Disaster Preparation
1. Identify/prioritize likely threats or disasters.
2. ID resources (internal and external)
3. Develop Courses of Action using a decision making process
4. Initiate disaster preparation; acquire skills, materials, etc.
5. Establish responsibilities, conduct rehearsals, conduct internal and external quality assurance checks, document, revise and repeat.
How you prepare for disasters will depend on the threats you face and the remaining social structure you anticipate during and after a catastrophe. A disaster can be natural, or manmade. It could be pandemic, a hurricane, a wildfire, an earthquake, a flood, or a war. It is likely that sometime in your life, no matter where you live, you will be without normal amenities for an extended period of days, weeks, or even more. A facility based analysis of disaster threats would look as follows.
Disaster Analysis
Frequency of Occurrence:
• Highly likely (Near 100% probability in the next year)
• Likely (Between 10% and 100% probability in the next year, or at least one chance in the next 10 years)
• Possible (Between 1% and 10% probability in the next year, or at least one chance in the next 100 years)
• Unlikely (Less than 1% probability in the next 100 years)
Seasonal pattern?
• No
• Yes. Specify season(s) when hazard occurs:
Potential Impact:
• Catastrophic (Multiple deaths; shutdown of critical facilities for 1 month or more; more than 50% of property severely damaged)
• Critical (Injuries or illness resulting in permanent disability; shutdown of critical facilities for at least 2 weeks; 25% to 50% of property severely damaged)
• Limited (Temporary injuries; shutdown of critical facilities for 1-2 weeks; 10% to 25% of property severely damaged)
• Negligible (Injuries treatable with first aid; shutdown of critical facilities for 24 hours or less; less than 10% of property severely damaged)
Are any areas or facilities more likely to be affected (e.g., air, water, or land; infrastructure)? If so, which?
Speed of Onset:
• Minimal or no warning
• 6 to 12 hours warning
• 12 to 24 hours warning
• More than 24 hours warning
Potential for Cascading Effects?
• No
• Yes. Specify effects:
The survival saw goes that you can survive six minutes without air, six days without water, and six weeks without food. While that is generally true, in each of those cases, you will not be doing much effectively after the first third of the respective period expires. It is up to you to see that you and any dependents have their needs (not necessarily wants) taken care of. It is not the government’s responsibility to take care of you, regardless of what our entitlement society's members believe. Those who expect the government to take care of them, review the Katrina tapes. Do you want to be airlifted off your roof to move to the Super Dome? Even well-meaning citizens will scramble and loot when they think they are going to run out of food and water and they see others getting away with it. You saw the looting of stores. If you are going to be the only one on the block with lights on and a generator humming away, once the stores are empty, guess where they are headed?
Thanks to modern transportation and economic efficiencies, your local box store or grocery has no attached warehouse. Everything they have is on the shelf, and to save money and space, it is normally only a few days of merchandise. If you live in an area that occasionally gets snow or hurricanes, you know what happens to the perishables and common necessities like bread, milk, eggs, batteries, bottled water, etc. There will not be more stuff appearing on the shelf until the trucks (and drivers) can get from the warehouse to the stores, and the stores have enough workers to open for business. There will be no more coming to the warehouse till the trucks (and drivers) get it from the distributors and wholesalers. Due to “Just in Time” manufacturing, there will be no more for them until the manufacturers (or growers, in the case of food) get their workers back on the jobs and their parts and components from the sub contractors, or increasingly today, the ports where they are brought in. The component makers will need labor and raw materials. You can see where this is headed. In the US, we live about 48 hours from a disaster. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you saw what is likely to happen in the event of a localized catastrophe, with the rest of the country outside of the few affected states available to respond. Society imploded. Imagine what it would be like if the region, the country, the continent, or the world, are all experiencing their own disasters and are not available to help. The mobs looting and roaming the streets looking for food, booze, drugs, guns, or victims could be your neighbors. You need to decide now if you are going to be a sheep, a wolf, or a sheepdog, and prepare accordingly.
Next, you need to analyze your most likely courses of action. Will you stay where you are or move elsewhere to unite with others or to get away from them? This is an important consideration. If you live in NYC, any disaster of more than a few days is going to be difficult to survive and will require a lot of planning and preparation. If you saw New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, you might want to reconsider planning to remain in an urban area during a catastrophe of any duration. There will be little food and clean water, and the wolves will be taking what they need from the sheep. If you are going to relocate, you need to prepare in case you are stuck where you are, and for your destination as well. This means that you will need to ensure that you have the ability to relocate, to include reliable transportation, adequate fuel, a plan to pack what you need to take and secure your home in a certain amount of time, a route (and timeline) that will not leave you stuck on the highway when disaster occurs, and that your destination will be ready when you arrive. If you saw the highways outside of New Orleans and Houston just prior to their anticipated disasters last year, you can see the fallacy of waiting too late to initiate your plan or of not having reliable transportation. This decision can have a number of branches and sequels, depending on the nature of the disaster, prep/warning time, etc. The time to work all of that out is now. If you live in East Nowhere, Oklahoma, you will also need to prepare, but you may not need to travel. Now is the time to sit down and war game what could happen, starting with the most likely/most dangerous contingencies. If you live in the Rockies, a hurricane may be unlikely and relatively less important to you than someone in Florida, who will not be very concerned with an avalanche or blizzard. Work your way down to the lesser events. Plan your fight, then fight your plan, but remain flexible. You always want to have a contingency plan or two. That hurricane may zig, rather than zag. The epidemic may start next month, rather than next year. You may be hundreds of miles from home when the disaster strikes and you may be in a completely different situation at that location, better or worse.
