Why should a person be prepared for emergencies? Ever had that thought that if you had prepared adequately it could have made all the difference? Since the life of you and your loved ones are at stake when disaster strikes, do you have all that it takes to keep everyone alive even when the worse is to come?
I have seen how disaster struck people around me when they least expected it. They were usually not prepared enough to face such situations which led to unnecessary economic loss and psychological harm. I have written this post to create awareness, to make everyone realize that DISASTERS DO HAPPEN! I want to show everyone that it is possible to prepare for even the worse situation and come out of it stronger.
Being a prepper means you are taking responsibility for your own survival. It takes a certain level of awareness to know that the world is getting to an even more dire situation where the economy is getting worse and the number of natural disasters are ever increasing.
Most people may have a fleeting thought about what should they do when disaster strikes– especially after watching Armageddon. So, please allow me to introduce a preliminary question: is it better to bug-out (carry supplies and move) to a location or would it be better to just stay still? We would explore more of these aspects in our future posts.
For me, I feel that ‘prepping’ should be read in a wide sense where it should encompass even the most low-key circumstances, covering anything which may ‘disrupt our daily living’. It does not necessarily have to be the presence of natural disaster, the fact that you are unemployed due to economic recession would still require a certain amount of preparation as well.
This is an important post to read because only when you are really convinced that there is a real need to prep, you would not take massive action! By understanding what the potential threats are, you will get an idea of what you need to prepare which helps you to effectively work towards preparing.
Factual Statistics
Here are some real SHTF situations, and I would like to illustrate how real-world problems come in a flash. This helps illustrate my points on why disaster preparation is important.
I would like to note that economic crisis such as how a stock crash usually happens progressively and can be avoided if you noted sufficient signals and took action towards it.
Even now, there is a lot of things happening because of Trump and Russia’s tension like how Russia threatened to make US suffer if Trump pulls out from the World Trade Organization.
For the United Kingdom, the UK imports more than 50% of food which means that if the country is hit by really bad weather for several days, it may cut off food supplies.
The fact is that disasters are ever more prevalent today, where there have been over 400% global increase in natural disasters since 1985 and 5,000 terrorist events annually over the past 10 years.
If you want to have a view of real-time disaster statistics, you can view this link.
Instead of complaining like most people, the prepper communities think differently, with this thought – ‘Interesting, let us look into this problem more so I can plan out how should I prep’, rather than this – ‘what the heck is happening?’
Importance of Preparation
Why is preparation important? I have laid out the reasons why is emergency preparedness important. Essentially, there are 6 kinds of disasters we must look out for: (1) Terrorism; (2) Economic Recession; (3) Natural Disasters; (4) Spread of contagious diseases; (5) Presence of Nuclear Threat and (6) Presence of Electromagnetic Pulse.
Reason 1: The wake of terrorism at its finest
After 9/11, there are claims that World War III has started. By looking at various news you can see that the major characteristics of terrorism is how unpredictable it is in terms of the scale of the attacks and the time of the commission. Now, the targets of contemporary terrorism are becoming increasingly unclear where the attacks are usually launched against innocent civilians without prior notification.
Terrorist attacks usually happen in a smaller scale as compared to other disasters such as natural disasters but the amount of physical and psychological damage it causes is huge. The number of deaths caused by terrorist has significantly increased where it is recorded to cause 43,566 deaths in 2014.
The United Kingdom became aware of terrorist threat after the 7/7 London bombing incident in 2005 where there were suicide attacks which caused the death of 55 civilians. Even recently, there are pockets of news that reports on terrorist attacks, such as Spanish terror attacks on 18/8/2017 where a terrorist ploughed a van into a crowd in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, 19/6/2017 attacks where a van driver mowed down Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park. Please refer to this link to view such incidents.
By looking at the nature of how terrorism occur, my suggestion is to bring along self-defense gears with you. By being prepared in this way, you would be ready for not only terrorist crimes, but crimes in general which causes physical harm such as robbery.
Reason 2: Economic Recession
One incident that you can look to is the ‘Great Depression’ and remind yourself that the economic cycle has its ups and downs! The Great Depression was a worldwide economic crisis because of a stock market crash in 29 October 1929. In this contemporary times, the number of people involved in stock exchange is significantly increasing, which means that the possibility of this happening would be even higher!
At that point of time, there was ‘dust bowl’ which impeded farmers in Oklahoma to grow their own crops in the 1930’s. This was really bad because not only because there was economic recession, since the people could not plant their own food they are had even more problems where they had to face hunger.
This is just an example of how ugly things can get when an economic downturn occurs, illustrating the discomforts that you and your loved ones may face such as being in constant hunger where physical discomfort may eventually lead to psychological harms.
If you had prepared by stocking up the right amount of food and you have a survival garden, the discomfort that you experience would be significantly reduced. Further, you would be at the best position to make decisions and find solutions for the problems faced.
Reason 3: Getting ready for natural disasters
‘Natural Disaster’ as defined by the World Health Organization is “an act of nature of such magnitude as to create a catastrophic situation in which the day-to-day patterns of life are suddenly disrupted and people are plunged into helplessness and suffering, and, as a result, need food, clothing, shelter, medical and nursing care and other necessities of life.”
