Another Todd
Contingency Planning for Real Survival
There are many bad things lurking on the horizon and contingency planning is crucial to survival. What may happen may be the “perfect storm”, Infomagic’s spiraling collapse of cascading destruction or Duncan’s Olduvai Theory. But regardless of what it is called or how it arrives, the future is bleak.
Common sense would seem to dictate that people look rationally at the future and take steps to ameliorate these potentials for disaster. However, few people really make the effort to develop a series of fallback plans in the event that Plan A doesn’t work or is inadequate in some way.
Prepping is certainly a beginning for a contingency plan but it is one-dimensional without comprehensive consideration of what might happen and, regardless of how many preps are stored, prepping is time limited.
In the case of food, one contingency plan might be to forage at some point. But this raises three questions: First, do you know how to forage? Second, do you know what is available season by season in your area? And, third, when will you begin foraging? By this I mean, do you start to forage the first day you begin to eat your preps so as to extend their lifetime and not over tax your natural resources; do you begin to forage when you have a week’s worth of food left; or do you wait until you are down to your last mouthful before foraging?
These are the kinds of questions that are the basis of a contingency plan.
Another example might be PM’s. The assumption is that, having supposed intrinsic value, they can be used to purchase or be traded for things. But what happens if there is no market in which to sell them to convert them into some kind of accepted currency or if they can’t be traded for some physical asset (and don’t argue that people will always accept gold because, at least in my case, I wouldn’t)?
In reality, there are dozens of issues that need to be addressed in a contingency plan. But any plan has to have depth - a Plan B, C and through Z if necessary. These multiple layers/fallback positions are the absolute keys to contingency planning.
Consider the following list of categories (which are hardly comprehensive and similar to the forecast Y2K problems):
Utilities – power, telephone (land line and cell), water, sewers, natural gas/propane
Financial – check paying/check cashing, debit cards, credit cards, ATM’s, cash availability/change of currency
Economy – deflation/depression, inflation/hyperinflation, stock market collapse, no jobs, collapse of the housing bubble, an oil embargo, loss of retirement income, cancellation of Medicare/MediCal programs
Services – fire, police, ambulance, road repair/snow removal, schools, buses/trolleys
Information – radio, TV, Internet/computers, newspapers, magazines, telephone
Necessities - food, water, repair supplies, shelter, clothing, personal care products
Food production – reduced petroleum inputs, inadequate water for irrigation, no imported food, new diseases/pests
Home food production/preservation – food for animals, seeds, fruit trees/bushes/vines, water, fertilizer, pesticides, hot water/steam canners, pressure canners, dehydrators, smokers, canning spices, fishing/hunting equipment
Medical – doctors, nurses, hospitals, prescription drugs, EMT’s, vitamins
Transportation – cars, bikes, boats, planes, four wheelers, foot travel
Timeframe/length of occurrence – radiation, disease, restoration of services/supplies/food/ fuel, economic collapse
Civil unrest – gangs, people leaving cities, neighbors, military
Fuel – gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, wood (for heating or wood gas fuel), anaerobic methane, oil embargo, solar/wind/water, coal
Government – military dictatorship, fascist dictatorship, detention camps, public executions of dissenters on TV, quarantines, anarchy, forced medications, travel by permit only, road blocks/checkpoints, mandatory identity cards/chip implants, transactions only possible using a government issued income card (cashless society with government access to all your spending habits)
Potential defensive weapons – hand guns, rifles, bows and arrows/crossbows, pit traps/snares/deadfalls, observation points, closing roads, incendiary devices, cutting down road signs, local militia, chemicals, disease
Also consider potential offensive weapons that might be used against you – conventional explosives, dirty nukes, nukes, disease, chemical contaminants, EMP bombs, invasion by a foreign country, invasion of your area by U S troops/LEO’s
A comprehensive plan would consider the ramifications if any of these things occurred and a plan to overcome, circumvent or use them. Now, clearly, there are so many possible permutations that it is impossible to cover each and every one. However, it is possible to have plans for various general categories. Lack of a plan assures disaster.
Here’s a personal example of what can happen during a disaster: I managed a research facility that was located on the grounds of a chemical plant. The plant experienced a massive dust explosion just as lunch was starting. The roof was blown off the three-story, 100x300 foot plant and, in the end, 14 were killed.
Many employees ate off-site and were punching out when the explosion occurred. When they realized what had happened, some went up to the neighborhood bar and got drunk. Some went home and some hung around watching the fire and the additional explosions when drums of flammable liquids ruptured and skyrocketed into the air.
Although the plant had an emergency evacuation plan, no one had considered a real disaster much less one occurring when employees were leaving the plant. The result was that it took over a day to account for everyone thus hindering the search for bodies or survivors. Should there have been a disaster plan? Sure – in retrospect.
My point is that you cannot automatically discount a worst-case scenario simply because it seems improbable. And, I personally believe that it is easier to prepare a contingency plan by starting with the absolutely worst case and then to work backward toward the simpler scenarios.
Contingency planning will also reveal that some problems have no solutions. And, it is these kinds of problems that can waste extraordinary amounts of time and resources while trying to find alternatives that don’t exist. They will also reveal that there are a ton of minutiae that make your life either possible or easier. Take lighting for example. Even with a PV system you have to be concerned about how you would provide replacement bulbs. This might not be possible. One alternative to electric lights would be to grow grain, ferment it and distill off the alcohol and use it in lamps. But again, this raises questions such as how to grow grain, ferment and distill the alcohol. And, further, what kind of lamp you would use it in.
I would suggest that you rent the movie Testament before you begin your plan. The story is about the impact of a nuke dropped on San Francisco on a town in Marin County on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. There is no gore, gutted buildings or special effects – just fallout/radiation. There is unrelenting sadness and depression. Ask yourself what kinds of contingency plans or timely actions could have saved at least some of the people (and there were many things that could have been done). Also ask yourself how you would cope with your own depression and, perhaps, the guilt of surviving in a situation like that.
I want to close with a comment that was made at a retirement conference I attended several years ago. The speaker was asked what was the best time to retire. The speaker said, “Today is the best time to retire because you may die before tomorrow.” The same thing is true of contingency planning. |
