Sunday, February 26, 2012

A better oriented beginning....

Ok. So I have been thinking a lot about preparations and planning lately. The other day, I downloaded a piece of mind mapping software. I sat down, and started populating it with data – the thoughts in my head as they came up. It was an extremely interesting exercise. By looking at your thought patterns; where thoughts came up in relation to other thoughts, you begin to see the interrelatedness of your thoughts that you may not have realized before.

After I 'emptied my head', I took a long look at the raw thought map. I engaged in this exercise because I had an overwhelming feeling by most of the stuff that went on in my own head. I felt that I was in a constant state of being pulled in too many directions. What I found was that I was absolutely correct! My mind map (actually, it is probably more accurate and descriptive to refer to is as a thought map) resembled a bowl of spaghetti. No single line of thought could be followed through to its logical conclusion.

The next step is where I started to have some fun. I began to re-order my thoughts on the map in logical sequences and groups. Initially, my thoughts pulled me in 15 different directions (literally, there were 15 different major categories that my thoughts fell into). On a minute by minute basis, I was juggling 15 balls mentally (hence my overwhelmed feeling). Once I was done ordering and prioritizing my 'thought' map, every thought/activity in my life fell into one of 2 categories. Mentally, I went from juggling 15 balls, to 2 balls. Within each of those life areas, there were 6-9 sub categories. I only delve into one of the sub-categories if I am currently mentally holding the appropriate 'ball'. Even as I type this, I recognize that this may paint an odd mental picture for some. I'm sorry, it is a map of my thoughts...you'll understand a map of your thoughts much more clearly.

One of the 'sub-categories' that I wound up digging into was preparations. I was all over the map on this one. In some areas, I was on point; while in other, more fundamental areas, I was completely ignorant as to what I even needed.

As many of my friends know, I was a prepper before being a prepper was mainstream, or cool. I was a Y2K prepper. I took a lot of grief and cajoling over that event. I never bought into the whole 'TEOTWAWKI' concept. My concerns centered on one weakness....the power grid. Of all of the 'systems' our society depends on daily, none are more taken for granted that the electrical power system, 'the grid' if you will. My contention was that if the power grid failed, even locally, for more than 2-3 days; we would have been living in a dire emergency. As a mental exercise, imagine our modern world without electricity for a day. If we knew the event to be a matter of a series of repairs that needed to be made, the first day may actually be kind of fun. Most people wouldn't go to work. Neighborhoods would come together. Neighbors may even meet each other for the first time, and share a beer. Grills would be fired up to cook meat that may go bad without refrigeration.

As an aside, my Y2K preps centered on a world without electricity for up to 2 weeks. There was credible evidence that loss of the power grid was very possible at midnight, January 1, 2000.

Now, let's move back to our hypothetical power outage event. Many people, a few hours into the event, may decide it is in their best interest to go out and top off gas in the cars, and grab some food from the grocery store. These people will see the first hints of trouble. Imagine the traffic in your area...without traffic signals. They use electricity, which means they are not working. Not just one intersection, but all intersections. Imagine a large city with no traffic control. So, our venturing soul makes it to a gas station near the neighborhood. Let's assume, for a moment, that they can drive right up to the pump (unlikely in that our hypothetical venturing soul will not be the only one who decides they might need to top off the cars). What do they find when they get there? An electrically operated gas pump. Gas is stored underground, and has to be pumped up to your vehicle. Those pumps require electricity. Some gas stations may have back up generators to run the pumps and store power. How long will the gas last? Till the next tanker truck shows up? What, the one that is stuck in traffic? You start to see the cracks in societies armor. One major systems failure (power grid), would severely overload other major critical systems (logistics & transportation), while completely bringing down other systems (traffic control). Do you think police and fire vehicles are going to get through the traffic much better (Security).

