Every other page in this domain is about paperwork, money and caches. This one is here because the playbook's own hard pages put it here, and because it is the entry most likely to be skipped and most costly to skip.
What this page is and is not
It is not a procedure to follow during an emergency. Sorting casualties under pressure is a trained skill, and a family in crisis applying a half-remembered scheme to people they love will not do it well, will not do it consistently, and will carry the result for the rest of their lives.
It is a conversation to have once, calmly, when nothing is happening. The value is entirely in having thought about it in advance. That is the same claim the playbook already makes, and it is right.
So this page gives you the shape of the thinking and the questions to settle, and deliberately does not give you a scoring system to apply to your children.
Why the framework exists
Triage was invented for one situation: more casualties than carers, with limited supplies and limited time. It is not about deciding who deserves to live. It is a method for producing the largest number of survivors from a fixed amount of help.
Two facts about it that are worth understanding before any of the rest:
It is counterintuitive on purpose. The instinct is to go to the person screaming, or the person you love most, or the most visibly horrifying injury. Triage says the screaming person has a clear airway and can breathe, so they can wait. That inversion is the entire point and it is why it has to be thought about beforehand, because instinct will not produce it.
It is temporary. Triage decisions get revisited as circumstances change. Someone deprioritised at 9am may be treated at 11am when more hands arrive. Nothing about it is a permanent verdict.
The only version worth knowing
If you retain one thing from this page, retain this, because it is what an untrained person can genuinely apply.
Reassess constantly. People move between these as time passes and as help arrives.
The decisions to make in advance
These are the questions worth settling as a household, calmly, once. Not answered here, because they are not ours to answer.
- Who is the decision-maker if two people are hurt and one adult is present? Agreeing this in advance removes an argument at the worst possible moment.
- What does everyone want if they are the one who is beyond help? Say it out loud to each other. It is a five minute conversation that changes how the survivors feel for decades.
- Where does the line sit between "keep trying" and "make comfortable"? Nobody can define it precisely, and having discussed that it exists at all is most of the benefit.
- Who goes for help, and when? Splitting up has real costs, and deciding the threshold in advance beats deciding it while panicking.
- How do you handle a child versus an adult? Most people's instinct is children first, and it is worth knowing that about yourselves rather than discovering it.
- What are the household's actual medical limits? What is in the kit, who has training, and what have you honestly never done. Knowing the ceiling in advance prevents both false confidence and unnecessary despair.
What good care looks like when cure is not available
This is the part most preparedness writing omits entirely, and it is the part most likely to be needed.
When you cannot fix something, there is still a great deal to do, and it is not nothing:
- Stay with them. Do not leave anyone to die alone. This is the single most important thing on the page.
- Keep them warm and dry, and off a cold floor.
- Control pain as far as you can. Paracetamol and ibuprofen at proper doses, positioning, immobilising fractures, which is genuinely effective pain relief.
- Wet their mouth even if they cannot drink. A damp cloth on the lips relieves a great deal.
- Keep them clean.
- Talk to them. Hearing persists long after responsiveness goes. Say the things that need saying, whether or not you think they can hear.
- Hold their hand.
- Let the family be present, including children if they want to be and are prepared for it. Being excluded is usually worse for a child than being present, though that is a judgement for the parent.
- Do not lie to them, and do not force truth on them either. Answer what they ask.
Afterwards
The people who make these decisions carry them, and the app would be dishonest to end without saying so.
- You will replay it. Everyone does, and it does not mean you got it wrong.
- Hindsight has information you did not have. The decision was made with what was available at the time, which is the only way any decision is ever made.
- Say it out loud to another adult. Silence is what turns this into something lasting.
- Children need age-appropriate honesty, not protection from the fact that something happened. See the children's tier for how that is pitched.
- If services ever return, take the help. Trauma from this is a normal response to an abnormal situation, and it is treatable.
The playbook's own framing is the right one to end on: this is a page about thinking clearly once, in advance, so that nobody has to think clearly for the first time on the worst day of their life.