This is documentation of my personal exploration of preparedness as a philosophy and a practice. The subject is interpreted differently by different people. Same words, different dictionaries. Being prepared is fundamentally about having the skills and resources needed for any commonly (or uncommon) anticipated or probable events which would impact one’s daily work and life. Many people do not prepare, period. Others consider having guns and bulk food enough. Others go all out and build bug-out locations, bunkers, and other structures. I intend to explore preparedness from a biblical and practical perspective. This exploration will consider areas which I believed are often overlooked by many.
[[MORE]]
Philosophy of Preparedness
There are many websites which provide preparedness information. These sites tend to focus on common disaster scenarios and skills. No single person will have all the skills needed to do all of the things needed in every scenario. It is just not possible and that is OK. Being prepared is about getting by, tolerating the situation, and surviving until life and infrastructure resume. While there are certainly those who are waiting to try out their skull bashing skills in a zombie apocalypse, there are more sane individuals that need to consider real situations common to their environments, family, and themselves. Preparedness is about practice more than stock piles. Those come later. In order to live off food that has been stored, one must know how to cook that food in way that is both nutritional and edible. Buying bulk bags of flour and never using them is not going to help you in a disaster. If you have not been cooking with flour on the regular, you will be hard pressed to learn in a stressful time with limited resources (water, electricity, other ingredients). The foods that you commonly eat are the foods you should be stocking. Instead of purchasing a week or two of a food, buy three to five weeks worth. Consider different ways to prepare those foods and recipes that could easily be executed on a grill, fireplace, or fire-pit. Then attempt to cook on those other places. Don\\’t expect you will figure it out in the dead of winter when the power is out. Try cooking on your grill with an alternative fuel while the electricity is on, the sun is shining, and there is charcoal available in the store. ## Community
Preparedness as a philosophy and practice is counter-cultural to our society. We live in a grand age of convenience. Food can be delivered within a day. We could easily live in our homes, almost never leave, and never miss a beat. This I tell you is not what God intended for us. We are meant to interact with other people outside of our homes. We are meant to be in community together. It is in our communities where we are to share our knowledge and skills with one another. Because no one person can know all things, skills should be spread among the community. We all have our gifts and talents. Those talents can benefit our community. If a man is excellent in gardening, he may be able to build a community garden and teach others to maintain it. Another person may be well versed in communications and be able to establish a radio network which can be leveraged for local community communication in general, and required community communication when disaster strikes. Each person has their own specialties which can benefit the community as a whole. However, this also requires people to know each other and build relationships before disaster strikes. The art of neighboring is real and can create some strong relationships that will be helpful when it counts. Think of your community as a military company. Within that company there are specialists; medical, man of arms, communications, etc. These roles are essential to us and are covered by many service providers when life is going well. But when life is disrupted there needs to be alternatives and those need specialists. The following list is not all inclusive but is here to stimulate your mind in thinking about the services you currently enjoy and the specialists needed to provide them in a grid-down situation. Areas of Specialty within Communities– Food Procurement
- Hunting and field dressing
- Fishing
- Gardening
- Farming
- Food canning and storage
- Cooking
- Shelter
- Repairing existing shelters
- Building new shelters
- Communications
- Radio communication (general, Morse-code, local, long range)
- Postal services (sharing and routing hand-written communications)
- Library Science and Information Handling
- Before the Internet fails
- Organizing locally collected information
- Academic resources (K-12 curriculum)
- Medical resources (First-Aid, advanced first-aid, medicinal herbs)
- Logistical resources
- Mechanical resources
- Water Management
- Collecting and distributing
- Sourcing
- Logistics
- Resource coordination and dispensing (food, medication)
- Documenting and managing roles and responsibilities (think HR)
- Waste management
- Security
- Command
- Establishing boarders
- Patrols and communications
- Armory
- Government
- No need to reinvent the wheel here, but leadership and supporting roles are important.
