Disclaimer - RationalSurvivor.com

The Short Version

If you only read one section, read this one.

Everything on rationalsurvivor.com is general information published for education. It is not medical, legal, financial, engineering or professional advice, and no reader-and-publisher relationship of any kind is created by your visit.
Survival and preparedness skills carry real physical risk. You practise them at your own risk, under your own judgement, and you are responsible for your own safety and the safety of anyone with you.
Laws on knives, firearms, fire, foraging, water use, radio transmission and stored fuel vary enormously by country, state, province and municipality. We cannot tell you what is legal where you live.
In a real emergency, contact your local emergency number and follow the instructions of the responders and agencies with jurisdiction. Nothing here overrides them.
Some links on this site earn us a commission. That never changes a rating or a recommendation.

The sections below explain each of these in full.

No Professional Advice: Medical, Legal or Financial

We are publishers, not your clinician, your lawyer or your financial adviser. Nothing on this site should be read as professional advice, and you should not delay, avoid or discontinue professional care because of something you read here.

Medical and first aid content. Our first aid and medical articles describe general techniques and refer to published resuscitation, trauma and wilderness medicine guidance. They are not a substitute for accredited training, and reading about a skill is not the same as being trained in it. We strongly encourage hands-on certification from a recognised provider before you rely on any medical skill under stress. Nothing here diagnoses a condition, prescribes or recommends a dose, or accounts for your medications, allergies, pregnancy, age or existing health conditions. Consult a qualified medical professional about your own circumstances.
Legal content. Where we mention the legal status of an item, a practice or a location, we are describing the general landscape, not your obligations. Laws change, and their application depends on facts we do not know. Consult a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction before acting on anything with legal consequences.
Financial content. Discussion of budgets, stockpiling costs, insurance, precious metals or the economics of preparedness is opinion and general commentary. It is not investment, tax or insurance advice, and it is not tailored to your finances. Speak to a licensed professional before committing money.

Use of this site does not create a doctor-patient, attorney-client, adviser-client or other professional relationship between you and Rational Survivor or anyone who writes for it.

In an Actual Emergency, Do Not Rely on This Site

This site is a place to prepare, not a place to manage an unfolding emergency.

If someone is injured, unresponsive, bleeding badly, in respiratory distress, or in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. If you are facing a wildfire, flood, storm, evacuation order, chemical release or any other declared incident, follow the instructions issued by your emergency management agency, fire service and police, and by official channels such as Ready.gov, FEMA and the National Weather Service or their equivalents where you live.

Responders and agencies with jurisdiction have information about your specific situation that we do not have. Where their instructions differ from anything published on rationalsurvivor.com, follow theirs.

Assumption of Risk: Outdoor and Emergency Skills

The activities we write about are inherently risky. Fire-lighting, cutting tools, cold-weather and heat exposure, backcountry travel, water crossings, foraging, tree felling, climbing, generator and fuel handling, electrical work and improvised shelter can all cause serious injury, permanent disability or death — including to people who do everything correctly.

By using this site you acknowledge and accept that:

You are voluntarily assuming all risk arising from any skill, technique or project you attempt after reading about it here.
You are responsible for assessing your own fitness, experience, training and equipment before attempting anything, and for supervising any children or inexperienced people in your care.
Conditions we cannot see — your weather, terrain, altitude, water source, tools, vehicle, home wiring, fuel and the people with you — change the outcome of every technique we describe.
You are responsible for obtaining any permit, permission, licence or landowner consent required before practising a skill, and for complying with fire restrictions and land-use rules.

Build new skills incrementally, in controlled conditions, with a margin for error and ideally with qualified instruction. Rational Survivor accepts no liability for injury, illness, death, property damage or loss arising from your use of the information on this site.

The Limits of Our Testing

We test gear, and we publish what testing showed. Testing is evidence, not a guarantee. Our methodology is described in full on How We Test, and these limits apply to every review we publish.

A test is a sample, usually of one unit. Manufacturing varies, and the item you buy may not behave like the item we used.
Results are bounded by the conditions we state — temperature range, duration, load, terrain, water source, user. Outside those conditions, our conclusions may not hold.
Products change. Manufacturers revise materials, coatings, cells, fabrics and suppliers without renaming the product, and a favourable review can describe a version that is no longer sold.
Durability findings are provisional. An item that has survived a year of use has told us about a year of use and nothing more.
Absence of a failure in our testing is not proof of reliability. It means we did not induce a failure under the conditions we ran.

Always read and follow the manufacturer’s own instructions, load ratings, weight limits, service intervals and safety warnings. Where the manufacturer’s guidance conflicts with ours, follow the manufacturer’s — they carry the product liability and the engineering data.

Knives, Firearms, Tools and Other Jurisdiction-Dependent Topics

Legality is local, and it is your responsibility.

Rules governing blade length and locking mechanisms, carry of any knife or multi-tool in public, firearm ownership, transport, storage and ammunition, pepper spray and other defensive tools, body armour, radio transmission and licensing, drones, trapping, hunting, fishing, foraging of plants and fungi, open fires and stoves, rainwater collection, well drilling, greywater reuse, fuel storage quantities, generator installation and transfer switches, and modifications to your home’s electrical or gas systems all differ by country, state or province, county and city — and sometimes by the specific parcel of land you are standing on.

