Posts Tagged ‘disaster’

Disaster Plan For Your Family

Yesterday Ken talked about disasters and emergencies discussing the differences between the two. I would like to touch upon a disaster plan for you and your family. We have discussed this before but the importance of making your own disaster plan will not only prepare you, but it will also open your eyes to what you may be lacking to deal with a disaster situation. This is also a very good exercise for beginning survivalists.

What is a disaster plan? Your disaster plan should be written down, preferably in a binder. The binder will allow you, if needed, to easily make changes to your disaster plan. This will provide everyone in your home a main reference point to turn to if you are not home. Is your spouse a survivalist? Do you have latch key kids? Will they remember the right things to do in a disaster? What if you have only a few moments to evacuate your home, what will you take with you? You will feel much more secure if this disaster plan is completed and you’ve had a training session with your family.

I know that right now some of you may be thinking, ‘I know what to do if a disaster takes place.’ Will you? A main point many people don’t think of is how you will truly react when the crisis and the stress hits. Will you really be able to put on your ‘thinking cap’ when the earth is shaking, there are fires all around you and your adrenalin starts really pumping,…creating panic? The bottom line is that many people don’t know how they will truly react when the SHTF. This is why writing it all down ahead of time and keeping in a location the entire family knows, your chances of survival will be better.

There really can’t be a ‘master’ disaster plan because each family plan, to be effective, is different. This is why you and your family need to make your own disaster plan. Only you can know the special needs of your family members, such as foods and medicines. Do you have an infant? An infant will require more items than your older children, items not being used by anyone else in the household. Do you have an elderly person living with you? What about their medications? Are they on oxygen? Let’s say the disaster happens when you and your spouse are at work and your children are at school. How will you all reunite? Do you have a logistical place in mind for your family to meet in a disaster situation?

What if the roads are blocked with people in their cars trying to evacuate? There are so many people that the roads are just clogged and none of the cars are moving. Would this be a better time to bike out of the area? Or hike out of the area? Only you will know what is the best choice for your family.

Making these decisions and writing down different options, destinations etc. will help you when the crisis comes. Doing this detailed thinking ahead of time with your spouse will save you the stress of trying to think of your best scenario when the S has HTF! How thoroughly will you really be able to think when you have 15 minutes to evacuate? What about your pets? Your important papers? What if you have nothing to come back to because your home has been destroyed? Depending on your disaster, losing your home could be a very real possibility. This is why having an evacuation list written down ahead of time will help you to make sure you take your most important items with you.

I hope I have made you realize the importance of having disaster plans in place ahead of time. If you’d like to read more about what should be contained in your disaster binder, please read Ken’s article Disaster Preparedness Binder.

If you enjoyed this or topics of emergency preparedness, or are planning for disaster,
Read our current articles on Modern Survival Blog – surviving disaster and emergency

Disaster and Emergency, What’s The Difference?

The difference between disaster and emergency is fairly big, although an emergency situation can certainly feel like a disaster to those involved.

Disaster is defined as a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction; a sudden or great misfortune or failure.

Emergency is defined as an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action; an urgent need for assistance or relief.

A disaster will likely affect more people and/or will have more devastating consequences than that of an emergency. An emergency can turn into a disaster while a disaster is inherently an emergency situation, if noticed ahead of time. Not all bad results of an emergency will reach the level of disaster.

When I think of disaster and emergency, I consider a disaster to be widespread, regional, or wider. Examples of a disaster may be the consequences of severe weather such as a hurricane, tornado, or flooding. An economic meltdown followed by a rapid devaluation of currency would be considered a disaster, affecting countless millions of people.

An emergency is a situation that requires immediate attention, a situation that could lead to disaster if left alone or unattended. Or, maybe it won’t, although it may seem like it to you nonetheless.

A disaster does not have to be preceded by an emergency. A disaster may come on quickly and without warning, a black-swan event, but not necessarily so. An asteroid strike to the planet could bring about major disaster without an ‘emergency’ before it. If we saw the asteroid coming weeks ahead of time, you could say that we had an emergency on our hands.

An emergency is a situation which may be an impending crisis, and is always something that requires quick or immediate attention. A disaster is a done deal, in that the damage is done, while it may leave behind countless emergencies as the damage unfolds into subordinate events which may themselves last for a long time until they are cleared up or written off.