- Healthcare
- Pharmacological
- General practitioner
- First-aid
If your community was to be cut off from the larger local region during a time of extreme infrastructure collapse these areas of specialty would be important. Not all of which will need to be established day one, but having a plan to stand them up when the time is right will be very helpful. Remember when we are stressed, we want to be able to respond to the situation, not start planning it out. ## Starting at Home
Families are the building blocks of communities. When families are broken down, communities fail and eventually die. We need to start at home in our preparedness. Food, water, and security are first. We are assuming that a shelter (your primary residence) is already established. You and your family can start by first deciding upon the disasters most likely to befall you in your area. These disasters are likely to have some commonalities. It is those commonalities where you want to start your planning. Here are a few that may be common around the country. ### Scenario 1: Hurricane or Tornado
In this scenario electricity is almost surely lost for a while. Water supplies can be disrupted if you are using a well pump or municipally supplied water. Roadways can become blocked, flooding can take place, stores can close for business. Communication networks could also be taxed or out of service. Hindrances– Power loss
- Supply chain disruption
- Roadways down
- Communications disruption
Scenario 2: Severe Snow Storm
In this scenario power outages can occur along with roadways becoming impassable. Communications can be disrupted, but generally has not happened in my experience. Travel is certainly impacted due to road conditions and low visibility. However, because road conditions are hindered, getting to the store to get supplies will be difficult. For some power loss in this scenario can also result in a loss of heat. Hindrances– Power loss
- Compromised roadways and travel
- Heating loss
- Supply chain disruption
In each scenario there are considerations for you, your family, your pets, and home. The United States Federal Environmental Management Agency (FEMA) has great PDF file about disaster prep which I recommend you read. Planning through the scenarios and common hindrances for you and yours is important. Practice of those plans and skills are even more important. You need to take stock of the normal rhythms of your daily life and then practice them as if a disaster has struck. How will you cook your breakfast with out a stove, oven, or microwave? What about coffee in the morning when the coffee shop is closed and your coffee maker is without electricity? Will coffee even matter? Perhaps. ## Taking Stock
Take some time to walk around your home with a pencil and a pad of paper. Take note of what items in your house are used everyday. Toothpaste, toilet paper, coffee maker, pet food (does it need a can opener?), washing machine, dishwasher, television, computer, toys, lamps, etc. Take notice of these items and write them down. After you have a list, think about how you could live without them for a short or long period of time. What would you need to sustain or replace them? Do you have enough toilet paper to last a week? Do you even know how much your home uses in a week? Could you make coffee over an open fire? How would you communicate with your family if you needed to leave the house and cell service was compromised? How would you get or share information with others without the Internet? These are questions we should as ourselves and seriously consider how long we could live without our modern services. I have found real tent camping to be a great way to discover the items you need to live and survive. Consider a camping list. There are many on the Internet. I\’ve included one below. As you look at it, consider which items you would need and which would be nice to have. Think about what you could carry with you if you needed to leave your home. Hopefully you will not need to leave your home. But if you did, many of these items may not be items you would or could take with you. ## Drills and Practice
We have to practice if we are going to be ready on game day. We have to understand our tools well before we have to use them. Consider these drills and situations to practice. Bugging In: You are sheltering in place during and after a storm which has knocked out power to your home for 54 hours. How do you respond? You can simulate this scenario by turning off the power to your home for the length of the drill. You can decide ahead of time if the storm in the drill was expected like a hurricane or unexpected like a tornado. See how we you and your family respond to the simple loss of power. Decide ahead of time what other elements are in effect. Consider food, water, medical needs, warmth (or cooling), communication, and entertainment. Never under estimate a deck of playing cards. Bugging Out: You need to leave your home and take shelter elsewhere for 48-72 hours. What bags do you have which will carry your supplies? Are cell networks compromised? Do you have the medications you need to take with you (were they written down already)? Do you have cash available to you without going to an ATM? Do you have a safe place to take shelter? How will you get there, what is the route? Are there any likely obstructions to your route? If you have to travel on foot at all, can you successfully carry what you need for several miles? Cooking without Power: Can you maintain your family\\’s nutritional health without power available to you? While prepackaged foods are certainly convenient, they are often not the healthiest for you. You will want to prepare well for this drill. Recipes, water, and a safe area in which to cook will be very important. Learning to cook on an open fire, a grill, or a camp stove can be very different from your range or kitchen oven. Heat is not always even, there are hot spots. Knowing how to stoke and control the fire/heat is a skill its self. Storing the cooking fuel of your choice should be done well before