Do you know what you’re preparing for? It may sound like an odd question, but most people really don’t have a clue.
To begin with, you need to understand the exact types of disasters and threats you’re going to face. This may sound a little simplistic, but not all disasters are created equal. What works in one situation, or in one area of the world, may not work when you factor in specific location-based threats.
While some of the supplies, techniques, and skills you need to survive may overlap, to be truly prepared for any situation you need to know exactly what type of disasters you’re preparing for and what problems you’ll most likely encounter as a result of that specific disaster.
In later chapters I will discuss how to identify and prepare for disaster-specific problems. But to get the most out of this book, and to be prepared for the specific threats that will most likely affect you, you’re going to have to do a little work.
That work starts with identifying the most likely threats you’ll face based on your geographical location, your lifestyle, and a number of other factors that will be unique to your specific situation. The following section will help you get started with your preparedness planning.
A threat assessment helps you visualize what threats you’ll face, scrutinize known risks related to the threat, strategically evaluate your response, and helps you start to identify the specific steps you need to take to stay safe. It’s going to help you protect the people you love from harm.
There are three primary objectives when performing a threat assessment:
When performing your threat assessment, keep the following things in mind:
The first step in analyzing your overall preparedness is to identify the most likely threats you’ll face based on where you live, your lifestyle, and historical trends.
Make a realistic list of what the most likely threats are and how the threats will affect you should you face them. This should be a location-specific list; if you live in the Mojave Desert, hurricanes probably shouldn’t be on the list. That being said, when traveling to a new area on vacation, I always do a mini threat assessment before leaving.
Under each threat, make a list of your vulnerabilities based on that specific threat. What problems do you foresee happening when the threat strikes? Think about disaster-specific threats as well as threats that may come from how people react to the disaster.
Do you or anyone in your family have any personal considerations that could be exacerbated due to each of the identified threats? These can include medical conditions, age-related limitations, mobility issues,or specific dietary needs that might be hard to meet during a disaster.
After the initial threat has passed, are there any threats you expect to spring up as a result of the disaster? These can include power outages, looting, home invasions, or anything that may be specific to your location. For instance, if you live near a nuclear reactor that could be affected by the initial disaster, this would definitely be a threat you need to list. Consider what happened as a result of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami that crippled Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.
Location-based threats may not be immediately apparent, but I bet there’re more potential threats in your neighborhood than you’ve probably considered.
The first step in minimizing your threat to a hazard is awareness. You need to take a serious look at your immediate area and figure out what potential dangers exist.
Deadly chemicals, flammable and explosive substances, and even radioactive materials are shipped daily on the nation’s highways and railways. Most chemical accidents are caused by transportation accidents. Even people living in the most remote areas of the country cannot completely insulate themselves from danger. In fact, if you live anywhere near a highway or a railway, there’s a pretty good chance you have hazardous chemicals traveling through your area on a daily basis.
It’s estimated that in the United States alone, some 4.5 million facilities either store or use hazardous chemicals and materials. Many of these facilities are allowed to operate in or near residential areas, where a hazardous material accident or chemical spill could quickly overtake a neighborhood.
From obvious places like industrial plants and chemical waste sites to not-so-obvious places like hospitals, dry cleaners, and food processing plants, you need to be aware that hazardous material accidents can happen anywhere.
Most communities have Local Emergency Planning Committees that are responsible for knowing what chemicals are being used in a community and developing plans to deal with emergencies involving those chemicals. Your local Emergency Planning Committee should be able to provide you with this information and is the first place I would start. These committees are usually run by local government officials and/or local fire or law enforcement departments.
Find out what chemicals are being used near your home, and find out what plans and warning systems are in place.
Besides being an obvious terrorist target, almost one-third of U.S. dams are over fifty years old, the average lifespan of most dams. Even more troubling is the fact that somewhere around fourteen thousand dams are classified as high-hazard, meaning that any operational mistake could cause a significant loss in human life; two thousand are so bad that they have been rated structurally deficient, meaning they are at a high risk of failure.
Most Americans are unaware of the problems and don’t even realize their homes lie directly in the path of an inundation zone. Because the government restricts most maps from showing inundation zones, check with your state’s dam safety agency or talk to local emergency management officials about potential dangers.
