← Ops console · Guide
This board quietly checks about 67 public sources every 15 minutes, from earthquakes and power outages in Utah to oil prices and embassy evacuations, and sums them up in one colour.
You only need two things: the big colour in the Cluster condition panel (green, yellow or red) and the playbook under it, which says what to do. Everything else is there to explain the colour.
Each source is compared with its own recent normal, not with a fixed number. Oil at $90 is not a warning by itself; oil jumping far more than it usually does in a week is. That is why a quiet board stays green even on a busy news day.
One strange reading never turns the board red. Markets wobble and news spikes all the time. Real trouble shows up in several unrelated places at once, so the board waits for that.
Normal. At most one lane looks unusual.
Routine readiness:
Watch. Two lanes look unusual, or one looks very unusual.
Get ahead, calmly:
Act. Three or more separate lanes look unusual at once, or two look very unusual.
Act now:
Official warnings skip the queue. Some signals are serious enough to show their own steps right away, even when the board is green:
If the colour is grey and says Stale, the board has not updated for over two hours. It is showing the last known colour, which is not the same as an all clear.
A lane is one area the board watches. Each lane is green when normal, amber when unusual and red when very unusual. Amber and red describe one lane; yellow and red at the top describe the whole board. Lanes that read the same kind of evidence, such as different news counts, only count once.
Utah crisis news, severe weather alerts, Rocky Mountain Power outages and earthquakes near Utah.
Why it matters: This is home. Local trouble matters more than anything far away, so several of these readings can raise a warning on their own.
Sources: Utah news sites, National Weather Service, Rocky Mountain Power, USGS.
Major earthquakes, hurricanes, extreme weather warnings, UN disaster alerts and FEMA declarations.
Why it matters: Natural disasters are the most likely emergency for most families. Big ones far away can still disrupt fuel, food and shipping.
Sources: USGS, National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center, GDACS (UN/EU), FEMA.
Civil emergency alerts (US and Utah), emergency presidential orders, and restless volcanoes.
Why it matters: These are official warnings. A Utah civil emergency alert is shown on its own, without waiting for other signs.
Sources: National Weather Service, Federal Register, USGS Volcano Hazards.
Rocky Mountain gas prices, gas lines, baby formula shortages and recalls, empty shelves.
Why it matters: These are the things a family actually runs short of first. Panic buying spreads fast, so seeing it early buys time to top up calmly.
Sources: EIA, openFDA, Google News.
Flu, COVID and RSV emergency-room visits (US and Utah) and FDA drug shortages.
Why it matters: A fast rise in ER visits is the first sign of a bad outbreak, before hospitals fill. Drug shortages tell you to refill prescriptions early.
Sources: CDC emergency-department data, openFDA.
New WHO disease outbreak notices and news of lockdowns or curfews.
Why it matters: Lockdowns and curfews are what change daily life: schools, work, shops and travel.
Sources: World Health Organization, Google News.
Whether the federal government is open, betting odds of a shutdown, and shutdown news.
Why it matters: A shutdown slows passports, parks, airports and some benefits.
Sources: US Office of Personnel Management, Kalshi, Google News.
Countries where the internet has gone dark.
Why it matters: Governments cut the internet during unrest, coups and wars. Big outages can also come from attacks.
Sources: IODA (Georgia Tech), Cloudflare Radar.
Outages at big cloud providers and security holes that hackers are actively using.
Why it matters: A large cyberattack can take down banks, payments, phones and stores at once.
Sources: Provider status pages, CISA's known-exploited list.
FAA ground stops, security flight bans, hijack and emergency codes, military aircraft in the air.
Why it matters: The government closes or restricts airspace fast when there is a threat, often before it says why.
Sources: FAA, ADSB.lol.
How many planes take off from Salt Lake City, private-jet hubs and big overseas airports.
Why it matters: If private jets suddenly leave in numbers, people with inside knowledge may be moving. If departures collapse, flights are being stopped.
Sources: Live aircraft transponder data (ADSB.lol, airplanes.live).
Countries the State Department says not to visit, and embassies sending staff home.
Why it matters: When the US government pulls its own people out of a country, it usually knows something serious is coming there.
Sources: US State Department travel advisories.
Gold, oil, the dollar, the stock market's fear gauge (VIX), credit stress and Bitcoin.
Why it matters: Big money reacts to trouble within minutes, often before the news does. A sudden rush into gold or a jump in the fear gauge is an early hint that something serious is happening.
Sources: Yahoo Finance, FRED (St. Louis Fed), New York Fed, Coinbase.
US crude oil stockpiles and solar storms that can disturb the power grid and GPS.
Why it matters: Fuel and electricity sit under everything else. Falling stockpiles mean higher prices and possible shortages; a strong solar storm can knock out power and satellites.
Sources: US Energy Information Administration, NOAA Space Weather.
Unusual quakes at nuclear test sites and the radiation level measured in Salt Lake City.
Why it matters: Rare, but the most serious. Rain can cause small harmless spikes, so a reading here is checked against the weather before anything else.
Sources: USGS, EPA RadNet.
How much the world's news is talking about conflict, evacuations, shipping, energy, money, outbreaks, flights and unrest.
Why it matters: When many outlets suddenly cover the same kind of crisis, it is usually real and growing.
Sources: Google News, GDELT.
How fast crisis words are being posted on Bluesky and Mastodon, and news about embassy departures.
Why it matters: People post about what they see before reporters write it up. It is noisy, so it only counts when other lanes agree.
Sources: Bluesky, Mastodon, GDELT.
Crisis words in posts collected from X.
Why it matters: Same idea as the chatter lane: an early but noisy hint that needs confirmation from elsewhere.
Sources: Posts sent to the board from X.
The board opens in the calm view: the colour, the playbook, Utah, the world map, your area and the latest news. The Analyst switch at the top right adds every lane, every individual reading with its numbers, extra map layers, a 7-day replay and the health of each data feed. You never need it to know what to do.
Tap any small on the board for a short note on that panel.
It is a personal early-warning board built on free public data. It is not an official warning system, and it can miss things or be late when a source is down. Always follow official alerts, such as phone emergency alerts, the National Weather Service and local authorities.
Some areas it would like to watch, such as grocery stock, transit ridership and school closures, have no free source yet. Those are shown in the Analyst view as stand-ins and never change the colour. Drug shortage rows are not medical advice. Times are Mountain time.