Disaster Scenarios
1. Awareness
'Knowledge means power'. 'Fortune favors the prepared mind.' These are empowering statements that I have encountered in my lifelong learning; guideposts in the sometimes fearsome wilderness of the unknown. This is very much the motivation of setting out to write 'Learn everything you can'.
From Ayn Rand;
'...Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch––or build a cyclotron––without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.'
When you believe you know nothing about a situation, you always have at least one resource; your imagination. I am not referring to 'baseless imaginings' or neurotic snowballing of fears. Rather, this is;
a. assessment of available data, b. comparison with previously encountered situations, and c. allowing the mind to evolve questions of 'What if...?'
In a low-risk situation, this is a fruitful and often highly entertaining exercise. You often can take your time. It's like opening a new book; taking a deep drink of fresh life experience. It makes you feel young and alive. (One has to admit that after testing imagination against reality, some bumps and bruises may be acquired, and you may not feel quite so young but hopefully still alive.)
2. Disasters
Think about your favorite disaster movie. (OK, you may not have a favorite disaster movie. I am hopeless when it comes to these. Have to watch 'Dante's Peak'. 'Volcano'. 'Independence Day'. All of the 'Terminator' movies.)
In real life, situations are hopefully not so extreme. We've had small earthquakes here, but (so far) no volcanoes. On the farm, I've had many animal and equipment emergencies. You need to have awareness of the environment, plan ahead, and keep tools and resources at hand. If you have a bull in the field, you take a stick and have an exit strategy. If you go out for a walk at dusk, you take a flashlight and are wise to carry a cell phone. I have a section under 'Learn; Ecosystem', entitled 'Wind, Ice, Fire, Flood, and Drought'. We have experienced all of these on the farm to varying degree and in varying combinations.
But what about the bigger 'unknowns' and possibilities in the world of today? What about sheltering in place or the possible need for population migration to avoid large-scale natural or man-made disaster? What is your plan? What are your resources?
Always, the first resource is your knowledge base. 'Learn everything you can, about everything you can'. This website is an offering of resources and ways to think. It suggests ways to go about learning. The thing most needed to be taught in school is 'learning how to learn'. Regardless of your field of study, if you have been guided through the 'learning process', it can be applied to any field of inquiry or body of knowledge.
It is key to understand that a 'body of knowledge' is not a static thing. I will admit, in my early years, much 'book learning' seemed just that; static, musty, and unchanging for too long. In part, this reflects an unchanging curriculum, and educators stuck in the rut of teaching the same material year after year. Think of High School English, or Latin. it is challenging, but not impossible, to mine tidbits of contemporary relevance from stories that breathe the ancient dust of history when the books are opened. Now, indeed, as I write what may become a book, it is an enlivening experience to watch the text grow, and change. But this, too, if it should survive, will eventually have the same dust of age upon it.
3. 2012; Consideration of the prospect of economic failure.
Reviewing the recent housing bubble, Ponzi schemes, government rescue of corporations considered 'too big to fail', the upcoming 2012 election, the national Debt, and other incidents of the past few years, one must question the concept of 'assets', and what is truly valuable. Accordingly, I had drawn up the following piece based on a series of thoughts that occurred while doing morning chores.
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Protection of assets in the face of economic instability: how to structure your holdings, possessions, operations, and relationships to survive crisis and disaster.
The topic ‘protection of assets’ is currently considered to indicate a need to structure investments- I e what stocks or bonds to buy, or what possessions will retain value. But that begs the question of how to deal with the prospect of money itself- your bank account, your stocks and bonds, your ‘stuff’- becoming valueless.
http://www.thecomingdepressionblog.com/some-of-the-really-bad-things-that-could-happen-if-you-do-not-prepare-for-the-coming-economic-collapse/ Posted on Sep 6, 2012
‘During an economic collapse hard assets are preferable to paper assets. Also, during an economic collapse necessities become much more important and luxuries become much less important.’
a. Start where you are (referenced on page1, ‘the learning process’).
b. Look to your resources and your (present) infrastructure.
c. Look to your dependents.
d. Methods to meet your *needs* have to be ‘bullet-proof’, versatile, and (preferably) portable. (One of your assets that must be especially versatile is your plan itself.)
There is a relative- but only relative- reassurance in the proliferation of high-level organizations considering these very issues. They graciously outline their efforts. But the questions remain.
a. What is their perspective? Do they see the situation ‘from 20,000 feet’?
b. If they have ‘boots on the ground’, who do they choose to assist, and why, and at what cost?
Look to their efforts, copy what is relevant, but make your own plan. *Your* boots are on the ground where you are. You are the one taking the hit. You are the one who will have to get back up and respond if you want to live. Your decisions and actions will determine whether you live, and how you live.
You can’t predict all hazards. But you can devise a plan (or plans) that contain common elements required to survive.
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4. The Plan
When I worked with the American Red Cross, I was involved not only in disaster response, but also disaster preparedness education. The mantra in about 2005 went like this; 1. make a plan. 2. Build a kit. 3. Get trained. 4. Volunteer. 5.Give blood.
Now, in early 2012, the order and perspective has somewhat changed. It now reads; '1. Get a kit. 2. Make a plan. 3. Be informed. 4. List yourself safe and well.'
The American Red Cross website http://www.redcross.org has a great amount of up-to-date information. Things have moved forward since my day. There is now an interactive set of video modules covering the material we used to teach in class. It's well worth a look.
Enlarging your perspective, you can see that in some cases you would be applying this sequence of preparedness actions to something that hasn't happened yet; something that may never have happened to you, happened in this country, or happened in your lifetime. Fire, famine, disease, flood, climate change, the end of cheap oil, food wars, invasion, regime change...It CAN happen here. Granted, 'when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping', but despite the ads, 'Hannaford' will NOT always be there. Most stores keep only 3 days supply of inventory as predicted by normal shopping patterns. Some of the hallmarks of natural disaster is that the store shelves go bare, the gas stations run out of gas, and some people just don't plan ahead. What they used to say in the days of hunting with muzzle loading rifles was 'keep your powder dry.' It is a timely reminder.
Old style farmsteads had, as a consequence of 'putting food by' automatically a year's supply of food. Currently, many religious organizations have this as either an item of faith or as a matter of best practice.
5. Application to the Ecosystem
It is understandable and appropriate to apply disaster planning to the big, bad scenarios. Financial disaster, catastrophic ill health, wind storms, ice storms, fire, flood and drought are all real possibilities, and the tip of the iceberg (so to speak) in terms of what may come.
At the same time it is important to understand that the same process; visualization/imagination, planning, gathering of resources, and implementation; can be applied to interactions with and optimization of the ecosystem. You can look at not only how things can go poorly, but how they can go well.
As an example, I have cattle, fields, and a big garden. Manure in the wrong place is an example of things going poorly, so-called 'waste' actually going to waste. Manure plus wood ash plus bone meal in the right place are an example of things going well. This is something I've been actively evolving over the last several years. My 'kit' includes a shovel, a wagon, and a manure spreader. I have moved from buying chemical fertilizer to saving wood ash and making my own bone meal. The circles reach out and interlock.
The American Red Cross educational materials stop at the point where you have survived the disaster. In the ecosystem you get to look at- in this case- the harvest and the condition of the soil at the end of the growing season. It should always look (and be) better, when you are finished. As you benefit from it, it should benefit from you.