There are two elements in particular that I think are very interesting in terms of preparedness: the first is the medical stuff. Claire is a WWII nurse when she gets pulled in to the stone circle that somehow enables time travel - to avoid too many spoilers, lets say she has further modern qualifications, but when she's back in the 18th century she learns from many practitioners there, as well as doing some teaching. Her herbal skills, and her use of alcohol, vinegar, and distilled water, as well as her fairly well documented attempts to reproduce penicillin, are powerfully used within the books.
The other element is the slow descent into the formal Declaration of Independence in 1776, and how things varied and shifted both before and after that date. I knew that the War went on till 1783 in historical terms, but I'd never thought much about the prior growth of political violence.
I suppose I'd thought of it in terms of the French Revolution, which is spitting distance away, and although there were grumblings and discontents for many years, I don't *think* there was much in the way of overt violence, comparatively speaking. Of course, in France they were at the heart of a centralised state, and America was a colony being carved out of primeval forest, very different situations.
Really interesting set of books, though
