Be Prepared

[mishalak]

I've been thinking a bit about the new cult of preparedness. Not that I'm a totally unprepared for disaster person, but I think some people have too much faith that having the right supplies will protect them. Sure I carry a shovel in my car, but I don't think that's any sort of protection against snow or mud.

If a person is involved in some sort of disaster no amount of storing food will save him. It might help, but in the end what is needed to survive something like a war, a hurricane, or an earthquake is luck. The time to avoid a disaster is before it happens, long before. You need to be ready to take to your feet two years before anyone else does. Otherwise you just have to live with the risk that you could die at any moment. And how is that different than the rest of life?

I know I'm rambling a bit, but I just think it silly that people feel they need these talismans of bottled water and dried food to be safe. We're urged by the government to have these supplies so that we feel safer, but not quite as safe as before they told us to be afraid.

In other news I'm likely to be too busy to post tomorrow. I'll write about the DASFA picnic sometime on Sunday.

Comments

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I think there are different kinds of preparedness. Since I live in a area where blizzards are not unknown, and I have been more or less trapped at home for three or four days, I make sure I have plenty of canned goods, TP, batteries, etc. I try to prepare for the *likely* problems. Almost every location has its share of likely natural disasters, and a little forethought and common sense can make life much easier if the worst happens.

I can't possibly prepare for long-term disasters like war, except, as you said, looking far enough ahead to not be in the way of danger, if that's possible. Like a number of people I know, if the current occupant is still in the White House in January 2005, I will relocate. I have relatives who managed to leave Germany in the thirties, or I wouldn't have as many cousins as I do.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I also live in a blizzard prone area. We had one this spring that dropped 54 inches of snow in about 48 hours. But the thing is that even in a pinch I have enough food to eat for weeks in my apartment. That's just the on hand ever day stuff. So I don't really count that as being prepared so much as being a cook. I've got to have 12 cans of tomatoes on hand because I don't know when to mood to cook something might strike.

Mostly I was thinking about the terrorism preparness thing going on. "The office of homeland security (an' that's a term I hate too) recomends the following..." Bah. If they ever do manage to pull off annother major attack everyone with supplies will be so panic stricken that they'll not be able to use them properly, even if they would do any good.

I'm looking towards Canada and Britian as well, I'm not sure that it'll be neccisary even if Il Duce is still around, but I'm looking into it just in case.