When this site discusses any of these subjects it is discussing them generally, for an international readership. Nothing here is a statement that a given item or activity is lawful for you to own, carry, transport, build, harvest or do. Verify the current law in your jurisdiction, and use licensed professionals where licensing is required — electrical, gas, plumbing and structural work in particular.

We do not publish instructions for making weapons, explosives, or anything designed to harm people, and nothing on this site should be read as encouragement to break the law or to interfere with emergency services, utilities or other people’s property.

Water Treatment, Food Storage and Home Preservation

This is the area where following incomplete information causes the most harm, so we are blunt about it.

Water treatment. Filtration, boiling, chemical disinfection and UV each address different hazards, and none of them addresses everything. Standard field methods do not remove heavy metals, most chemical contaminants, nitrates, radiological contamination or agricultural runoff. Cloudy, chemically contaminated or industrially affected water may be unsafe by any household method. Follow current guidance from the EPA or your national water authority, use products according to their own instructions and contact times, and treat a boil-water notice from your utility as the controlling instruction.
Food storage and preservation. Home canning, curing, fermenting, dehydrating and long-term storage carry a genuine risk of botulism and other foodborne illness when procedures, acidity levels, processing times, pressures or altitude adjustments are wrong. Use tested, current recipes and processing schedules from the National Center for Home Food Preservation or an equivalent national authority, and follow FoodSafety.gov guidance on storage and spoilage. Do not scale, substitute or improvise a preservation recipe based on anything you read here.
Wild food. Plant, fungus and shellfish identification from photographs and text is not sufficient for safe consumption. Misidentification of fungi in particular is regularly fatal. We do not publish content intended to qualify anyone to eat wild food, and you should not treat it that way.
Fuel, heat and carbon monoxide. Portable generators, camping stoves, charcoal, unvented heaters and vehicles produce carbon monoxide that kills indoors and in partly enclosed spaces. Follow manufacturer clearances and ventilation requirements, fit working CO alarms, and never improvise indoor heating or cooking arrangements from general advice.

If you are immunocompromised, pregnant, elderly, caring for young children, or preparing food or water for anyone in those groups, apply a wider margin than any general article can give you and take professional guidance.

Affiliate Disclosure and Commercial Relationships

Rational Survivor participates in affiliate programmes. Some links to products on this site are affiliate links, and if you buy through one we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This is how the testing is funded.

Commission never affects a score, a ranking, a recommendation or a decision to publish a negative finding. Gear that failed is reported as having failed, whether or not it carries an affiliate link.
We do not accept payment for reviews, rankings or placement, and we do not publish sponsored posts disguised as editorial.
Where an item was supplied by a manufacturer rather than bought, we say so in the article itself.
Prices, availability and specifications shown on this site are indicative and change without notice. The seller’s listing at the moment of purchase is authoritative.

Full details, including the programmes we belong to, are on our Affiliate Disclosure page, and the rules our writers work under are set out in our Editorial Standards.

Accuracy, Currency and Corrections

We aim for accuracy and we cite sources so you can check us. We do not guarantee that everything on this site is correct, complete or current.

Guidance moves. Resuscitation protocols are revised, agency recommendations are updated, water treatment products are reformulated, preservation schedules are re-tested and legislation changes. An article that was accurate when it was published may not be accurate when you read it. Check the publication or update date on any article you intend to act on, and verify safety-critical figures — doses, processing times, contact times, load ratings, ratios — against the primary source before you rely on them.

If you find an error, tell us at hello@rationalsurvivors.com. We correct mistakes in place and note significant corrections on the article. That is a standing commitment, not a favour.

External Links and Third-Party Content

This site links out to agencies, standards bodies, manufacturers, researchers and other publishers, because claims you cannot check are worth little.

We do not control those sites. A link is not an endorsement of everything on the destination, and we are not responsible for the accuracy, safety, availability, privacy practices or content of any external site, product or service. Agency pages get reorganised and links rot; if a cited source has moved, search the issuing body’s site for the current version rather than assuming our summary still reflects it.

The same applies to any third-party content that appears here — advertisements, embedded video, quoted material, and reader comments or contributions where those are enabled. Opinions expressed in third-party content are those of their authors, not of Rational Survivor.

No Warranty and Limitation of Liability

The content on rationalsurvivor.com is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free or free of harmful components.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Rational Survivor and its writers, editors, contributors and operators are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, special or punitive loss or damage — including personal injury, illness, death, property damage, loss of data, business loss or lost profits — arising from or connected to your use of this site, your reliance on its content, or your inability to access it.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions of warranty or limitations of liability. Where that is the case, the exclusions above apply only to the extent that jurisdiction permits, and nothing in this disclaimer limits any liability that cannot lawfully be limited. This page should be read together with our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Changes to This Disclaimer, and How to Reach Us

We may update this disclaimer as the site grows, as the subjects we cover change, or as our commercial relationships change. The current version is always the one published at this address, and continued use of the site after a change means you accept the updated terms. Substantive changes are dated on the page.

Questions about this disclaimer, a specific article, a correction or a commercial relationship go to hello@rationalsurvivors.com. Privacy and data enquiries go to privacy@rationalsurvivors.com.

If you want to understand the standards behind what you are reading before you rely on it, start with How We Test and About Rational Survivor. If you are new to preparedness and want the sequence we would actually recommend, begin at Start Here.

Disclaimer for RationalSurvivor.com