Examples of Disaster and Emergency

Disaster

A solar flare / CME event unleashes an EMP (electro-magnetic-pulse) which takes down the electrical power grid of 2/3 the United States. A disaster for sure.

The Hayward Fault in California rips a magnitude 7.5 earthquake which destroys tens of thousands of homes, injures thousands, and kills hundreds in a highly populated area outside of San Francisco. The electrical power, natural gas, and water utilities are all damaged and offline in the region. A major regional disaster affecting millions.

A declared ‘Greek default’ triggers an economic tsunami as credit-default-swaps are called to perform while the issuers of the insurance do not have the assets and liquidity to pay the bondholders. The major banks and institutions are too leveraged and all fall like dominoes, setting off a new Greater Depression that lasts 13 years. While not a geophysical disaster, a man-made disaster such as this can be just as devastating or even worse.

Emergency

You are at work and rioting has broken out in the streets outside from an angry mob who has lost their government cheese and are smashing storefront windows and lighting cars on fire in protest. It is an emergency and you need to bug-out safely or ‘bug in’.

You are awakened in the middle of the night as an intruder has just invaded your home in search of valuables, or worse… Your heart is pounding as you realize what is happening, and you reach for your firearm. It is an emergency.

It is winter and you are traveling in your vehicle through the snowy mountains on the way to your destination. You are not on the main roads, and you swerve to avoid a deer which suddenly leaped out from the side of the road. You skid off the road down a moderate embankment, you’ve been injured, and you know that they won’t be able to see you from up on the road. It is an emergency.

Disaster and Emergency are two different things, they are sometimes confused, but they are often related. At Modern Survival Blog.com we often speak of these words, while they each have their place and context with regards to survival and emergency preparedness.

Be Prepared.

If you enjoyed this or topics of emergency preparedness, or are planning for disaster,
Read our current articles on Modern Survival Blog – surviving disaster and emergency

Disaster Preparedness Binder

Evacuate – Are you ready?

The knock comes at your front door. A fireman tells you that you have 20 minutes to evacuate. The wild fire has been burning for several hours now and is headed your way. Panic sets in. What should you take with you?

Fires, floods, hurricanes, the list goes on. At a moments notice you may have to leave your home and everything in it that you own and hold dear. Do you know what you will take with you in the minutes that you have?

You may be thinking, “…well, I know what to do, I know what to take.” Do you? None of us know if panic will set in during an intense time of stress and crisis. Will you be able to think clearly, remembering everything in the limited amount of time before evacuating your home? What if you’re not home? What if the only one at home is your spouse, who, lets say, is not a survivalist, or perhaps just your children?

Disaster Preparedness Binder contains detailed instructions, actions, and information

If you have everything written down, and kept in a known location, things will go smoother. I prefer the idea of a binder because editing, making changes, and adding pages is easier.

The more detailed you can be in your binder, the better preparedness for everyone involved.

For example, if the gas to the house ever needed to be turned off, pictures as well as step by step instructions would be the best – especially if you are concerned that your kids or others may be at home by themselves and have to deal with it. I would insert a picture of the valve itself, along with the proper tool to use (Having the right tool is very important – gas valves are hard to turn – leave the tool in a known location so you don’t have to scramble looking for it).

Emergency Shut-off Wrench

Some things to put in your binder would be:

• How to turn off the gas to your house.
• How to turn off the water to your house.
• How to turn off the electricity
• A list of items to take with you
• A list of contact information including:
  Family and friends
  Insurance companies (home, auto)
  Hotel information (pre-planned evacuation stay)
  Doctors, Hospitals
  Your bank, financial institutions

The list of contact information and emergency phone numbers should include a pre-determined hotel destination (keep several destination scenarios). It should also include your home and vehicle insurance company, your financial institutions, and of course, family and friends.

If you think about it, you may surprise yourself how we rely on all of our phone numbers being stored and at the ready in our cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone, etc… all electronically. Not too many people have a written record of all this data anymore. In a power down-situation, you will not have access to this information after your batteries have run down.

Do you have a telephone plan in place? In a large scale emergency you may not be able to get through to anyone by phone for several days, or longer. On the chance that you are able to get one call through, who would you call first? Does that person have the list of the others to be informed? The idea is to call one person following a major disaster, say a relative living outside of your regional area. This way, other family members or members of your group would know to call that point-of-contact to get updated information.

