Not only are natural disasters a threat, but widespread terrorist acts have turned the concept of safety into question. Any large-scale national disaster is going to strain the resources of local and government relief services. Your survival and certainly long term comfort depends on just how prepared you are. Emergency and Survival Preparedness can be as simple as moving to a better location, creating a food storage program or developing an emergency exit plan. Preparation doesn't need to be stressful or overwhelming. On the contrary, that is why survival preparedness is an important part of living well.
“Methamphetamine is 95 percent addictive the first time you try it,” Pense likes to say. “My gardening system is 100 percent addictive.” Pense gardened all his life, but when he moved to Springfield, the rocky Ozarks soil stumped him. “I discovered that you can buy land here and not get any dirt with it,” he says. So he experimented with gardening out of an 8-by-8 foot sandbox, mixing sand, compost and fertilizer. The plants grew, and with them, the idea for a raised-bed gardening system complete with top-notch soil that would enable people around the world to grow their own food.
Opening and staffing the EOC is one of the primary missions of the Health Emergency Response Operations unit. Specific tasks can include management of patient movement operations, establishing and staffing an alternate care site, providing resources to support hospitals and alternate care sites, supporting mass care and other emergency support functions.
Over the phone from the company’s headquarters in Salt Lake City, Shields attributed the spike to the onslaught of natural disasters that left thousands of Americans without food in 2017, and rattled many more. “You got the hurricane that hit Florida, you got the hurricane that hit the Houston area, you got the hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico,” he said. “Geologists are coming out and saying that California is severely overdue for a big earthquake. You got these major events that are taking place that affect mainstream America. So how do you protect your family?”
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.
This type of prepper prides himself on how prepared he is for any apocalyptic event. He finds it hard to keep his mouth shut about his food preparation, water supply, and his self-sustaining environment that he built as a whole. The problem with this is if a disaster does happen, those ill-equipped groups will surely come for these religious preppers first.
Emerson advocates his readers to avoid blindly following the paths of others and instead to trust and follow their own instincts and blaze their own path. Conformity, according to Emerson, is death to an individual. Both hope and optimism is the essence of self reliance. Emerson admonishes his readers to avoid debt as debt will rob them of opportunities and self confidence. Self reliance is the foundation of a productive, efficient, and self sustaining society.
Strategic Objective 2: Countermeasures are used to protect communities from the adverse health impacts of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear attacks, outbreaks of infectious diseases, and other incidents. NHSS describes a vision for preventing and mitigating adverse health consequences that includes sustaining medical countermeasures and strengthening the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions within the Nation’s countermeasure capability.4,5
Health Emergency Response Operations works with local communities, healthcare facilities, state and federal agencies, and other private partners to help prepare and respond to an emergency or disaster impacting the health of Alaskans. This includes natural or manmade disasters as well as infectious disease outbreaks. The unit develops plans, coordinates with partners, conducts training and exercises, and distributes grant funds to eligible healthcare facilities for disaster preparedness activities. The unit also manages the Department of Health and Social Services Emergency Operations Center.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.
The Lord has declared, “It is my purpose to provide for my saints” (D&C 104:15). This revelation is a promise that the Lord will provide temporal blessings and open the door of self-reliance. He has also declared that “it must needs be done in [His] way” (D&C 104:16). To receive the blessings of self-reliance, we must accept and live the principles of self-reliance, which include the following:
Long term food storage can be the lifesaving foundation of your survival preparedness plans that protects you in many types of emergency situations. With a little forethought you can establish an emergency food storage program. The emergencies that have people digging in to their stores was NOT the disaster they expected. A plan worked a little at a time can make give you high-level, long-lasting food supply security. The easiest way to finish the project is to purchase a one year supply for your family. Only do this when it won't cause undue financial hardship on you and your family today. In that case, I recommend accumulating by a weekly plan.
Spurred on later by fears of the 2012 Mayan prophesies of an apocalyptic nature, the Prepper movement is seeing a lot of growth in late 2011 and into 2012. The advent of many television shows and movies that are collapse oriented has helped to nearly bring preparedness to the forefront of societal consciousness. While it is still considered “fringe” by many, the Federal Government is actively promoting preparedness through Ready.gov and many states are developing specific readiness programs.
This group focuses on surviving brief encounters of violent activity, including personal protection and its legal ramifications, danger awareness, John Boyd's cycle (also known as the OODA loop—observe, orient, decide and act), martial arts, self-defense tactics and tools (both lethal and non-lethal). These survivalist tactics are often firearm-oriented, in order to ensure a method of defense against attackers or home invasion.
When I point out that her reasons for getting into survivalism sound far off from the “every man for himself” mentality of the macho prepper stereotype, Chymiy mentions a paper by a team of social psychologists from UCLA, published in Psychological Review, about the differences in how men and women react to physical and social stressors. “The traditional fight-or-flight response is apparently based on research done only on men, so when they finally researched women under extreme stress, their response instead of fight or flight was more tend and befriend, apparently,” she explains. “Instead of running away or punching you in the face if you try to mug us, we’ll try to talk you down or try to make a social connection so you know the stressful situation can be diffused. And in neighborhood settings, we try to come together and help each other.”
In his 2016 book, Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods, Gary Allen, a food writer and adjunct professor at SUNY Empire State College, traces the evolution of food preservation as a source of culinary innovation. “The original food-preservation methods—like salting and drying and all that—actually turned the food into something else,” he told me over the phone. “Cabbage sauerkraut is not the same thing as cabbage. Wine is not the same thing as grape juice.”
People with disabilities may be especially vulnerable during and after emergencies. In an emergency, many systems you rely on may not function as well as they usually do. Familiar landmarks and usual travel routes you and your service animal know may be altered. Utilities like electricity, water, gas and phone service may be disrupted. You might need to temporarily evacuate to a shelter which may not be fully accessible for your needs. The tips and strategies in this newsletter can help you plan to be prepared for these situations.
