Survival Tips For The Sane ;-P

Boy everyone seems to have survival tips these days! Many are prepping for the end of the world even!
Many others see this as nuts going nuts about where to hide their nuts! I say that most of the extreme stuff on both ends of the spectrum is just plain nutty as always! That said however, I also have a refreshing positive flip of the coin and view of all this prepping going on.

Accidents and Mother Nature happen all the time and often I have learned that the people involved were unprepared for it. So I see that getting people aware of everyday emergencies and natural problems is very beneficial when taken in manageable doses and with a balanced approach. You know me, I like balance! Personally I have survived both the 1980 Mount St. Helen's eruption in Washington State and 2005's Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Both times showed me what a little self preparedness would do for people and what overdoing it and stressing about it can do as well.

A Personal example here: Mt. St. Helen's showed me that even the best laid plans of Emergency Operations Center personnel and tons of federal "Emergency Prep" money can be thwarted by the simplest of events. As it happened, Mount St. Helen's blew up on a Sunday afternoon. The manager with the only set of keys to enable the expertly designed Emergency Broadcast System ended up getting stuck in jammed traffic on the way to activate the EBS to prevent the jam in the first place. Lack of an immediate EBS warning actually caused everyone to panic as they did not know what to do when the scary grey snow began to fall on them. Initially, they did as instructed and waited until the EBS system told them what to do “in case of an actual emergency". Except this time there was no EBS alert and everyone panicked thinking the worst had happened! (Ooops, insert sickening laugh here) Billions of cold war EBS bucks were blown that day by a simple single key! This was because for "safety concerns" the automatic EBS switching gear was locked in a vault so that no one could play with the system and scare the masses for no real reason. Trouble was that weekend of the event, the EOC guys gave the only key to the vault to a manager that lived on the outskirts of town! So again as you see, the best laid and best paid for emergency plans went up in a cloud of grey ash in the middle of gridlock traffic they where designed to prevent! So don't bet on the government or emergency services immediately saving you're life, They'll be busy saving their own!

So what does all this mean and what can you take away from my babble here? Well I like a take the approach of Vigilance, Reason and Appropriate Action. I have described this mantra on the blog as it relates to computers, so I will not repeat it here, but suffice to say, a "Little" self planning goes a very long way. Time and again it has been shown that those who remained cool calm and collected survived even the worst disasters even when these survivors had no training or supplies at the ready to handle the problems at hand. They simply dealt with it with reasoned and appropriate action!

Wikipedia has a great example of  when the Fit real did hit the shan and only some very fast but reasoned and cool thinking kept anyone out of  296 souls alive! Read here about United Arilines Flight 232

The big thing to take away here, is that survivors reasoned and thought about their situation and then took the appropriate action to solve there immediate endangering situation as best they could. Due to flight or fight biology however, this can be much harder than most people expect and has caused even the most seasoned pro grief and trouble at times. So this is something to also be mindful of.

So what to do and how to prepare? I find that reasoned action or taking the road of balanced study, planning and stock piling of only the necessities for near term use wins the day. Using this approach, I find covers 99% of emergencies that any of us will face with minimal costs while setting ourselves up to best survive the 1% outliers that really can not be planned for anyway. A great example of this balanced approach is again Mt. St. Helen's. That Sunday evening and Monday Morning as the ash rained down on everything, Breathing normally suddenly became a big issue! 3M masks suddenly became a hot commodity and supplies ran dangerously low! Did everyone panic and off themselves! Noooooo, Most families went to the garage and got "Dads" wood working supply out! Problem solved and most everyone breathed easy the entire time! Some did panic, but they were a vast minority of unprepared apartment dwellers who relied on automated services and even they were taken care of when the EOC finally got up and running.  

So again I do not judge anyone’s plans, but I do say be vigilant of the surrounding natural emergency potentials. Then take simple stock of what's somewhat predictable to happen to you. I live in New Orleans, as an example, so I need to be vigilant for events like floods, hurricanes, power outages, Tornado's ect… and pause about possible earthquakes once in a while. I need to reason that I need to be very prepared to evacuate the city between May and November if a hurricane is projected to be in the Gulf of Mexico shortly. I need to reason that all the other emergencies can happen to varying degrees and what I would do and what I really need in case they did. I then need to take the appropriate actions (and I find this key) for these reasoned emergencies. I keep important records in something weather resistant and ready to go. If there is a storm in the Gulf, I get an evac bag ready if I happen to need it. I keep a well stocked first aid kit in my car with an MRE handy.

But I strongly caution to not go over board, and this is where I strongly reiterate about appropriate action! As an example I ask, why haul and therefore waste the much needed gas on a five gallon jug of toothpaste during a hurricane evacuation? Some might counter that I’ll need it at the bug out location because it’ll all be gone! That is a point, but is it a valid and appropriate one? In this given question and example above, as it turned out, I went to my Uncles house which is less than a block away from a 24 hrs Wal-Mart in a perfectly safe and unaffected location with plenty of stock and 5 different flavors! So their was no appropriate reason to haul 5 gallons worth of toothpaste, and waste the expensive gas. Similarly why panic buy and haul tonnage of bottled water when I can shut the engine off at my destination, walk into my Uncles air-conditioned kitchen getting a clean glass out, get some nicely cooled water from the fridge and then plop down on a comfy couch and watch the ensuing mayhem on CNN? Oh it never happens that way and I’d be betting my life on things being OK at my bug out location some might say! Well it did happen just like that in 2005! Again sometimes taking appropriate action is not as easy as it sounds and it is something to think about. One or two big bottles for the trip are OK, but 5 cases “cause ya just never know” would have been a waste of resources and not appropriate to the actual severe and life taking emergency encountered.


Hopefully I have given you some food for some serious yet measured reasoned thought here! Now I’d like to show you a website that can help you make those reasoned appropriate actions and help you stay safe, sanely vigilant and leaving the nuts for the holiday party platters!

Read below about what you may really need to stay safe and sane in an insane and troubled world:

http://www.earthchangesmedia.com/survival/index.php