Practice status

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Build a practice round

Practice decisions before a disruption. This independent quiz uses a curated U.S. baseline: 32 original questions across eight areas, checked against Ready.gov on 11 September 2026. It does not measure household readiness. During an emergency, follow current local alerts and officials.

Optional. Leave blank for the default round; use the same seed and settings to reproduce it.

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Answer recorded. Explanations will appear at the end.

Review your household preparations

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No misses in this round. This score does not establish readiness for a real emergency.

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Missed answer review

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Topic performance

Which readiness areas need another look? Counts describe only the questions in this round, not the safety of your household.

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Answer ledger

Question ID Prompt Topic Your answer Correct answer Outcome Explanation Source Copy
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Smoke Detector Placement Calculator Plan preliminary smoke alarm locations for bedrooms, sleeping areas and each level with purchase needs plus cooking, age and accessibility checks.
Generator Watts Calculator Size generator running and starting wattage from a load inventory, with startup overlap and site-derating assumptions for equipment comparison.
Home Fire Escape Planning Quiz Check your home fire escape planning knowledge with 28 original U.S.-based questions, explanations and focused practice on missed answers.
Hurricane Preparedness Quiz Check your U.S. hurricane preparedness knowledge with 32 original questions and explanations covering evacuation, shelter and recovery.

An emergency kit can be full while an evacuation plan is still unusable because nobody has arranged transport. Household emergency preparedness connects supplies with warnings, communication and practical help, so people can respond when ordinary services are disrupted.

Plans also need to work when household members are apart. Children may be at school, adults may be at work, and a caregiver may be unable to get home. Agreed contacts, meeting places and responsibilities reduce dependence on being together or reaching one particular phone. School pickup arrangements need to fit the school's emergency procedures, not just the family's preferred plan.

Leaving an affected area and remaining in a protective location require different preparations.

Evacuation
Leaving a threatened area for a safer destination, using routes appropriate to the incident.
Sheltering in place
Remaining in a suitable protective location rather than traveling away from the affected area.

The appropriate action depends on the hazard and current local instructions. A familiar route may be closed, and a well-stocked home may still be unsafe to occupy. Advance planning therefore includes destinations, alternative routes and transport arrangements, while allowing for changes directed by emergency officials. Having supplies is not a reason to disregard an evacuation order.

Supplies must remain useful without the services normally available at home. Shelf-stable food, a manual opener for cans that need one, stored water and a battery-powered weather radio address different dependencies. A portable kit serves a different purpose from larger supplies kept at home. Both need an accessible location that household members know, and their contents need to change as food expires or household needs change.

For someone who cannot hear an audible warning, accessible text or visual alerts and an agreed support contact may be essential. Medicines, communication aids, mobility equipment and electrically powered medical devices need individual planning with the appropriate healthcare professionals. Pets also need supplies, transport and a destination that accepts them. An assumed rescue, an unconfirmed ride or a shelter that has not agreed to accept an animal is not a dependable arrangement.

Recovery begins before a disaster through protected copies of identification, insurance information and essential contacts. A lost phone should not be the only route to those records. A small, securely stored amount of cash can help when electronic payments are unavailable, but it does not replace food, water or other supplies. After supplies are used, replacing them and reviewing what did not work prepares the household for another disruption.

General preparedness guidance is educational. It cannot assess a damaged building, replace medical or utility advice, or determine the safest action for a current incident. Current local warnings and emergency instructions take priority.

How to Use This Tool:

The quiz uses a general U.S. baseline. On first use, the setup is Whole household, Scenarios, 8 questions and After each answer. This samples the 16-scenario pool, not all 32 questions.

  1. Choose a Topic or household focus and Question type, then check Question count. You can study an individual topic or focus on caregivers, children or households with pets. The available counts depend on that combination; a count that no longer fits is replaced with the new pool's default.
  2. Choose when to receive Feedback. After each answer reveals correctness and an explanation before you advance. At the end records each choice without revealing correctness in the question view.
  3. Enter an optional Replay seed under Advanced when you need a repeatable setup round. Use no more than 128 characters and keep the other settings unchanged. Leaving it blank uses home-preparedness-1, a fixed default. An overlong entry produces a warning and uses that default until corrected.
  4. Select Start practice, read the question and choose one of its four answers. Selecting an answer records and locks it immediately. Use Next question to continue and View results after the final answer; there is no skipped-question or early-finish result.
  5. Read Missed answer review first when it appears, then use the Answer ledger for the complete review. Each reviewed question includes your choice, the correct answer, an explanation and its source information. Use a missed topic to identify a household arrangement or supply that needs checking.

Interpreting Results:

Ready describes the practice setup, not your household. During a round, Practice status and the progress percentage describe how many questions you have answered. At completion, the summary changes to the number correct out of the number selected.

A Perfect round means all answers in that attempt were correct. It does not establish that supplies are usable, that transport is arranged or that a home is safe. The result is a knowledge review, not a household inspection, certification or professional competence assessment.

Topic performance compares counts of correct and missed answers within the sampled topics. An untested topic has not been assessed. The suggested review topic is based on the greatest number of misses, not a measure of real-world household risk. Read the explanations and check the corresponding real arrangements rather than treating the longest bar as the most important safety priority. The Answer ledger remains available if the chart does not load.

After a completed round, Retry missed starts a fresh attempt containing only incorrectly answered questions. Replay same seed repeats the current questions and option order, while Try a new seed reshuffles available questions and may repeat familiar ones. Every replay starts without previous answers. A perfect round has no missed-question retry, and Change setup clears the current attempt.