Categorizing Supplies
Base your plan on what services you consider vital, how long it will be before help, rescue, or normal conditions return, and how many people you will be providing for. Consider if you have additional people depending on you, whether they are family members, or you are the sort who wants to share with the entire neighborhood. As we have seen in the Pandemic Flu thread, if it mutates to a HTH strain, there are expected to be several waves of 4-6 weeks each, over a period of 18 months. There will be widespread absenteeism from work and school. When the truck driver who delivers the gas or groceries is sick (or his wife or kids), the tank or shelves are going to stay empty. The mortality rate is expected to be anywhere from .5% to 50%. Even if the lesser mortality rates occur, some of these people will be in critical positions in the manufacturing and distribution system, and consequences will follow. If the higher rate applies, there are going to be serious long-term implications. This will affect your ability to do everything from having electric power, to clean water, to gasoline, to fire and police protection, to food, to medical care. The experts are saying to have a plan for up to 90 days of essentials on hand. Full restoration of normalcy and amenities as we know them could take significantly longer. Take a clue from the Boy Scouts and be prepared.
You do not need to order a year’s supply of freeze-dried food for your family and stock up on a dozen cases of 5.56 ammo today. That is not planning, that is just stockpiling. First, as noted, you need to develop an appropriate, workable plan. Then, you need to prioritize your needs and develop a plan to acquire them in accordance with a realistic time line. You don’t have to get everything at once, but some will be high priorities and are more important to sustaining life than others. There are a number of needs and they need to be dealt with in a logical manner. As noted above, some will be a priority. You could start by taking a look at your plan and adding 10% or so to your weekly grocery buy of non-perishables. If you live in Death Valley and have your water trucked in weekly, you will have a different set of priorities than someone who lives on Lake Michigan. Figure it out and plan accordingly. The following is a sort of laundry list of requirements in a semi-prioritized fashion. We can cover each of them in more detail later.
1--Necessities: Breathable Air(N95 Mask), Food/cooking (Portable Grill), Water (Canteen and sterilizer)
2--Health: First Aid/Medicine/Sanitation (Trades in health care will become a valuable asset)
3--Defense: Firearm (Three main types for different situations ( Concealed, Close Quarters, and Ranged)) ***Factor Ammunition Availability and Price*** , Knife, Baton (Extended range with minimal risk) ect…
4--Shelter: Tent, Sleeping Bag, Foul Weather Gear (Clothes, Shoes, Poncho)
5--Communication: Amateur Radio, AM&FM Radio, Television (Cell phone service could be temporarily out of service)
6--Power/Fuel: Solar & Gas Generator, Land Line (Hidden Energy Source)
7--Tools: Household Tools, Automotive Tools, Outdoor Tools
8--Transportation/Mobility: Bicycle, Automobile, Navigation (Most reliable are Maps and a Watch (A analog watch can also serve as a compass)
9--Entertainment (Optional)
^^^General Outline, mold and shape list to your dependencies.
After you have determined the necessities to support your courses of action, you need to develop the supporting plan to acquire them.
The plan has to take into consideration the type of disaster, relative importance of the items, available budget for acquisition, and last but not least, available storage space. Get the most important items first, but not necessarily to the exclusion of other items. That year’s supply of 5 gallon buckets of hard red wheat may be a comfort to have stacked in your garage, but without a grain mill, the other ingredients, and a means to bake bread, they are not really much good except as barter to someone else who has those items. The ammo is useless without the weapon, and vice versa. Make sure that you consider those related needs before initiating your plan.
If you need skills or training, get it now. You need to know that you can bake bread before the shelves go empty. If you do not know how to do CPR, there is no time like the present. In many places, classes are free. Make sure that you know how to operate and maintain that shiny new generator before the lights go out. How long before it needs maintenance? Do you know how to do it, have the tools and supplies? If you are not sure which way the pointy things go in your new pistol, get some training. Can you really use that water purification device and provide enough potable water for the people you are trying to care for? Are you going to do it all by yourself? What if you are the first victim or are away from home when the disaster occurs? Does everyone know where the supplies are and how to use them? Get the skills, inventory, assign responsibilities, rehearse, make notes of deficiencies (human or material), correct them, make changes as needed to the plans, develop additional contingencies as required, and reevaluate periodically to ensure that you are ready. Only then will you really be prepared for a disaster. And fortune truly favors the prepared.
Special Thanks to Professional Soldiers
