So you’ve come to the realization that the world and the times we live in are getting a little scary and that you want to be more prepared for the unexpected, to be more self-reliant. Maybe you decided to put away some extra food, maybe a few extra boxes of ammo for your rifle or plant that vegetable garden. You’ve become a “Prepper” but do you have a clear idea of what you are prepping for? If you are concerned about the unrest in the world or the direction our country is heading in, or you live in an area that is likely to be impacted by natural disasters like hurricanes or floods. Making some preparation makes good sense but it can be overwhelming to think and list all of the possibilities that are out there. How can we break it down into manageable chunks to improve your preparations and lower your stress level?

Then there is the question of does preparing for “Events” that may or may not happen make sense both financially and for your time investment. The other big thing to consider as well is that all the things we do to prepare for threats should have real value and benefits and improves your life even if nothing major ever goes wrong.

Let’s take a look at a Threat Probability Matrix that was published recently by Jack Spirko. It attempts to analyze and help us predict the likelihood of what could happen to any of us at some point in the future. He’s broken it down into 5 basic categories.

Individual – Localized – Large Scale – National Scale – Global

Making a list of events and scenarios for each of these categories can get long, complex and difficult to compile and will vary by your location, but let’s just look at a few examples.

An Individual event would be something like the loss of your job or your spouse’s job or a fire in your home, or one of your family members has a major illness. Effects are primarily going to be on you and your family.

A Localized or Regional Disaster would be a thing like a tornado, flooding, an earthquake or a train wreck with a hazardous chemical spill. You may or may not be directly affected but will feel some impact to local services like short-term electricity interruption or your local hospitals capacity challenged if many people are injured and other local services curtailed for a short time.

Moving into Large-scale events would be a major Hurricane like Katrina or more recently hurricane Sandy that effected several states for a longer period of time. Goods and services are not available like food, fuel, and medical attention for days, into weeks and in some places months.

National scale disaster is something along the line of a Nuclear strike to multiple US cities or an EMP event whether it be from solar activity or an attack. This one is hard to imagine but help might not be available in some places for months to years.

On a Global scale you have pandemics, financial markets collapsing, World War breaking out or an asteroid impact on Earth.

So what is the likely hood of each of these scenarios affecting you and your family and are there preparations can we make that would be applicable to all but “The End Of The World Event”?

 

What is more likely in the next few weeks, loose your job or there is a global Pandemic? Where then do we start to begin thinking about how can I possibility prepare of all of the above?

 

We will begin cover each of these in more detail in the next posts.