It’s so much easier to not prepare for any potential future crisis that it’s almost the American way. Like the government’s preparation for Hurricane Katrina, its was easier to turn a blind eye. I remember picking up a magazine and reading an article about the potential for a huge negative impact to New Orleans if a Hurricane hit there many months before Katrina arrived. The potential for loss was great and it was well known, yet there were very few who thought to prepare.
Regardless of the recent announcements that state that the government thinks things are getting better, we are now looking at the potential for a another wave of home mortgage foreclosures, the likelihood of numerous commercial mortgage foreclosures and by the way the monetary system as we now know it may not survive. A major inflation has been predicted by many prominent economists. Without being a full on survivalist, there are many people getting back to the basics of having stored food, water, a gun and gold just in case.
If I mention being prepared to many people I get the “I don’t want to survive a crisis that I need food, water or a gun for.” While everyone has their own decisions to make, and I’m not trying to sell you anything, I can’t see that it would take a great deal of effort to prepare for an unlikely event. Maybe we won’t have any futher financial crises, but then again you could find yourself in an earthquake, flood, storm, epidemic or part of some other natural disaster. Being prepared is not just a good idea for Boy Scouts.
Oh yeah, I want to give some credit to Ameko on the “Your Money” MSN message board for reminding me to get plenty of shotgun shells just in case the zombies come.
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I’ve been hearing this sort of thing more and more lately.
A couple months ago there was a front page article in The Toronto Star profiling a local survivalist. His food stash was very large.
I think that’s a sign of how mainstream this notion at least is becoming.
Sometimes it’s hard to think of even how to prepare for a crisis. There are so many that can hit you. That’s why it’s easier not to prepare for one. I guess the best thing to do is to try to keep some extra canned food and water and medical supplies. If you can hide away some money that would be good too. Maybe being prepared is being mentally prepared so you’ll be able to restart again.
I don’t like the thought of being totally unprepared, in the physical sense, when it is so easy to just collect some potentially useful items and putting them in my garage. Some of my early reading was John Christopher novels like “A Wrinkle in the Skin.” While its pure fiction, and it’s a very unlikely that anything similar to the global disasters that Mr. Christopher writes about could occur in my lifetime, I have nevertheless been inflenced by them.
I am aware of this thing. Sometimes people really don’t have time to prepare for such incident like crisis. But now, the people will become aware and concern for their lives in the future. Nobody can tell what industry will stand in the near future. We are now unsure of what the economy will bring for us.
I agree with the strategy of stocking water and non-perishable food with a realization that part of the problem could involve no electricity for an extended period.
Also I think it would be a great idea to have significant cash on hand, preferably including small bills. A shortwave radio would be a good idea, as would a crankable light source and some first aid supplies.
You don’t have to be a “doom & gloomer” to make a few preparations that could be very helpful in the case of an emergency.
Well said about the preparing shotgun shells for zombies. Point well taken. It is a becoming a problem now to the society, ignorance that is. Predicting a disaster, concluding it and yet doing nothing about it. That’s just beautiful. Preparing for ourselves would be a great idea. Even just a hundreed dollar would be alright I think.
As I noted in another post with a similar topic, “One Second After” by William R. Forstchen is a current best selling book that you want to read if you don’t believe in preparation. There might as well be zombies if our highly evolved state of civilization starts to break down due to an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) hit that put our technology back in the 1800’s. Any preparation is, I agree, better than none, but I think we have to make an effort and not just ignore the possibility. Does that mean you have to become a survivalist? No, but maybe you should dedicate some space to emergency items.
Speaking of communication, I’ve heard of people hanging on to HAM radios, and also I’ve heard that shortwaves are being stored.
Would an EMP take out those kind of radios? I’m not familiar with exactly how it would work. I guess I need to read that book.
Anything with circuit boards connected to the grid will fry in an EMP attack. Old tube HAM radios may not be hit, but if the power grid is down they won’t have much use without a generator or battery power.
To be always prepare for everything is good than not being prepared. We encountered different issues today, like in our economy and environment. We are facing a global financial crisis, we have to think ways how to prepare in facing this problem. Our ozone layer is getting thin, tress and animals are becoming extinct. How are we going to prevent this? I guess this is the time for us to prepare and disciplined ourselves on this issues.
Preparation is very important. Most likely, it would be easier for us to prepare when a natural calamity is expected to come, other than that, we do nothing. It’s not yet too late, right? I mean, experiencing these economic crisis, health issues, environmental problem and others, I’m sure people would now prepare themselves for the future.
I agree that one should be prepared to face any unforeseen natural calamity. However we humans have a very short memory and once we start enjoying good time all memories of hardships are forgotten. Till the time a calamity strikes, all pre-preparation is looked at as waste. We need to change this attitude.
i understand what you mean on this..always prepared and the likes is not enough ..since we really cant predict what befalls to anyone or to the place we live in…