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On September 30, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the country that every major military installation in America is going to generate its own power, independent of the civilian grid. The plan is called FORTRESS America. The Pentagon wants roughly 500 bases in the continental United States able to run on their own for at least 90 days, with their own power, water, fuel, and communications. Since late October, a large part of the internet has decided this means a 90-day blackout has been announced. It has not. Nobody at the Pentagon has put a date on the grid going down. What they have said is that they no longer trust the civilian grid to be there when the military needs it.
The Pentagon broke FORTRESS into five pillars, and each one has a version you can build at your own house. The free five-pillar worksheet follows them in the same order, one page per pillar.
What the Order Says
FORTRESS stands for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability. Hegseth announced it in his “State of the Force” address and a follow-up memo set up a program office to run it. The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, summed it up this way: “Power is combat now.” The five pillars are energy independence, supply chains and the defense industrial base, a strategic defense reserve, installation hardening and cyber defense, and space and spectrum.
There is no price tag and no deadline. On October 20, a senior defense official told reporters at a Defense Writers Group roundtable that energy comes first and that bringing every base up to the standard could take decades. Air & Space Forces Magazine estimated the cost at scores of billions of dollars, possibly hundreds of billions. Separately from FORTRESS, the Army has picked five bases for its Janus nuclear microreactor program: Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning, and Fort Drum. The first reactor is targeted to run by September 2028.
The 90-day number has a history. A 2021 Department of the Air Force Installation Energy Strategic Plan was already warning about power disruptions lasting 30 days or more. That same year, a ransomware attack shut down the Colonial Pipeline and caused fuel shortages along the East Coast. In February 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned that a Chinese state-sponsored group called Volt Typhoon had gotten into networks for communications, energy, transportation, and water. The military has also watched power plants and substations get hit in Ukraine and in the war with Iran. So the bases are getting a 90-day plan, and your house has whatever is in the pantry right now.
Pillar One: Energy
The average American home used about 865 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a month in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That works out to about 28 kWh a day. The Pentagon is planning to power essential operations on its bases, and a battery with a couple of folding solar panels can cover that same kind of short list at your house. Plan your house the same way.
Start with a notepad and walk through the house. Write down only the things that have to keep running: medical equipment, the refrigerator if there is insulin or other medicine in it, a light, a radio, and phone chargers. Next to each item, write the watts, which are printed on a label on the back or bottom of almost every appliance. A refrigerator carries a yellow EnergyGuide sticker that lists kWh per year. Divide that number by 365 and you have the daily figure.
Then do the math. Watts multiplied by hours of use equals watt-hours. A device that pulls 50 watts for 8 hours a night uses 400 watt-hours. Add up the list and you know how big a battery you need and how much solar panel it takes to refill it each day. Most people buy a power station first and do the math second. Do the math first.
My own list is short. It is mostly communications gear and some lights, and that is why I can run it quietly off a battery and panels. If anyone in your house depends on a medical device, that device goes at the top of the list, and everything else gets cut to fit around it.
Pillar Two: Two Ways to Get Everything
This is the part of FORTRESS I like best. For the most critical things the military depends on, the plan calls for at least two qualified supply or production pathways. If one source fails, the second one is already lined up. The Pentagon is also identifying commercial factories that could switch to defense production in a crisis and preparing the contracts and conversion procedures in advance.
Apply the same rule at home. Take seven things your family cannot go without: water, heat, cooking, light, power, communications, and medication. For each one, write down your first way and your second way. Water might be the tap, then stored water with a filter. Heat might be the furnace, then a propane heater rated for indoor use with a battery-powered carbon monoxide alarm right next to it. Cooking might be the kitchen stove, then a camp stove that only runs outside.
When the list is finished, there will be at least one line where the second column is empty. That empty line tells you where your next dollar goes. Fill one of them every payday until the column is full. Page two of the worksheet has this list, with room for a third way on each line.
Pillar Three: The Strategic Reserve
Look at what the Pentagon is putting in its reserve: munitions, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts, and medical supplies. Most preppers stop at food and water. The military is stockpiling spare parts.
Think about what breaks first at your house. Water filter cartridges wear out. A generator needs a spare spark plug, a pull cord, and oil. Radios and lights need batteries in the sizes they actually take. If one part failing takes a whole system down, buy a second one now and store it next to the system it goes with, so nobody has to hunt for it in the dark.
