Offline 2

Past about $10M in revenue, the fear changes. Someone can clone a voice, lean on the one account that takes the money, and wait until you are the only person who can log in. The water and the meeting point stay on the other page.

← Offline (paper kit)  ·  Personal  ·  Tech  ·  Productivity  ·  Security desk

What this is

Field notes from Ayman Al-Abdullah (@aymanalabdul), 28 Oct 2026, 14:01 UTC. About 409 likes, 23 reposts, 708 bookmarks, 437,000 views at capture. He quote-tweeted @remarks (27 Oct, 17:15 UTC; about 12,700 likes, 2,000 reposts, 2,600 bookmarks, 8 million views), whose post said former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had told Americans to take 30-day emergency preparedness warnings seriously.

Ayman’s post is a CEO memo. His X bio calls him former CEO of AppSumo, grown from $3M to $80M+ a year. The post says $10M is where you stop hunting and start being hunted, then a black-swan question, then four lock-downs he keeps in Notion, then a home that can last 30 days without anyone.

The gallons, the radio, the pharmacy call, and the print button are already on /offline. This page is the company, the exec team, and the family around them. Keys that can spend while the network is up stay on /security.

One sentence

Twice a year, ask how a funded enemy would take the company out, then make sure a second person can move money, restore the list, and keep the household fed if you are out for three days.

The question

Every six months he has the CEOs he coaches run a Black Swan Committee. One question:

“If I gave $5M to our worst enemy, how would they take us out?”

Write the answers where a second owner can open them. He uses Notion. The tool is his. The second owner is the point. His close: growth is the operator’s job, protection is the architect’s.

What he says already broke

These are his account of the last company. The post says $84M. The bio says $80M+ a year. I did not re-audit AppSumo.

  • One processor. 90% of revenue ran through one Stripe account when a 30-day termination notice landed.
  • One list. A million-person email list went dark overnight.
  • One codebase. He wrote “depreciated code.” The point he is making: the site had to be rebuilt, fast, because it could not be patched in place.
  • One city, frozen pipes. He spells it “snowpocapyse.” He says Austin, 50%+ of the team affected, and rescue runs with clean water because the pipes froze. He does not date the storm. The company figures are his.

Four lock-downs

His list, in his order.

Identity and access

  • Three YubiKeys for the CEO: one carried, one in a home safe, one off-site. One key in a bag is the same single point of failure, with a lanyard.
  • No SMS codes on money, email, or domains. A text is a phone number, and a phone number can be moved to another SIM.
  • Two owners on every root account: registrar, email host, bank, payment processor, and the admin that can delete the site.

AI fraud defense

  • A spoken code word for the exec team and the family. Agree it somewhere a podcast cannot hear it.
  • Two people approve a bank movement over $50k. His number. Pick yours and write it down.
  • No wires after 3pm Friday. His clock. The useful part is an hour when tired people stop moving money.
  • A quarterly fake call to finance, engineering, and the execs. The person who picks up uses the callback rule below.

Financial barbell

  • Six months of operating expenses, split across two banks.
  • No payment processor over 60% of volume.
  • $1M or more in liquid money outside the business. He wants about 90% of that in cash, Treasuries, and physical gold and silver, across three locations. That mix is his coaching standard. This page leaves the allocation alone.

Continuity and the bus file

  • 3-2-1-1 backups, the copy he called immutable, tested every quarter. The ordinary reading: three copies, two kinds of storage, one offsite, and one the live system cannot rewrite. A backup you have never restored is a hope.
  • The email list exported to cold storage every month, somewhere the sending tool cannot reach.
  • A 72-hour incapacity clause that names an interim CEO. Write the name while everyone is healthy.

The voice

“Twenty seconds of podcast audio” is his line for cloning a voice and calling the CFO for a wire. I did not attach a lab paper to that number. His conclusion still stands on its own: a control that depends on “I would recognize his voice” is finished.

The outside source is the FBI’s 15 May 2025 public service announcement, I-051525-PSA. Since April 2025, attackers had been sending text messages and AI-generated voice messages that claim to come from a senior US official, to build rapport and then reach personal accounts. The announcement says a message that claims to be from a senior US official is untrusted until you check it another way. The Register read the bureau’s advice as: call back on the department’s own number.

