment and authority.
This Constitution is maintained by Michael Hendrick, currently its sole author and sole decider. That is stated plainly instead of being hidden behind institutional language.
Amendments are versioned, dated, and logged publicly with a one-line reason. The Editorial Handbook may change without a constitutional amendment. If the two conflict, this document governs.
Why these rules exist.
Serious risk can be held without obsession. Preparation can be practical without becoming tactical, communal without becoming sentimental, and honest without becoming alarmist.
The outcome we want isn’t vigilance. It’s earned calm. The strongest household isn’t the one that imagines it needs nobody. It’s the one that understands its dependencies, protects what it can, and takes part in a living network of reciprocal care.
These articles will eventually cost us something. We’d rather decide now, while it’s cheap.
Adopted and reviewed July 25, 2026