According to the FBI, there are over 1.4 million active gang members and around thirty-three thousand different gangs in the United States. What was once largely an urban problem has now spread into even the most rural areas of the country.
While the aftermath of each disaster will be specific to the situation, there are some general repercussions that play out during almost every type of disaster.
Depending on the severity of the disaster, there’s a good chance you could take a major economic hit. From not being able to access your bank accounts due to power outages caused by a natural disaster to longer-term problems like the inability to work due to illness or workplace closures, consider the possibility of lost income.
During almost every type of local or regional natural disaster, you are probably going to face at least a few disruptions in essential services. Electrical grid and energy failures, water shortages and shutdowns, and the disruption of telecommunications routinely happen during even small-scale disasters. Losing these essential services means losing the ability to
To be ready for essential services shutdowns
Food, water and emergency supplies are going to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to come by following a disaster. During disasters that cause major road closures and breakdowns in fuel distribution, you may have to live off the supplies you have in your home for an extended period of time.
Supplies are hard to come by leading up to and following a disaster for two reasons: a breakdown in delivery systems and panic buying from people who failed to prepare.
When planning to survive any long-term disaster, something that’s often overlooked is the danger associated with a lack of adequate sanitation. I know it’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but if faced with a situation where sewage systems stopped working and garbage trucks stopped running, sanitation issues could quickly become a life-threatening problem.
In the aftermath of a major natural disaster or economic collapse, violence, looting, and an increase in criminal behavior is almost a certainty. Unfortunately, the world is filled with people who love to take advantage of these types of disasters for their own personal gain. To be truly prepared, you need to be able to defend yourself during the aftermath of any type of disaster.
The next step in the threat assessment process is to assess how each of the identified threats will affect you and then figure out what needs to be done to protect yourself and your family from those threats.
The final step in the threat assessment process is to take immediate protective actions that will help prevent or minimize your exposure to the identified threats.
Most of the location-based threats you’ll face have dedicated chapters in this book that contain detailed survival strategies. In addition to those strategies, keep the following in mind.
Many localized emergencies can be survived simply by leaving the area, so having an evacuation plan is vital to your safety. In the case of something like a chemical spill or terrorist attack, where seconds can literally mean the difference between life and death, you need to have multiple routes out of town.
Because time is of the essence during any evacuation, you can’t afford to waste it on packing up emergency supplies. That’s why it’s so important to put together a bag of emergency supplies, called a bug out bag, that can be grabbed at a moment’s notice.
If you need to quickly evacuate, having emergency cash can help you do everything from rent a hotel room to stock up on extra supplies. Remember, you can’t count on being able to use electronic payments during a crisis situation.
Now that you’ve performed a realistic threat assessment, the next step in the preparedness process is finding out how prepared you are to face each of the identified threats. To do this, you need to perform something called a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a simple but useful method of really understanding
Performing a SWOT analysis on yourself, your family, and your capabilities is a great way to determine how prepared you are to face the unique challenges of surviving any crisis.
When identifying your survival strengths, a good place to start is to take an inventory of supplies you currently have. This can be everything from food and ammo to knowledge or specific skills you might possess.
Analyzing your strengths will give you a good idea of what you’re capable of doing. It’s also a great way to highlight and use overlooked things that could be extremely beneficial during a survival situation.
This is where you really have to be honest with yourself. Honestly detailing your weaknesses will help you better prepare to survive a crisis situation. When you know what your weaknesses are, you can take steps to deal with them so they don’t hinder you in a crisis.
Try to imagine what resources and opportunities are available to you and what will be around when a disaster strikes. List the opportunities you can take advantage of as well as those that will be important during a survival situation.
To truly be prepared, you need to have a realistic idea of what threats are out there and how likely it is that each of those threats could happen. By going through this exercise, you can better prepare yourself to face any scenario a disaster may throw at you. You will know exactly what skills you need to work on, what plans you need to put in place, and what equipment you will need.
This should expand on your threat assessment and take into account any secondary threats that could result from the initial disaster.
The most important part of performing a SWOT analysis is what you do with your findings. There’s no point in performing one if you don’t plan on taking action. Now that you have a good idea of the disasters you could face and your overall level of preparedness, you need to act on your findings and create a strategic plan of action. The next chapter will help you create that plan.