Questions people actually ask

Is this written by AI?

Drafts are AI-assisted. Research comes first and every factual claim is tied to a named source before drafting starts. A human author and a human reviewer then edit and approve the piece, and both are named on the article along with the date it was last checked. Nothing publishes without a person reading it end to end, and no article ships unless it contains something original that could not be produced by summarising other pages.

What are your credentials?

We claim none, on purpose. Nobody writing here holds a certification worth citing in this field, and implying otherwise is exactly the pattern this site was built to avoid. Authority comes from citing primary sources such as FEMA, CDC, NOAA, USGS and the National Center for Home Food Preservation, from linking to the people who do hold credentials, and from testing things ourselves and publishing the results including the failures.

How does OutpostCore make money?

Today it does not. There are no ads, no sponsors and no paid placements, and newsletter sponsorship is ruled out. Some gear guides will eventually carry affiliate links, disclosed at the top of the page and again beside the links. The free or nearly free option is listed first in every recommendation, even where it earns nothing. We also build a few other products, and any link to one of those says plainly that it is ours.

Why are there so many links to other sites?

Because the useful material already exists and mostly comes from agencies and nonprofits that publish it free. The resource library holds more than sixty annotated links to places like Ready.gov, FEMA, CDC, NOAA, ARRL, Kiwix and the cooperative extension system. Sending you to the better source is more useful than rewriting it worse, and the annotation tells you what each one is actually for.

What will you not publish?

No medication dosing, diagnosis or treatment protocols, because that belongs to clinicians and getting it wrong hurts people. No legal advice. No predictions about when society ends. And nothing that encourages hoarding during an active emergency, which harms your neighbours without helping you. Beyond that the scope is set by what we can research properly and test, not by a list of forbidden subjects.

Is this United States only?

The hazard playbooks, agency links and licensing rules are written for the United States. The physics of water storage, food preservation and battery capacity do not respect borders, so much of the rest travels. Where a rule is national, we say which country it applies to.

How often is content updated?

Every article carries the date a human last checked it. Anything older than twelve months comes back for review, and reference pages that carry data which moves, such as frequencies or programme rules, come back every six months. Corrections are appended to the article with a date rather than made silently.

What is in the newsletter?

Signal Check goes out on Thursday mornings and has five short sections: one skill to do this week, five annotated links, one reference table or number, a seasonal hazard note, and what we are testing. It uses double opt-in, carries a one-click unsubscribe, and has no sponsors.

Do you track me?

The server counts page views and stores a salted hash of your IP address rather than the address itself, which lets us count returning visitors without holding anything identifying. Google Analytics loads only if you accept it in the banner, and declining takes one click and changes nothing about how the site works.

Something missing? Ask it, and if it is a fair question it goes on this page.