@Avatier replied the same day with the company version. The cloned voice also works on the help desk, where a password reset often gets fewer checks than a wire. A callback to the number already in the directory still works when the voice is convincing.

A code word stops a stranger who has only the public voice. The callback, and a second person who must approve the wire, still work after the voice is perfect. On this site, an agent that can already spend is the same shape of problem: /gymhack.

How long the shelf lasts

Five clocks got mashed together in one week of posts. They are different jobs.

  • Ready.gov, several days. The US household floor on /offline. Kit page updated 1 July 2026. One gallon of water per person per day.
  • Tom Morgan, two weeks. His aim on the same page, if you have the space. Start at several days.
  • UK Be Ready, three days. The Cabinet Office launched the campaign on 22 Oct 2026. The advice at the heart of it is three days of disruption, the same ask France, Ireland, and the Netherlands use. The Guardian reported up to nine litres of bottled water and three days of food, with three litres per person per day for drinking. Reuters reported the same three-day ask, tied to weather, cyber incidents, and that week’s PHP outage.
  • Bongino, “30 days” as something he had heard. On his podcast around 26 Oct 2026 he told people to take the warnings seriously and to skip the panic. Mediaite quotes him attributing “30 days of preparedness and having food ready and power” to the UK government and others, then quotes his list: an emergency radio, batteries, emergency food, rain collection, water filtration, filtration tablets. He also said to make “Fortress my house” and “Fortress my apartment.” The UK campaign that week asks for three days. Thirty days is what he said he had heard.
  • Pentagon FORTRESS, 90 days for bases. Pete Hegseth announced FORTRESS on 30 Sep 2026. In that speech, every major US installation generates its own power, independent of the civilian grid. The “90 days without outside support” line is Fox News Digital on 25 Oct 2026, from documents Fox said it reviewed. The Pentagon has not published those documents. Snopes calls the initiative mostly true and leaves the 90-day requirement on that report. Bongino repeated the 90-day line. That standard is for bases.
  • Ayman, 30 days for the CEOs he coaches. Water, food, solar or a battery, a Starlink Mini, a go-binder, and small bills, at home, so your head stays clear. He wants the execs covered too. Thirty days is his bar. It is longer than Ready.gov, longer than Tom, and longer than the UK campaign.

Thirty days of not needing anyone

His home list adds a Starlink Mini. A terminal needs power and a clear view of the sky. The paper kit on /offline still works when the sky is useless: small bills, stored water, a radio, a meeting point written in pen.

A shop that cannot see a network cannot run a card or an ordinary Bitcoin payment. That split is /fiatvsbitcoin. For the shelf, the useful fact is smaller. Small bills.

The interim CEO needs the same shelf. A 72-hour clause that names a person who is also out of water names a spectator. Print /offline for your house and for theirs. The next day he said a Sunday newsletter would go deeper on the home plan and the buy order. The shelf on this site is the page you can print.

What to run

  • Keep: the $5M question, twice a year, where a second owner can read it. Two owners on the registrar, the inbox, the bank, the processor, and the admin that can delete the site. Hardware keys carried, at home, and off-site. SMS off those accounts. A wire rule with a second person and a clock. A callback to a number you already stored. A family code word agreed off a recording. A quarterly fake call to finance. The email list exported monthly to storage the sending tool cannot reach. Immutable backups, with a restore you have actually done. A named person for the next 72 hours. The home shelf on /offline for you and for that person.
  • His, filed as his: the AppSumo percentages, the $84M against a bio that says $80M+ a year, six months of operating expenses, no processor over 60%, $1M outside the company in his 90% mix, metal in three places, a Starlink Mini as required gear, and twenty seconds of audio.
  • Leave on the other page: gallons, food, the radio, the pharmacy answer, the meeting point, small bills, and the print button. The first purchase there stays Ready.gov’s several days. A base’s 90 days and a coach’s 30 days are the other clocks, already separated above.

Sources

Related on this site

  • Offline — the paper kit. Print that one
  • Security desk — keys, patches, and a hidden origin, for while the network is up
  • macOS Keychain — day-to-day secrets stay out of chat and off a printed password list
  • Fiat vs Bitcoin — a shop that cannot see a network can refuse a card and a coin
  • Gym hack — an agent with a credential is already inside

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