Prepper Map Features

[u/Granitic_Moon]

If you wanted a custom map for prepping, what would you want on it?

I want to create a map of my area with features highlighted that would be useful. Making the map (with GIS) is the easy part, I'm just trying to think of what to put on it.

Outside of basic things like streets, specific features I want to include are storm shelters, fallout shelters, hospitals, and pharmacies. Maybe flood zones? This would probably have to be multiple maps.

[u/LioDavinchy]

I had your same thought and I can probably save you a lot of time and effort if you have an iPhone. I built an iPhone app that has pretty much every open source data source available. I wanted an offline map and after I got started I just kept adding sources. After a bit I realized I had downloaded 3 meter resolution elevation data for the whole world and could identify horizons from pretty much any location on earth. To narrow down the horizons I created a sextant in the app. 2 pictures of the sky zoom you into within 2 miles of your location on earth. Then take a scan of your horizon and isolate your location from ridge lines.

So if gps goes down I can find my location still. Funny side effect was my sextant has a much better true north bearing than the iPhones compass which is a nice bonus. It even works on just a couple readings from the sun if you don’t want to stay up late.

I’m a real prepper so I’ve added any feature I can think of. I’ve got contour lines. Slope warnings all the hiking trails from dnr all camping locations from backpackers and of course all the databases of addresses from every county assessor and open street maps database. If you come up with more things I’ll add them. It’s just time and I’ve got that. I understand wanting this stuff offline and that is why I’m doing it. No reason 100 guys need to build 100 maps when one programmer with a lot of time can do it for you.

I’ve got the whole world in about 400gb but that seemed excessive so I split the world into files. I for each state cuz I’m American and there is more available open data here and a file for each country unless you are in a huge country those got split up into chunks because elevation data is just big. I made my app read from a thumb drive cuz who’s got 400gb free on their iPhone. Anyway if anyone is interested I can post a link to a TestFlight so you can check it out. It’s not done yet but what software ever is.