EARLY IN MY TRAVELS, I was told the man to see for a deeper understanding of prepping in New York was Aton Edwards, founder of the International Preparedness Network and author of the emergency survival guide “Preparedness Now!” Mr. Edwards, 51, is often called the city’s foremost expert in personal disaster preparation — he has appeared on the “Today” show, has taught his “Ready Up!” seminars to hundreds of participants with partners like the Red Cross and has set up, as part of the National Urban Self-Reliance and Preparedness Program, “incident command centers” across New York, like the one he recently created for the hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa in the Bronx.
Strategic Objective 3: Active and timely situational awareness provides the foundation for decisions and actions that may result in early detections and better resource utilization; successful prevention and mitigation of emerging threats; and improved security for the Nation. The vision for improving decision-making in disaster events is focused on strengthening health situational awareness. This vision includes the development of innovative and compatible technologies, the identification and integration of relevant data (to include human, environmental, and zoonotic), and better approaches to coordinating health situational awareness.6
“Preppers are on all different spectrums. Some people are preparing for nuclear war, but I also just used my bug-out bag when Hurricane Harvey hit and we were going to be without electricity for 48 hours. So really, a bug-out bag and preparedness are common sense. To start, you definitely need a bag. Some people use a tote, but you’ll really want something comfortable with adjustable straps that will connect across chest, or maybe even on waist as well, to take weight off the shoulders. 5.11 Tactical has a lot of good bags that people use.”
Three hours after I arrived, Andrew: senses it’s time to wrap up, but not before breaking into one last story about the Bigfoot footprints he keeps in the back of his car. The prints were collected in Arkansas in 1956, he says, and they belong to an adult male, a juvenile female and an adult female. He says he himself came from the “drug scene hillbillies” and that his ancestors had six digits.
If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,--but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last.-- But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.
That spirit of self-sufficiency runs through the history of American food culture. Lydia Maria Child’s 1829 manual The Frugal Housewife, one of the first American cookbooks ever published, instructed women to contribute to their family’s finances by making sure no scrap of food was wasted: “Nothing should be thrown away so long as it is possible to make any use of it, however trifling that use may be.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints* encourages members to keep a three-month food supply on hand at all times, and even sells dehydrated food products on its official website. This Mormon connection may be why Utah is such a freeze-dried food hub: Of 21 freeze-dried food companies I counted online, 16 were from the state, and Bedford told me she first learned about long-term food storage by reading blogs by Mormon women.
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.
Several national studies have shown that training similar to Penn’s help increase students’ preparedness to help a friend. — Aneri Pattani, Philly.com, "College students train to help peers at risk for suicide, depression and more," 10 July 2018 Jonathan White, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said Thursday morning. — NBC News, "DNA tests for separated families slammed by immigration advocates," 5 July 2018 As an organization that provides home protection and warranty services to customers across the country in times of need, Cross Country Home Services (CCHS) has made hurricane preparedness a way of life. — miamiherald, "With storms Irma and Maria on their minds, CEOs preparing for 2018 hurricane season," 24 June 2018 On Wednesday, Trump made her first public appearance in front of press cameras in 26 days, attending a hurricane preparedness briefing at FEMA. — Kate Bennett, CNN, "Melania Trump to attend Ford's Theatre gala," 10 June 2018 Far more severe, Irma tested both the durability of millions of Floridians who had never faced such a storm and the effectiveness of the most robust preparedness ever by utilities. — Kevin Spear, OrlandoSentinel.com, "Hurricane Irma schooled Orlando area's electric utilities on readiness for new storm season," 30 May 2018 But even the best tools in the world won't be sufficient, Gates said, if the United States doesn't have a strategy to harness and coordinate resources at home and help to lead an effective global preparedness and response system. — The Washington Post, OregonLive.com, "Bill Gates calls on US to lead fight against a pandemic that could kill 33 million," 27 Apr. 2018 Back then, the level of competition and preparedness of teams and drivers had far more disparity than the modern era of stock car racing. — Jason Hoffman, Cincinnati.com, "XFinity Series driver Daniel Hemric chasing perfection at Kentucky Speedway," 12 July 2018 After the meeting on Tuesday, the commission also is scheduled to discuss possible recommendations and actions for improved hurricane preparedness following widespread power outages in 2017's Hurricane Irma. — Marcia Heroux Pounds, Sun-Sentinel.com, "Will FPL customers get Hurricane Matthew refund? Commission to vote Tuesday," 9 July 2018