hand. Remember that propane and charcoal could run out well before the emergency is over. Learn to cook with biomass fuels and stock those fuels before hand. A rocket stove is an excellent way to cook, boil water and potentially keep warm. Fuel for a rocket stove can be as simply as brush, twigs and small sticks and branches. This is fuel most will use for kindling but discard for real heat use. The efficiency of a rocket stove means that you can cook for longer than one could over an open fire considering the energy loss of that open flame. Communication: You could experience a loss of cellular service, Internet access, and landline communication. You need to consider how you will communicate to the outside world and to your family if you need to split up during the emergency. How will you receive new information about the emergency? Radio communication is likely the fastest and easiest way to communication during an emergency. You can choose from FRS, MURS, GMRS, and Amateur radio communications. Note that amateur and GMRS communication require a license to use, except during an emergency where life and property are being threatened. It is important to understand each protocol, its advantages and disadvantages, and how to use it properly with the right equipment well before an emergency. FRS and GMRS share frequencies. One can communicate over a short distance with FRS radio. GMRS can communicate further and with more transmitting power than FRS. MURS is license free and a bit more powerful than FRS, but does require MURS capable radios. FRS radios can be purchased at any department store. Amateur radio does require a license after a short test. This may scare some people off. I would like to point out that a ham radio can be purchased for as little as $30USD and can transmit much further on it\’s own and even further through repeater systems. However, in a grid down situation, repeaters are not likely to be up and running. With amateur radio you are free to boost your transmitting power and raise your antenna higher to get your signal out. This is something that cannot be done with license-free radios. Whatever method you select for your family you will want to practice with it on the regular. Learn the capabilities of your equipment by testing in different weather conditions and varying distances. If someone has to leave the home during an emergency to get supplies or to help a neighbor, you will want to know how far your signal is likely to reach before game day. Make sure your equipment can be charged by an alternative source of power such as USB and solar panels. In addition to radio communications, alternative forms of writing and messaging could be useful if communications need to be secured or obscured. Such writing could be physical or digital. Ciphers could also be helpful and fun. Medicine: An understanding of medicine is essential to survival. Medicine starts with the right nutrition. After nutrition one should learn first-aid and then about known over-the-counter medicines, and finally herbal remedies. There are many resources which we can leverage before disaster strikes. It is important to practice such first-aid and remedies during stable times as to be prepared with the knowledge of what remedies work well for you and your family or community. Allergy and anti-inflammation medicines can also be very important. Computing Skills: The use of computers could be helpful as they can hold vast amounts of information. However, with regard to limited power and resources, computers should be leveraged with a minimalist principle in mind. Light-weight laptops, tablets, and even current or older cell phones can serve as computer workstations. Keep in mind that Internet access will likely be disrupted and therefore should not be counted on for information. This is where library sciences may also come into play. Compiling and organizing a wealth of information in a way that can be easily accessed from one of the aforementioned devices can be key. Learning and understanding some basic command-line skills can also be helpful. Why? Computers which display graphical user interfaces also use more energy to run and compute. Textual interfaces require and use less resources. Computing skills can go hand in hand with radio communications so one can communicate digitally at a distance. Imagine being able to sent a text file(s) via a radio signal on a daily basis to communicate with others. These setups do require a bit of technical knowledge but can be very helpful to communities cut off from grid networks. Navigation Skills: Learning how to navigate using a compass and a map can be essential if you need to move over distances without the use of GPS or modern directions. Understanding how to use a compass can also help you to make a map of the area in which you are. There are many more areas of daily life which we need to drill and practice for grid down or emergency situations. ## Bringing it All Together
All this information is great in theory but means nothing if we do not practice these skills and more. Create a list of your most common tasks and actions. Next write down the grid down alternative next to each action. Make a schedule of practice for each week and commit to learning a new skill each week. Thereafter practice it when you can either through daily practice or scenario based training. It may seem senseless to do this often but it will be very helpful when it is needed. Camping skills are often very useful in grid down situations. Consider simply going camping with varying degrees of difficulty in terms of supplies and area. No one is going to be completely prepared for everything. Knowing a few practical skills can make a difference for yourself, your family, and your community. Make no mistake, all the greatest gear in the world will only uselessly weigh you down if you do not know how to use it well. So practice, practice, practice. Talk with your neighbors and friends and plan preparedness parties in which you can practice skills together and share ideas. This is your charge. Prep on!