An evacuation list – It is imperative to think about and document your list ahead of time. It will help insure that you will take what you consider to be irreplaceable as well as the other things you’ll need for your survival. Some people keep a ‘bug-out-bag’ at the ready. If you already have a 72-hour kit in your vehicle (which you should), then your short term food and water needs will be met and you can concentrate on any other items that you want to take with you. Take some time and think about it, write it down, and their locations – so you can quickly go get what you need when the time comes.

The point to all this is to write things down in a disaster preparedness binder. This will accomplish several things. First, it will cause you to think about what you would do in an impending disaster or evacuation. Most people have never even thought about it whatsoever. Second, having written down the process, you will have ready and detailed instructions assuring that you will not forget anything that you have considered important actions.

A disaster preparedness binder will be different for everyone because it requires your own personal thoughts, requirements, and will vary depending on your regional risk factors and the physical aspect of where you live.

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Do You Really Have What it Takes? Adaptability?

The other afternoon I was again reading all of the wonderful comments I received regarding my post “I am a Survivor”. As I was thankful for all of your prayers, well wishes and supplemental advice, all of a sudden it hit me! It was surprise. Surprise is what I was detecting from many of the comments. “Keep up your strength”, “God will not give you a test that you can not overcome through faith in him.” “Just continue to get better.” and “My hat’s off to you and Ken for being strong, smart (preppers), people. How in the world he managed to take care of the blog and see to his hero, and you have to be his hero after all that, is beyond me.”

So here is what hit me…Adaptability. Ken and I are adaptable which is one of our traits that helped us get through this past year. “The definition of adaptability is: something or someone that can change according to need or environment. Adaptability shows the ability to learn from experience, and improves the fitness of the learner as a competitor.”

Then I realized as I gave it a little thought, that being adaptable is a huge survivor/prepper trait. Think about it, if you are not adaptable at all, chances are, you will not survive when the SHTF. Many times you may hear that when a catastrophe happens, it will only take about 3 days for people to run out of food. Many people are not adaptable enough to either have stored their own extra food or will they have grown their own food. This is when the panic will set in. Groups of scared, hungry and panicked people will start pillaging grocery stores. Either buying or stealing, depending on the situation, the last supplies of food will be disappearing. They will break into the homes of other people trying to take what they can. How adaptable can you be in a situation like this? Will you be stocked? Will you have a ‘bug out’ plan? Will you bug out or will fear take over you and make you hide in your home? Will you help people or turn them away?

Can you “change according to need or environment”? You may be surprised at what you may or may not be capable of doing when a SHTF scenario actually hits. Adaptability was a trait that really came to the forefront last year during my time of illness and surgeries. Given a choice, I think I would have chosen not to have surgeries, but not having a choice regarding the surgeries, I made the only choice available to me. I would adapt, adjust and deal with my situation. It was a new path our Lord had put me on and I could handle it.

I guess what I am trying to say is that until you are confronted with real catastrophe, how do you really know what you will do? Unless you have been through a life threatening scenario how will you really know? If you had a home destroyed by a flood or a tornado, what did you do? What was your reaction? (your adaptability) Also very important is, what did you learn from your experience? IF it happens again, would you do anything differently?

Another situation that comes to mind is what I saw during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Please understand that I realize that was a terrible catastrophe, destructive and deadly, but here’s my thing. If I were there when that happened, I can tell you that we would’ve grabbed our bug out bags and found a way out of there, be it by an improvised boat, swimming, or  walking. Talk about a lack of adaptability, this is what I saw on TV all the time. I saw lines of people literally waiting for the government to help them. Waiting for the government to help them! I never really saw anyone walking or making it to a neighboring town. I think these people truly had no clue about what to do. Point being, we will be in big trouble when SHTF, so please be ready physically and mentally.

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The Mega-Disaster Just Happened, What To Do?

Guest post: by ‘Be informed’

You wake up one morning early and turn on the TV and there is an emergency alert going off and on intermittently, in between these messages the news has been in bold red, “breaking news” and “alert”. A mega disaster the doomsayers have long been anticipating has just recently occurred. It can be any of what people consider a mega catastrophe. The mega cataclysm is going to be far more intense in scope than the smaller scale disasters such as the recent earthquakes and weather related calamities that were recoverable and more regional or local rather than worldwide. This one is going to hurt most or all of the world.

