May 06, 2011

Three Approaches to Disaster Planning

"Meet at the red box." Jim Shepherd at The Outdoor Wire talks about disaster preparedness around the house.
There are many, many things you could include in a comfort and recovery kit, but it's important to remember that in an emergency, the essentials are most important. One lady in Tennessee told me of telling her kids to put clothes and toiletries into their backpacks because they were going to her parents house. The tornadoes missed their home, and shortly after midnight, they returned to their own home.

There, she discovered that her son had packed video games, not clothes or toiletries. Fortunately, they weren't among the groups that lost everything except what they were wearing or carrying.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit on low-budget preparedness:
So yesterday's post on  low-budget disaster prep has produced still more email. Mostly it’s suggestions for what more people can do. That, of course, goes all the way up to a custom bomb-shelter / retreat in the mountains somewhere. But for most people, resources are limited. What are some things you can do that go beyond just keeping some extra groceries and bottled water? But not too far beyond?
And if you really want to start down that dark, scary road in your mind, here is an essay from  SurvivalBlog, "The Unrealistic Mentality of the Modern Survivalist." It begins,
I am guilty of falling into the “Wolverines!” mindset from time-to-time, that being the image of going toe-to-toe with the insidious foreign invasion force and setting up ambushes to destroy the evil occupiers or perhaps having to confront droves of hostiles, be they urban gang-bangers, local looters, or some other such group of less than savory individuals. The modern survivalist seems to be rather obsessed with the idea of a total collapse of all centralized authority to the point where society is little better than Somalia, although historical precedent doesn’t give much credibility to this theory. The idea of a “total collapse” has been covered to the point of ad nauseam but what of the idea of a “partial” or “limited” collapse?
In such a situation, he suggests, the isolated, well-stocked rural hideout beloved of many survivalists is actually a bad idea.

Somewhere down the list of my reasons for joining the volunteer fire department is something like what this writer advocates: "small yet close-knit communities [for those] who had the support and trust of their neighbors." (And such a thing can exist in urban areas too.)

Aside from my own wanting to give back something to the community, I also figured that if other sorts of bad things happen, it does not hurt to be friends with a group of people who are competent, have access to tools of many types, and who have an attitude of helpfulness and community service too.

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