What are you preparing for and how do you prioritize accordingly? There are some very real threats out but all of us are limited on time and resources. Even the independently wealthy prepper with all the time and money in the world could not prepare for and mitigate risk for every potential disaster which exists in the world today. With that in mind there must be a calculated balance, prepping for threats in a common sense way which does not over extend our resources or take up too much time (read: getting bogged down).
I see this two ways: High Probability / Low Impact vs Low Probability / High Impact. Where you are in the world and you current state of readiness determines how you break the threats out and prepare for them. A few examples follow.
High Probability / Low Impact
- Bugout necessary because: forest fire, flooding, train wrecks and spills chemicals etc.
- Storm causes power outage for a few days or even a couple weeks
- Job loss
- Stuck on the side of the highway broken down in winter storm
- Droughts cause water shortages
Low Probability / High Impact
- Supervolcano in Yellowstone erupts
- Total financial collapse globally
- Asteroid strike on earth
- WW3 with nukes
- EMP Strike destroys the grid
From the list above (and there are many more) you can see that “impact” to us is relative, you might think a job loss is tough but indeed it is relatively low impact compared to the Supervolcano erupting (especially if you are in the fallout zone).
I’m sure at some point most of us used to watch the OPSEC fail show Doomsday Preppers, where people would state which disaster they were preparing for. Countless time and efforts were being poured into prepping for that one thing but what if that one thing never came to fruition? What if all that time and money toward an underground bunker could have been redirected toward something(s) which would have a better impact to mitigate more plausible scenarios? Granted there is some definite crossover with respect to preps but all of those hand crafted Faraday cages probably won’t come in handy as supplemental income if a job loss happens.
There are no guarantees with respect to preparedness. You could be that guy with seemingly everything going right: community, preps, land, crops, animals, et al and that flood / fire comes through and wipes it all out. With that in mind I think it is important to strive for excellence but also have the mental agility to be flexible, to adjust and prioritize as necessary in order to remain effective. All of the items I listed above could happen so I’m not discounting any of them, yet as stated time and resources are limited so use them wisely. Make your own high prob / low impact vs low prob / high impact list and plan accordingly.
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Generally speaking, Events can be categorized by level of impact and duration. For impact I use: Personal, Local, State, Regional, National, International which follows established legal boundaries. For Duration I use: 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, 1 year, 2+ Years which allows for grouping of typical events from short term power outages or small storms to larger events that may require permanent life changes.
You can then classify Event Severity which allows you to define levels of preparedness. If you have Level 1 preparedness then you can handle personal 3 day long events. Level 2 preparedness allows for family and 3 week long events, and so on…
Breaking it down this way allows to develop skills and supplies for the next level of preparedness. Short term, low impact events occur more frequently and is where new preppers should focus their attention.