Referring to the definition, it is clear that a disaster is bound to cause power cuts and fuel shortages which disrupts your everyday consumption of food, water and energy. Usually, people would address this situation by preparing a bug-out bag so that they have sufficient time to move to a bug-out location filled with supplies.
Natural disasters are one of the likely ‘big’ emergencies that we would encounter, and most preppers would prep for. Of course, I would consider extreme weathers as a ‘natural disaster’ as well because it would similarly have the effect of stopping food supplies and limiting our movement.
Keep in mind that natural disasters are usually sudden and it would potentially affect a huge number of people around your area. Hence, relying on people around you would not be an option. Organizations like the Red Cross, the United Nations and the World Health Organization had processed last 20 years’ disaster data and found that every year, natural disasters would cause an average of 85,000 deaths and 189,000,000 whom will be affected by it.
Also, please do not mistakenly think that natural disasters are only present in poor countries. Keep in mind that the United States and China top the list for being the country with the most number of disasters in the country because of its large population size.
Imagine that a flood hit your area, are you prepared enough to survive until you are able to be rescued? Do you know that more than half of the people who perish in floods occur when vehicles are driven into dangerous floodwaters? Only when you are equipped with the right knowledge and tools you can face these situations with ease.
If you are interested to learn more about how you can prepare for natural disasters, please watch this video:
Reason 4: The spread of contagious diseases
Pandemics like Ebola came to the world by surprise in 2014 but it did not cause any fatalities in the United States. The fear of bioterrorism is becoming more imminent because people now are more capable of developing deadly microbe strains that can be used as biological weapons causing a global pandemic.
The diseases which you must look out for include Tuberculosis, Cholera, Zika virus etcetera. Tuberculosis is considered to one of the leading causes of death in the world, killing over 100 million people. These diseases can be segregated into Respiratory illnesses and Foodborne Illnesses.
The spread of virus could be prevented by several means including having your very own survival garden since some of these diseases come from the contaminated food you consume.
Although people in first world countries have access to medicine and clean water, things would be different when a calamity occurs. Dirty water supplies may cause Leptospirosis (bacteria that attacks the intestines) and cause the body to be weaker. If proper care is not taken, it may cost your life or the life of someone dear to you.
If you would like to understand further how pandemics spread, you can watch this video:
Reason 5: The development of Nuclear technology
To understand the effects of nuclear technology, we can refer to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident. The effects of the energy accident at Fukushima’s Nuclear Power Plant was initiated primarily by the tsunami and followed by an earthquake on 11 March 2011. Even now, there is a worldwide contamination of food supply because of this incident.
Due to this incident, the radioactive elements were released as far away as Oregon and Washington. This incident not only affected the fish in the area, it had substantially affected the livestocks and crops in the West Coast as well. This shows how important it is to have your own survival garden, planting food that you are sure that it has minimal contamination.
With the increasing number of nuclear technologies, the likelihood of such accidents are 200 times greater than what was estimated in the past. It is a fact that catastrophic nuclear accidents (involving core meltdowns) would likely happen. The rate of how fast the radioactive particles would transfer shows that it is a significant threat.
The good news is that you can prepare for such situations. There are food that can protect you from radiation poisoning and having a ‘disaster plan’ may save you from excessively exposing yourself to radioactivity.
Reason 6: Electromagnetic Pulse and solar flares
In 1859, Richard C. Carrington was the first to find out about the possibility of a solar storm. Later, Lloyds of London delivered a sobering news that this kind of event would happen every 150 years and the cost of restoring from this would be a huge amount of $2.6 trillion. An EMP is capable of stopping a region’s supply of water, electricity and food causing everyone to find their own way of surviving. Another view is that most experts would expect a bad solar storm that reaches Earth around once every 100 years.
Basically, an EMP is also a geomagnetic storm which is triggered by a burst of solar energy that could overwhelm the power grid of an area, immediately shutting down all telecommunication networks and disrupting the distribution of electrical power.
Not only you will get no ‘light’ when its dark or have limited means of getting clean food, the amount of information you can obtain will be reduced as well. This is when your skills in operating two-way radios would become handy.
With the use of widespread electronic communication, the effects of an EMP would be even more grave. Some aspects to look into would be installing extra transmission lines and generators to help divert the power over vulnerable nodes present in the power grid.
When you are preparing for an EMP, you are potentially preparing for a power grid failure as well which is very likely to occur. An example can be seen in the 2013 ice storm which disrupted many power sources in places located in the US. When your house is freezing cold and the life of your family is on the line, do you have what it takes to help everyone survive?
Conclusion
Keep in mind that this post is not to make you fearful, but the goal is to make every reader aware of the possibility of a disaster happening. By looking at the various types of disasters and knowing that disasters happen in a random manner, almost everyone are equally at risk of meeting with a disaster.
You can either lament about the possibilities of such events happening or get your act together and do what is necessary. The best time to prepare for a disaster is now!
If you have any thoughts you would like to share, please comment below!