About Crisis Calculator

Why this site exists

Crisis Calculator is the answer to a simple observation. Most sites about emergency preparedness consist of listicles: 10 things you need in an emergency, top 5 power stations 2026. Generic, often imprecise, rarely tailored to the actual household.

This site does something different: interactive calculators instead of a hundred lists. Power needs, blackout resilience and emergency supplies are calculated for your household, based on the recommendations of Germany's Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) and on real technical data. Crisis Calculator is the English edition of krisen-rechner.de, translated tool by tool.

Who is behind it

Darko Konrad, senior software engineer from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the developer behind kdsoft.de. Crisis Calculator is a side project, built next to the day job simply because the topic is interesting. No company, no editorial team and no manufacturer behind it.

Two observations started it: first, the available sources offered no concrete calculations, only rule-of-thumb advice. Second, the few existing tools were either locked behind newsletter walls or built by sellers who wanted to place a specific product.

The calculators are deterministic (same input, same output, no cherry-picking, no random values), the calculation logic is documented openly in the spec files, and the recommendations follow the civil protection categories. The English edition carries no affiliate links.

Despite all care: all calculations are without warranty. Errors in data or logic are possible. No liability is accepted for decisions you make on the basis of the results, as far as legally permissible. Details are in the disclaimer.

What this site is not

Not a survival blog. No apocalypse. No doomsday-prepper romance. Preparedness is a technical task like data backups or home insurance: solved calmly once you know the numbers. That is what the calculators are for.

This site also gives no medical, legal or public-safety advice. In an actual emergency, the instructions of the responsible authorities apply.

Method and sources

• Civil protection guidelines of Germany's Federal Office of Civil Protection (BBK) as the normative basis for supply quantities, water needs and blackout cascades. On the essentials they match FEMA and other national agencies.
• PVGIS v5.2 (EU Joint Research Centre) for solar yield data, 15-year averages of daily irradiation.
• Manufacturer specifications for power station data (capacity, AC output, surge rating, battery chemistry), with our own plausibility check of the values.
• Real events as the learning basis: the Iberian blackout of April 2025 (Spain and Portugal), the Berlin blackout of January 2026, earlier outages in Central Europe. The timeline values of the blackout simulator are calibrated on these.

Editorial principles

• Numbers before buzzwords. Every recommendation is justified with concrete values, not with imperatives.
• No hidden commerce. The English edition shows no product recommendations and contains no affiliate links.
• Corrections welcome. Report factual errors by email: kontakt@krisen-rechner.de. Corrections are documented with an update date.

Legal

The full legal notice, privacy policy and disclaimer are linked separately. The site stores no personal data without cause and uses Umami, a cookieless, GDPR-compliant analytics tool.