If you have not yet been directly affected then you have time, limited, to still ready yourself for the certain chaos to soon follow. The worst course of action for anyone at this point to do is to sit mesmerized at the TV or the internet screen like a deer staring at headlights approaching it. The time to do more is RIGHT NOW. The initial shock period is going to last for awhile for the majority of the population, perhaps several hours. You have to take advantage of the “shock and lull” before all out panic explodes everywhere.

For each person, family, and survival group, you are going to vastly need to have a per-organized plan geared towards your individual needs and your individual unique circumstances. This plan should be written or printed out and is necessary because almost everyone’s thoughts are going to be in spastic convulsions no matter how mentally prepared anyone “feels” they are for ANY disaster. A pre-drawn up plan to deal with a mega disaster, even lesser disasters, will help everyone follow some type of cool heads organization rather than running around in disarray and confusion.

Each person’s preparation for a mega disaster plan will be as unique as they are, but should have the following fundamentals:

1. FIRST AND FOREMOST IS NOT TO STALL.
Be physically and mentally ready to move quickly and orderly. Have at least a couple of places to evacuate to if you have to leave your primary home. The faster you can get to your safe location, the better – before road closures and everyone else figures out they need to get out and clog up the road. Plan your escape routes well. Have reliable transportation ready to go. If you stay put, begin immediate securing of your place from intrusions and from future possible damages to the structures of your home from the aftermaths of the mega disaster.

2. ASSUME THAT THE WATER FAUCETS WILL GO DRY.
Plan on being near to clean water sources such as ponds, lakes, rivers, etc. If your water is still on, begin filling up durable clean storage containers with water as quickly as you can. Fill up as much water as you can, even if you are evacuating, carry as much water as you practically can, you WILL NEED IT.

3. FOOD.
Everyone should already have emergency food stored, but if you can add to your stockpile before the “food runs” start, by all means do it. Get to the grocery store and buy what you can, and have on you “plan list” the extra food you will need to add during a mega crisis. Also have a list of where to find natural food sources in the locations you plan to be at.

4. FUEL.
Get all your transportation vehicles filled up before the gas stations close. A good plan is also to have empty fuel continers ready to be filled up in addition to what you have stored. You may have only one chance to get the fuel you will almost certainly need. Electric generators are also going to need fuel that is likely going to be in extreme short supply. Plan out where all the gas stations are within a few miles of you in case most of them are closed.

5. SELF DEFENSE.
While obtaining firearms during this short period of lull before the storm will likely be too time consuming, it still would be a good idea to add ammunition to what you have and maybe get some non-lethal means of self defense.

6. PLAN FOR REMAINING INFORMED.
You really need to know what is going on. This probably means a good shortwave radio protected from EMP and have plenty of fresh batteries to run it for weeks.

7. THE ELEMENTS.
The plan should absolutely take into account where you go that is LIVEABLE. There are many safe areas that have water and food, but are just too harsh for some people to survive in. Some people will die from the cold or too much heat, a real consideration to think about beforehand.

8. MEDICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Some family members and survival group members just cannot make it too well without oxygen tanks, medications, etc. The plan you make up has to take this in account and be ready to help those in need survive the best they can without these needed items.

9. STOCKPILE OF CASH MONEY.
Most places will still remain open even after hearing of the mega disaster, some places might not even have heard about it yet. Stores will have a strong likelihood soon after that they will have a rapid freeze of credit, or the electronic systems of credit just will go down. You will need cash money to get what you need. Have all denominations in your stash.

10. PLAN FOR SHEAR PANIC AND IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR.
Those around you will freak out, even stable levelheaded people, when they feel that the end of the world is upon them. Many people can have heart attacks or resort to suicide from overwhelming fright. Be ready to see people act like they have never acted before. Knowing what helps calm the people around you will help those better cope with the horror they are feeling. Also plan for strange unusual worldwide events to follow.

These are 10 suggestions, but there are many other additional considerations. Having your own INDIVIDUALIZED written or printed up plan will help you to “NOT” be caught off guard. The absolutely last thing you want to do after becoming aware of a mega disaster is to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off saying to yourself over and over again, “what do I do?” “what do I do?”

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