Fuel belongs in the reserve too. Add stabilizer to stored gasoline, write the date on every can with a marker, and on a set schedule pour the oldest can into your vehicle and refill it. Food works the same way. Store what your family already eats and rotate the oldest to the front of the shelf. The water standard for this series is 3 gallons per person per day for at least 30 days, which is 360 gallons for a family of four.
Medicine is the item most families forget. Call your insurance company this week and ask whether your plan allows 90-day fills on maintenance medications, either through mail order or at the pharmacy. Many plans do, and one phone call settles it.
Pillar Four: Hardening and Cyber Defense
The model for this pillar is Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Hurricane Michael tore that base apart in 2018. The Air Force has spent roughly $5 billion rebuilding it with storm-hardened buildings, a microgrid, and a centralized maintenance hub, and officials expect other bases to follow the Tyndall pattern.
You do not have $5 billion, but you do have a screwdriver. Pull one screw out of the strike plate on your front door. If it is about three-quarters of an inch long, it is only holding onto the door trim. Replace those screws with three-inch screws that reach the framing inside the wall, and do the hinge screws while you are there. When a door gets kicked, the frame usually gives first, and this fix costs a few dollars.
Cyber defense starts with the same lesson the Colonial Pipeline taught. The company’s chief executive, Joseph Blount, told the Senate in June 2021 that the attackers got in through a single compromised password on an old virtual private network (VPN) account that did not require multifactor authentication. At your house, the router is the front door. Log into it, change the default administrator password, turn on automatic firmware updates, and turn off remote management if you never use it. Then turn on two-step login for your email and your bank accounts.
After that, print the information your family needs when the phones are down: doctor and pharmacy phone numbers, insurance policy numbers, and a list of every medication in the house with its dose. Put the printout in a folder with some cash in small bills. Card readers and ATMs need power and a network to work.
Pillar Five: Space and Spectrum
For the military, this pillar covers satellites and the radio frequencies forces use to talk. For a household, it means GPS and radio. If the cell network goes down, the map on your phone can go with it. Buy a paper road map of your county and your state, and mark the route to wherever you would go if you had to leave home, along with one alternate route.
Then find your emergency radio station. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) operates 77 Primary Entry Point stations, radio stations equipped with backup generators and hardened studios that together can reach 90 percent of the United States population with emergency alerts. Look up the station closest to you and write its frequency on the worksheet. Keep a battery or hand-crank radio next to that sheet, and add a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio. Amateur radio is the layer you build after this one, and the earlier 90-day article covers it.
The Order to Do It In
Do the energy list tonight. Make the call about medications this week. Fix the door screws this weekend. Then fill one empty line on the two-ways list every payday until every line has a second way.
What the Bible Says
When Nehemiah heard that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and its gates burned (Nehemiah 1:3), he went to the king, got permission, and organized the people to rebuild it. Nehemiah chapter 3 lists the work section by section. Eliashib the high priest and his brothers took the Sheep Gate. Goldsmiths and perfume makers took sections. And again and again the same line shows up. Jedaiah repaired opposite his own house (Nehemiah 3:10). Benjamin and Hasshub repaired opposite their house (3:23). The priests each repaired opposite his own house (3:28), and Zadok did the same (3:29).
Nobody rebuilt that wall alone. Each family took the stretch in front of its own door, and the city was protected when every stretch was finished. Nehemiah 6:15 records that the wall was completed in 52 days, while the builders were under threat the whole time. The Pentagon is building its own wall right now, and that order stops at the base gate. Your house is your stretch of the wall, and your church family holds the stretches on either side of you.
Psalm 112 describes the man who fears the Lord. Verse 7 says he is not afraid of bad news, because his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. The man in that verse has his house and his heart in order before the news arrives. The headlines this week are bad news. A Christian can read them without panic when their own section of the wall is built.
Final Thoughts
Which pillar is weakest at your house right now? Tell me in the comments what you found when you filled in the two-ways list, and which empty line you are filling first.
1 Corinthians 16:13: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”
Remember your ABCs. Always be carrying.
Keith Graves Christian Warrior Prepper
For Paid Subscribers
✅ Analyst’s Notes: what the jump from 30 days to 90 days says about the Pentagon’s planning
✅ Why most bases will stay on the civilian grid for years
✅ What FORTRESS leaves outside the fence for military families and the towns around bases
✅ Four questions to ask your water utility this week
✅ Indicators that show the program moving from a memo to funded work
✅ What to tell church members and neighbors who are panicking
Thank you Keith, significantly a better article, very informative. I appreciate you sharing this.
Thank you just getting started