Essential Preparedness and Survival Techniques for Natural and Manmade Disasters

Be Ready for Anything: How to Prepare for Different Disaster Scenarios

Picture this: You are at home drinking coffee when the ground rumbles beneath your feet or the first dark clouds cover the sky, whirling overhead with a sinister vigor. Your pulse quickens. How prepared are you for a crisis? For most of us, the answer probably isn’t as reassuring as it should be.

Disasters come in many forms — earthquakes and hurricanes, yes, but industrial accidents or cyberattacks also. Still, it’s easy to think, ‘That certainly won’t happen to me!’ Yet no matter how improbable an emergency might seem; the truth is that emergencies strike when we’re least expecting them. They don’t discriminate. They can happen to anyone, anywhere, and at any time. How can we make sure our home, work and schools that can be devastated by a hurricane, earthquake, tornados, tsunami, or wildfire, as prepared as possible?

Understanding the Problem

And the elephant in the room might be our own anxiety: the possibility of disaster looms large, so many of us just push those thoughts to the back of our minds, sure that we’ll get around to it later, somehow. But what if we lived in a Florida flood zone? Aren't hurricanes tired of raking us with misery every year or two? Disasters can be awfully unpredictable. Also, they can be awfully helped by preparation, not panic.

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What Could Happen

Think of the last story you saw on the news, a disaster of some sort. How did it make you feel? Concerned? Maybe a little bit helpless? But you don’t have to feel that way. Instead of waiting for the next headline to remind you of the risk, let’s look at some of the most common types of disasters and what you can do to prepare for them.

Natural Disasters

Earthquakes: If you live in a seismic zone, securing heavy furniture and knowing safe spots can save lives. Know where the overhead power lines are. Identify and know how to immediately shut off a propane or natural gas supply, in case of a pipe failure during a seismic event. Keep an emergency kit on hand with water, food and first-aid supplies.

Hurricanes: If you live near the coast, have a plan for what to do if a hurricane threatens. Gather your supplies and contact information for your local emergency management services. Have one or two locations you can go to for refuge. If the place of refuge belongs to a friend or family member, discuss it with them. Maybe arrange to leave a box of emergency supplies in a storage shed or garage. Your ideas may inspire them to prepare also.

Flooding: Crazy rainfalls are more likely to bring flooding than earthquakes, even if you don’t live in a floodplain. Assemble a ‘go-bag’ with vital documents and a week’s worth of necessities. As with the section on hurricanes above, plan on going to one or two alternative locations on "high ground", if escape is your only alternative.

Man-Made Crises

Fires: Escape routes. Fire drill! Who does what, when? Kids? Pets? Medications? Documents? Where and how? Identify and practice alternate escape routes. Will you be comfortable taking your elderly neighbor? Remember, during a fire you might be crawling on your floor due to smoke. Update smoke detectors and fire extinguishers.

Cyberattacks: Computers and smartphones contain our lives. Avoid using the same password for different sites. Use two-factor authentication (and get a separate security authenticator), back up data regularly, and know that the transportation and power utilities that provide you with running water, electricity and communications are extremely vulnerable, too. Get ready for outages in the short term for sure, and in the long term.

Why It’s Worth It

You may be thinking: ‘Why should I bother? It's too much trouble. Nothing ever happens to me.’ But what if preparing for the unexpected is not about the event, but peace of mind you ask? Isn’t the relief of knowing you have a plan in place worth the effort?

Also, prepping is liberating, not only for you and your loved ones, but because being prepared you’ll be showing others that there are ways to protect yourself, and to start a chain reaction of others taking a similar course of action for themselves, and their families and friends.

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Building Your Preparedness Plan

So, how do you tackle this preparation challenge? Here’s a simple, actionable plan:

1. Acknowledge Your Risks: Identify which disasters are most likely to strike near you. Make a 'Family Emergency Plan': choose meeting places, multiple ways to communicate, routes to escape from harm, and clearly define roles for each person.

2. Create an Emergency Kit to store at least a 72-hour supply of water, food, first aid, essential prescription drugs, flashlights and batteries, emergency tools, and critical documents. Start with a backpack emergency kit for each of your cars. You are usually near your car after all, so you will have access to a kit no matter whether you are at home or away.

Practice, Practice, Practice: Conduct frequent exercises/drills with your family to be sure everyone knows what to do when the time comes.

3. Subscribe to local alerts and listen to emergency news. Get a solar or crank-powered radio. Get a scanner-receiver radio and a list of station frequencies to use as suggested by NOAA, and/or your state and local emergency response organizations.

4. Network: Talk to your neighbors, friends and family members about your neighborhood’s emergency response capabilities. Can emergency services even get to your neighborhood in the event of a disaster? Can you create a simple neighborhood/block/community — disaster-response plan that empowers everyone to help whoever you find in need of assistance if a disaster strikes? Leverage your neighbors’ knowledge and capabilities. Does a nurse, doctor, Ham radio operator, military vet or firefighter live in your neighborhood, or close by? Whether retired or not, they’ll have knowledge and experience you could draw on to make them a key option in your personal disaster response. Learn from them. Be their assistant.

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Bringing It All Together

Readiness is about turning the energy of fear into organized action. When you turn fear of the unknown into preparation and true alertness, you equip yourself and those you care about, to go into the unknown as empowered actors, not as cowering prisoners of random chance. It’s about not getting paralyzed by terror; it’s about taking control when the odds are against you. It’s about forethought, education, and just plain 'being ready'.

So, why wait? Start today. Your future self will thank you!

This is the first blog on disaster preparedness I am writing. The other blogs will focus a little more on specific disasters and make suggestions about what we can do to be prepared in those particular cases. It's all about sparking doable ideas.

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