About Mostly Alive
Mission, origin, and design philosophy of the Mostly Alive guide
Mission
Human civilization has achieved interplanetary space probes, mRNA vaccines, and high-frequency trading algorithms, yet has somewhat surprisingly still not shipped a particularly comprehensive everyday user manual.
Mostly Alive is an open-source, web-first survival and safety knowledge base. We teach rare-but-vital emergency actions for uncommon situations—lightning strikes, grease fires, rapid tsunamis, downed power lines, broken ice, toxic atmospheres, and other occasions where the laws of nature express an acute opinion about your presence.
The Core Premise
People remember funny things.
Therefore: make safety knowledge funny enough to remember, while keeping the actual instructions sober, precise, authoritative, and unmistakable.
The guide is written from the perspective of an overly confident electronic field guide for humans by an entity that considers humanity fascinating, fragile, and statistically questionable.
Non-Negotiable Standards
- Safety Layer Supremacy: The jokes are optional; the emergency safety instructions are not. Humorous commentary never obscures, delays, or replaces urgent life-saving steps.
- Strict Provenance: Every actionable safety claim is derived directly from authoritative primary organizations (NOAA, ERC, NFPA, BBK, CDC, Red Cross, DWD, DGUV). We do not invent citations or procedures.
- Open and Accessible: Zero tracking cookies, zero paywalls, fast client-side performance, and full offline emergency availability.