Prepared in New Zealand. Shared worldwide.
NZWAR has refreshed its Survival Resource Library, making it easier to preview printable guides and decide which card sets matter most for your family, community, or emergency kit. The improved previews let readers inspect sample pages before choosing what to download.
Find the guidance you need before an emergency
Different emergencies call for different knowledge. A family preparing for an evacuation may prioritise first aid, safe water, shelter and food. Someone expecting a prolonged power outage may need guidance on salvaged equipment and basic off-grid power. In an unstable environment, low-tech hand signals and practical personal safety guidance can also be useful.
Our illustrated cards are designed to be browsed, downloaded and printed. The library includes:
- Civilian Survival Handbook: a broad starting point for civilian preparedness, including evacuation and printable action-card packs.
- Defensive Reference Cards: situational awareness and practical personal safety.
- Wartime Food & Resource Cards: food, resources and practical field decisions.
- Field First Aid & Basic Care: basic care concepts and emergency medical reference.
- Salvage Power: ideas for building and maintaining more stable off-grid power using recovered or second-hand equipment, with appropriate electrical safety precautions.
- Silent Signals: low-tech hand signals and visual communication methods that require prior agreement within a group; these are not universal international signals.
- Emergency Protein Procurement Guide: practical food-procurement considerations for disrupted supply chains.
Across these resources, readers will also find material relating to shelter, visual guidance, hygiene and alcohol-based disinfection. Where disinfection or electrical work is involved, readers should follow relevant safety instructions and not assume improvised methods are automatically safe or medically equivalent to certified products.
Preview first. Choose what matters. Download for later.
The updated Downloads page offers clearer visual previews, so you can see the style and subject matter of each set before downloading the PDF. You do not have to collect everything at once: start with the guides most relevant to your local risks, then build a broader printed reference library over time.
When the screen goes dark, paper still works
A downloaded PDF is valuable, but a printed copy offers another layer of resilience. Networks can fail, batteries run flat, and charging may become impossible. Paper does not require a signal, a screen or electricity to read. Store printed guides in a dry, protected place alongside essential supplies, and keep digital copies on more than one device where possible.
No handbook can guarantee survival, and written guidance cannot replace professional training, emergency services or local instructions. But reliable, accessible information can help people prepare earlier and make better-informed decisions under pressure.
Free to download worldwide
For now, NZWAR’s downloadable survival guides are offered free to readers worldwide. Looking ahead, we may organise region-specific free collections for people affected by particular conflict zones or disaster conditions. This is a future possibility, not an announced restriction on today’s worldwide access.
Free to download. Free to print. Free to share. Please retain source information and any safety notices when distributing the materials.
Explore the updated NZWAR Survival Downloads Library →
Prepared in New Zealand. Shared worldwide.