Fear and Preparedness
I have been involved in Preparedness planning for my own family for nearly 30 years. Over the years, when new acquaintances, workmates, or family members (new spouses mostly) became aware of my “prepper” activities, I was often met with two responses. Initially the question “What are you so afraid of?” followed shortly by some joke about being safe in my bunker when the zombie apocalypse broke out.
Since I have been doing Preparedness Consulting as a business, I often meet with the same misconceptions from businesses, churches, and other institutions I assist. The differences is that businesses often see preparedness as spending a lot of unnecessary money on a fear based outlook… not a popular proposition with business school graduates and frugal non-profit administrators. It is important to identify and address the most common misconceptions about preparedness in order to get past the social stigma (largely informed by government propaganda designed to convince you that spending tax dollars on preparation is a waste of time), and to start getting prepared to face the unexpected. There are 4 common misconceptions about preparedness and preppers that have their roots in popular culture and political rhetoric, in no particular order, these common misconceptions are:
1. Preparing and preparedness are based on irrational fear of some artificially contrived disaster.
This misconception is based largely on popular culture’s portrayal of those engaged in preparedness activities in “reality TV” shows like Doomsday Preppers, post apocalyptic science fiction, and in some part by fictional books written for a “prepper” audience.
At its root, preparedness is simply about acquiring skills, supplies and equipment to increase your ability to provide yourself and your family with the 4 basic essentials of survival, Air, Shelter, Water and Food with little or no outside assistance. When I help my clients develop preparedness plans, we spend most of the time discussing skills and supplies. We also discuss specific threat profile for each client…that is, 1) what are you most likely to encounter and 2) What events could plausibly occur that your organization could reasonably survive. We begin by preparing for threats that fall into those two categories. Interestingly enough, when you start looking at the big catastrophic threats like nuclear war, super-volcano eruption etc….you find that most of the preparations you have made for the common and plausible threats will give you a significant edge over non-prepared individuals.
Most of my clients are not concerned about a zombie apocalypse (nor should the be, it simply cannot happen), or even plausible threats like accidental nuclear war or global pandemic. After talking to me, they understand that the difference between being prepared for an accidental nuclear war or global pandemic and being prepared for much more probable events like a catastrophic flood, an out of control wild fire, or a chemical spill are very similar.
2. Preparing for “big” disasters is a waste of time and money.
Part of the root of this misconception is the natural human tendency towards normalcy bias. A tendency that has been exploited in the Untied States by politicians to justify an absolute lack of public funding for disaster preparedness and civil defense. Right now the average large corporation spends about a dime per employee per year on disaster preparedness, almost entirely on electronically stored information (data security), and compliance with various regulatory frameworks (OSHA, building code, Health and Safety etc). The average small business spends even less (many small businesses are not compliant with even basic fire or occupational safety regulations). The federal government spends less than a dime per citizen per year on disaster preparedness (and substantially more or disaster response)….why? Response buys votes, preparedness does not.
3. Everyone who is concerned with prepredness is a “Prepper” who has a basement bunker packed to the gills with weapons and baked beans.
Again this is based on a pop-culture stereotype that has its roots in the survivalists of the 1970s. While there is still a lone wolf survival culture within the preparedness community, detailed analysis of the potential issues with long term solo survival show’s that it is not an effective strategy. One of the early critics of the survivalist approach was Bruce Beach, a Canadian who planned and constructed a community fallout shelter near Ontario. if you haven’t seen some of Bruce’s YouTube videos they are well worth a watch. Many of them are about the shelter (the Ark Two Refuge Facility), but have a strong undercurrent of the need for a survival network and a survival community if you really want to weather the worst imaginable events. Creek Stewart has also written extensively on the concept of a preparedness network. Both of these gentlemen are advocating survival techniques that are based on sound anthropological concepts. Many anthropologists who study social and societal collapse point out that people don’t just die off, they reorganize into new communities, and make cultural adjustments to new realities. The Mayans for example didn’t die out, there are thousands of individuals living in Mexico and Central America who are genetically descended from the Maya who build the elaborate temples and cities of the past. The Mayan’s didn’t die out, although many of them may have died due to disease, environmental change or some as yet unidentified cause. Those who were prepared, or who had a sufficient network of adequately prepared individuals were able to provide sufficient air, shelter, water and food to procreate and continue their family lines into modern times, and well beyond.
4. I don’t need to prepare because the government is doing all that for me.
Between 1945 and 1994, the biggest collective threat to human life in the United States and the Soviet Union was nuclear war. Initially, under Eisenhower, significant (but still inadequate) money was allocated to an organized Civil Defense Corps… largely volunteers who would work to maintain a network of marginally equipped fallout shelters, monitor fallout following a nuclear war, and attempt to maintain some semblance of order. This program was quite expensive, and anti-nuclear activists took up a new tactic that nuclear war was “unsurvivable” so we should get rid of nuclear weapons. This false philosophy didn’t result in nuclear disarmament, there are still thousands of warheads on earth ready to wage the “unthinkable war” in an ironic effort to prevent the same unthinkable war. However, the public really took to this idea, and Congress slowly and silently defunded all forms of civil defense meant to protect the general public from a clear and present threat… all the while spending BILLIONS of dollars on Continuity of Government (COG) programs… The current Federal agency charged with disaster preparedness is FEMA….an agency whose funding is almost entirely for COG not civilian preparedness. While the government officials tell you that nuclear war can’t happen, they spend billions of dollars a year maintaining largely classified facilities to allow those self-same government officials to survive a nuclear war and worse. So while Congeress and myriad regulatory agencies don’t see fit to fund your local fallout shelter, or to even build a flood wall or other disaster prevention infrastructure, they spend billions on preparing for the same disasters they tell us are “unthinkable” or impossible.
Ironically, FEMA recommends that you have a 3 day supply of food and water (in addition to a number of other truly useful pieces of equipment) on hand to prepare for potential disasters, after YEARS of taking well in excess of 72 hours to mobilize a disaster response of any kind. The truth is you need a minimum of 2 weeks supply of food, and a means of procuring potable water for at least that long if you want to have any hope of being prepared for a large disaster. In another similar irony, FEMA manuals state that in the event of a chemical spill, or simiar event, people should have sufficient oxygen to shelter in place, since it is unlikley that a chemical emergency would last more than a few hours. If you build a chemical shelter efficiently, you have about 12 hours of oxygen max….Take a look at the Chemical Safety Board analysis of chemical disasters….almost no serious chemical disaster has been addressed in a few hours, most serious incidents have taken 12 or more to get under control, and have not caused offsite casualties merely because chemicals have not made it off site in large enough quantity to cause problems (although there have been a number of near misses). Moreover, the shelter in place strategy (FEMA’s preferred method), isn’t viable in most situations where it is recommended.















