How prepared are you for any eventuality? For example, if you could not find food when you were hungry, or water when you were thirsty. If you couldn’t just hop in your car and drive down the road because of gas shortages, what would you do?
Do you know what you would do if our infrastructure was in shambles due to a natural disaster, terrorist attack, pandemic, EMP (electromagnetic pulse), or even economic collapse? I ask this question to make you think. To think about what you would do if you were in that situation. Now I sincerely hope that our society will never wind up in that state during my lifetime. But what if it did?
I like to think that I am a smart enough guy that I would be able to figure out what to do in pretty much any situation. But I also have never faced anything so monumentally challenging as having to, say, hunt for my dinner. We, as a society, have been lucky over the past 100 or so years. And when I say society, I am of course referring to western society. I’m sure there are people in certain African countries that would do just fine if every single one of the world markets collapsed, because they do not rely on technology for virtually every aspect of their life. I, on the other hand, do. Hell, I am writing a blog entry right now on what I would do if the world went to shit!
So what could you do to get better prepared? For starters you could take a wilderness survival course. They will teach you such necessarily skills as purifying water, how to build a fire, how to build shelter, how not to get lost, and how to track, trap and kill your food. I know the thought of eating squirrel or pigeon probably isn’t that appetizing, but neither is starving to death. Trust me on this, you will do what you have to do to survive. It’s human nature.
Most of us don’t live in the middle of a national forest (even though I did as a kid), so what could you do in an urban setting? Gardens are good, and depending on the climate and the soil, you can grow lots of fruits and vegetables. So no matter where you live, you could probably grow enough food to survive on. But that takes quite a bit of planning and forethought, and you may have been taken by surprise by whatever crisis is happening. You should also have on hand lots of canned food. Getting a hand-crank short-wave radio could also prove to be beneficial. FEMA recommends that everyone have at least 3 weeks of food on hand, though most experts feel that 60 days of food is safer. How much food do you have in your house right now? If you’re like me, and I’m betting you are, you probably have nowhere near that much.
If you think back to when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, I’m sure you remember all the countless people wandering around downtown Manhattan, looking for some kind of guidance on where to go or what to do. And the police didn’t really have a clue what to tell them, because they were just as unprepared for it as the citizens were. I am sure this will be happening all the time if our social structure ever becomes dysfunctional. So it is up to you and me to become better prepared. I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to be caught off guard if and when our society ever collapses.