Technical Details:

Preparedness decisions depend on which services are unavailable and who needs help. Stored food may depend on refrigeration, an alternative power source may introduce an exhaust hazard, and a medication plan may need arrangements that a general checklist cannot specify.

Preparedness rules

The following rules explain several consequential distinctions in the questions. They are general preparation guidance, not a procedure for handling an active emergency.

Decision Rule Important limit
Stored water The question's baseline is one U.S. gallon per person per day for drinking and sanitation, for several days. This is not one gallon for the whole household or a maximum allowance. Heat, illness and pets can require additional water.
Warning methods U.S. Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are official messages broadcast to capable phones in a targeted area. Device capability and reception matter. Retain other warning methods, including a suitable battery-powered weather radio.
Natural gas Only a qualified professional should restore service after gas has been turned off. Learning the household shutoff plan does not qualify someone to restore gas or justify experimenting with a valve.
Medical supplies and equipment Plan prescription supplies with a doctor or pharmacist and device backup arrangements with the healthcare provider. A general quiz cannot prescribe doses, substitutions or a safe interruption of treatment.
Returning home Follow official return guidance and avoid damaged areas and downed utility lines. Permission to return to an area does not establish that every building is safe. Document damage only when it is safe to do so.

Portable generators create a separate carbon monoxide (CO) hazard. The generator question uses an outdoor location at least 20 feet from windows, doors and attached garages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specify more than 20 feet from windows, doors and vents. For actual use, follow that greater separation and the manufacturer's instructions, and use working battery-powered or battery-backup CO detectors. A garage with its door open is not a safe operating location. Gas ovens and charcoal grills are not indoor heating substitutes.

How the practice score is calculated

Every correct answer earns one point and every incorrect answer earns zero. Let C be the number correct, A the number answered and N the number of questions selected for the current attempt. C, A and N are whole-number counts, with N greater than zero and 0 ≤ C ≤ A ≤ N. The score rate and completion rate use the same denominator but count different things.

Points=C Accuracy (%)=100×CN Progress (%)=100×AN

Total points range from 0 to N, with no weighting, deductions or pass/fail bands. Each topic's totals count only its selected questions. Unanswered questions stay in N but do not count as incorrect and are not included in Retry missed. A final result requires all N answers.

The main result summary shows the exact correct/total fraction. Accuracy is calculated without rounding; only the visible progress percentage is rounded to the nearest whole percent, with half-percent ties upward. After one correct answer in an eight-question round, accuracy and progress are both 12.5%, so the progress display reads 13%. If the next answer is wrong, progress becomes 25% while accuracy remains 12.5%. The six remaining questions are still unanswered, not missed.

Question coverage and repeatability

The curated bank contains 32 original text questions: two facts and two scenarios in each of eight areas. Those areas are Alerts, Communication, Supplies, Documents, Utilities, Evacuation & shelter, Household support and Recovery. Household focuses reuse selected questions from these areas rather than adding new questions.

Focus Facts & scenarios Facts Scenarios
Whole household 32 16 16
Any one of the eight topics 4 2 2
Caregivers & access needs 6 1 5
Children & family routines 5 2 3
Households with pets 3 1 2

Available round lengths are 1, 4 and 8 wherever they fit, plus the full size of the selected pool. Selection does not repeat a question within a round, but short rounds are not guaranteed to balance topics or include both facts and scenarios. Changing the seed can change selection and order; it cannot create new content beyond the chosen pool. Taking the full pool includes every question in that pool, not every preparedness issue.

Repeat comparisons need the same question scope, settings, seed and question-bank version. The bank records Ready.gov source checks dated 11 September 2026; those are historical source notes, not live monitoring or assurance that every reference remains unchanged. The quiz is independent of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Ready.gov. Its original questions are not an official or endorsed assessment. Local hazards, services and instructions can differ.

Privacy Notes:

Answers are scored in the browser, but the page address can retain the setup, replay seed, selected answers and position in the round, including unfinished attempts. Someone receiving that address can restore the recorded choices. Treat an attempt link as a record of answers rather than an anonymous invitation to an empty quiz.

No personal records, medical details or household address are requested. Keep such information out of the Replay seed. Page addresses may enter browser history or be transmitted when opened or shared, and additional network resources load for the results chart. Browser scoring is not a guarantee of offline use, no transmission or a particular site-wide retention policy.

Change setup clears the current attempt and its current address state, not earlier shared copies or history. Progress is not an account-based record. If a damaged or incompatible link produces Saved attempt unavailable, its answers have not been restored; choose your setup and start a new attempt.

Worked Examples:

Food supplies that still depend on electricity

Choose Supplies, Facts and 2 questions. Select the one-U.S.-gallon-per-person daily water answer, but choose only frozen meals requiring an electric oven for the food question. The completed score is 1/2, equivalent to 50%, and Topic performance shows one correct and one missed answer for Supplies. The missed explanation identifies shelf-stable food and a manual can opener as the appropriate arrangement. Checking whether the actual kit can be used without power addresses the mistake beyond the quiz.

A high score with one consequential mistake

Choose Whole household, Facts & scenarios and 32 questions. Answer all correctly except the gas-restoration question, where you select any household member who can reach the valve. The result is 31/32, with Utilities identified for review. The high total does not make that answer safe. Retry missed creates a one-question attempt about gas restoration; answering it correctly produces a new 1/1 result, not a revised 32/32 result for the original attempt.

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