Now, in your mind, extend our simple power grid failure out 3 days. Do you start to see what I saw? Fortunately, Y2K was a non event; and all of my friends pointed and laughed at me and said “See, I told you so”! I am glad it didn't' happen. I only had 2 weeks of 'preps'. My estimation was that to prep for longer, and still exist in the current reality, was cost prohibitive. Another reality was that my '2 weeks' most likely would have not lasted that long. My own after action report indicated that I had overlooked several fundamentals.

The main weakness in my plans, was that my preps, and my life were not compatible. You may ask exactly what that means. Let me paint a picture. What if I was able to accurately tell you that you had a 100% certainty that you would experience a total infrastructure failure in 48 hours, that would last for 48 hours. Now, what if I told you that you had a 25% chance of a partial infrastructure failure over a county wide area within the next month, and it could last from 2 weeks to 2 months. What if the second scenario was the same 100% chance, but the event duration was 2 months, and national is scope? What if you had 3 months notice to prepare for it? What if instead of a 100% likely hood, there was a 50% likely hood. Do you start to see the problem with prepping? There are SO many variables, and odds of likely hood. The scope and odds of any particular event affects our 'normal' life decisions. Would you pay your credit card bill in all of those scenarios? Power bill? Would you spend the same as you always do on groceries in all of these scenarios?

The 'hard core' preppers would tell us that you are not a prepper unless you have built an underground bunker that can withstand an atomic blast,and you have at least 5 years of food and water stored up. Not only that, but you need seeds and tools to 'rebuild' society after you come out of the bunker. Can you afford to do that and still live in today's society? I can't!

So, where does that leave the average Joe who believes that it is smart to be ready for some tough stuff, but recognizes that prepping for an all out nuclear war in your back yard is cost prohibitive? That is where I am starting. I have been listening to a guy named Jack Spirko, and his Survival Podcast (http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/ ). The first thing that I heard him say that made perfect sense, was the 'mission statement' of his podcast; “Helping you live that better life for when times get tough, or even if they don't”. There, for the first time, I came face to face with root cause failure of my preps. They failed to take into account, “what if this doesn't happen”? I can liquidate my families assets, and bug out to the hills; and effectively 'drop out' of the system next month. Does that improve my quality of life? No, it doesn't. So there's the central tenant to prepping. Sure, plan for rough times, but don't destroy your current life over what may happen. Preps and life should coincide, and compliment each other.

With this new paradigm in place, I looked at prepping in a layered arrangement. There are 4 different scopes of disaster I am looking at. Within each scope, I am looking at 9 'critical systems' that are vulnerable. My goal, is to look into each of the scope and system combinations in this blog; one per week. Scopes and systems may be added or deleted based on discussion and analysis. Your comments to this blog can point me in different directions, or drill down deeper on some of the existing concepts.

Personal disasters

What is a personal disaster? Simply put, a personal disaster is any event that significantly disrupts your life, but your household continues to function normally. This could be anything from the death of a spouse, to an injury. With a personal disaster, you are unable to function in the same manner after the event as you were the day before the event. For me, it was difficult to imagine a personal disaster, that was not also a household disaster because I am the bread winner of my family. You too, may find yourself in this situation, but it is useful to at least think through events that could be a personal disaster, where your household would still function as normal.

Since personal disasters include things like death, injury, and sicknesses; we can conclude that there is a 100% likely hood that you will experience a personal disaster in your lifetime.

Household disasters

As I said, it was hard for me to separate personal disasters and household disasters. A household disaster is and event that significantly disrupts your household, but your neighborhood continues to function normally. Depending on the event, those in your neighborhood may come to your aid in such an event.

Again, since this area would encompass death, injury, and sickness, of not only you, but of those in your household, we can conclude that there is a 100% likely hood that you will experience a household disaster in your lifetime.

Neighborhood disasters

A neighborhood disaster is any event that significantly disrupts your neighborhood, in which society outside of your neighborhood continues to function normally. Recent examples of neighborhood disasters (although, perhaps 'events' is a more appropriate term) in my neighborhood has been crime, nearly having a haz mat induced evacuation (a battery recycling business just north of us caught on fire), power outages, and internet outages. Before you laugh at the lack of internet service as a disaster, think about how tied to it we are; especially for communication and news. ATM's and gas pumps need the connections as well. Do you live near a major rail line (as I do). Have you thought about a derailment with a haz mat leak on that line? We had a derailment a few months ago just north of our neighborhood. Fortunately it was a couple of miles away, and did not involve haz mat. But, what if it did? Do you live near a major interstate, US highway, or state highway? Trucks carry haz mat too.

My neighborhood has already experienced events such as these to one degree or another. As such, we could conceivably say that there is a 100% likely hood of one of these events occurring. As a prepper, we should be focused on the events that are 'significant'. It is up to each individual to determine where that threshold is. For my assessment, I peg the likely hood of a significant neighborhood event in my lifetime at 90%

City wide 'events'

A city wide event would be any significant event that adversely affects one's ability to live in their current location, but society continues to function normally at the county level. Examples of these type of events could be storms, criminal refugee on the loose, loss of water/sewage services, etc.

My personal assessment puts the likely hood of an even of this scope at about 75%.

Larger scopes

Obviously, we can continue this exercise through, the county, area, state, regional, national, continental, and global levels; and doing so is a perfectly legitimate exercise. But, before we go off the deep end here, let's look at our 'prepper mind map'. The larger our scope becomes, the less likely we are to experience a significant event. Now, let me pause here and address on bit of concern. We are currently in a global economic 'event'. Depending on who you believe, it is either just getting started, or is getting better...you decide. A person who looses their job in the current economic environment may argue that a 'global' event is closer to 100% likely. My argument is that the true 'event' that you should be prepping for is much closer to home...in this case, at the household level.

I also contend that the larger the scope of the event, the less and less my personal decisions matter. There is a point where using our resources to prep for events reaches a point of diminishing returns. That is not to say that we should ignore larger scope events. Quite the contrary. I am finding that if you concentrated on the fundamental preps closer to home, many of those preps will serve you well in a larger scope event. I think back to the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict. We can make the argument that that was an area event (Metro LA is huge!) As rioters and looters swarmed the lawless streets, one man sat on his front porch with a .22 rifle at the entrance to his neighborhood, and no one entered that neighborhood to engage in criminal activity. This man employed a household prep (security), that benefited his neighborhood, in an area event. He could have used his limited resources in the days and weeks leading up to the event (if he had known it was coming) to organize a militia that committed themselves to protecting a 4 block area in the event that law enforcement was overwhelmed. Now, I am not poo pooing the concept of the militia (I am in the militia, and this will be a discussion for the future as well), but this man leveraged his resources to the maximum advantage. The cost of the rifle, and the ammo in it, and any training he may have taken; would have done nothing if spent trying to protect a larger area. I say all of that to say this, start small (scope), and concentrate on the fundamentals.

What are the fundamentals? Withing each scope, I have identified 9 critical systems. Discussion may lead us to add more, or take some away. Many of the systems are interdependent. Here they are:

Shelter
Water
Food
Security
Communications/media
Energy
Transportation
Financial
Health care

Once per week, my plan is to write a blog post drilling down on a specific scope, or fundamental system.

Humans are social creatures. There are some people who can exist alone, and are happier for it. I propose to you that they are in the vast minority. I am fairly non-social myself. It takes me time to warm up to someone. Even I crave social interaction. We are a community. Have you ever noticed that the people who claim that they can survive TEOTWAWKI, follow that up with a pronouncement that they will emerge to rebuild society? As humans, we thrive on social interaction. We each bring strengths and weaknesses to the table. We seek out the best in each other, to augment our weaknesses. We can not do it alone. Many, whether they admit it or not, would rather die than not be able to exist in some form of community.

To that end, let us explore this together.

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