Your Goal – Be Prepared for Any Situation

The goal is to always be prepared for yourself and your family. In any natural disaster, support will come after a few days. But there is something causing people to freak out right now that isn’t a natural disaster.

Is it possible that something is going to happen soon?

I know we’ve been busy sending out MREs, fire kits and plates since it was announced that the Pentagon has launched the FORTRESS initiative (Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy Supply, and Survivability), requiring major U.S. military bases to operate independently for at least 90 days without outside municipal support, the electrical grid, or civilian supply chains.

This has created a lot of fear and not much around many individuals truly being prepared.

The problem – you’re not going to know what to prepare for until it’s happening.

What Should You Prepare for?

You want to be ready for things like natural disasters that happen in your area like: earthquakes, fires, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, etc. The weather seems to be strong this month, even where I live in San Diego we’re getting more rain and the coast is having flooding and erosion issues. There’s a Polar Vortex getting ready to come down into the country. Will that keep people in their homes for a few days? Are they prepared for that?

You also want to think about being prepared for non weather related problems like: complete grid failures, cyberattacks (fridges are getting hit right now in grocery stores in Europe), biological attacks, banking collapse, civil unrest, food shortages and even war.

Would you be self-sustained if one of the above things happened?

During the catastrophic February 2021 winter storm (Winter Storm Uri), millions of Texans were left stranded and freezing in their homes when the state’s power grid failed. 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without electricity or heat for days. My wife had a client that was a single mom and they had no food except for half a jar of peanut butter for 3 days. They couldn’t walk anywhere, everything was frozen. She had PTSD from this experience for months. Now she knows what to do to prepare for herself and her son.

What Does Being Prepared Look Like?

How long could you survive that Texas storm without electricity in freezing temperatures?

Could you go for a week, two weeks, three weeks or even longer if needed?

As Ronald Regan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

If your preparedness strategy is waiting for the government to show up to help you, you’re in trouble. When are they coming? How are they helping? Can you get to them? Do they have enough for everyone? How long are your struggling waiting for them to get to you?

Being prepared is not ordering food, protection, water and other items when you hear something is going to happen in the media. That’s too late. Prices are going up as stores run out of essentials to help you get ready. Think about toilet paper during COVID. People tend to get irrational with what they buy and prices sky rocket. Toilet paper prices are still high, six years later!

You want to have on hand supplies for any time of year and be ready for the situations that could happen but haven’t yet. True preparedness is being ready for the unknown.

When COVID happened and my daughters’ schools were shutting down for an unknown amount of time – we were ready. We had everything we needed and more. We didn’t have to leave the house unless we wanted to for months.

Being ready is not difficult and it doesn’t have to be expensive.

There are basic things that you can do and have on hand that you can use on a regular basis. Bigger budgets do have better options but you can still have the basics on a low budget. The goal really is to be prepared to the best of your financial ability.

Step 1 – Plan

Come up with a plan and share it. Talk to your family members in your house and talk to your neighbors that want to work together with you in emergencies.

Create a meeting spot should something happen and what to do if you can’t get to that spot. Assign roles to family member. Even kids can help and they should be involved. They can have tasks like get the pets or find the survival and med kits from their location and bring them with us if we’re leaving or gather them and bring them to our meeting place.

Step 2 – Prepare

Food you eat normally like dried rice, beans, canned tuna or chicken and other canned food can last 3-5+ years. MREs are a great choice and have a long shelf life. If you have the budget, freeze dried food is the best option. It is easy to travel with and can last 25+ years. Have as much food as you can on hand and make sure you’re constantly rotating to keep it as fresh as possible so it lasts as long as possible.

Water is a must. Have 1-gallon jugs and cycle out each year or drink it and replace as needed.

When meat goes on sale, stock up. Vacuum seal it if you can to avoid freezer burn. By stocking up when it is on sale helps relieve the budget. Adding a little each month to your stock pile after a year will show huge rewards and not affect the budget. You can make your meat last longer by freeze drying it. You also want to make sure you have a power source to keep your fridge and freezer cold. My father-in-law bought lunch meat for a hurricane in Florida. It wasn’t too helpful for them when they lost power for a few days.  

Also make sure you have power sources and the ability to create fire – matches, ferro rods or arc lighters. We keep candles around the house as decoration and when the power goes out, it has lit our house up. Before solar batteries for the house, our neighbors thought we had power. We didn’t – we had candles and a fire source. 

Step 3 – Survive

The goal is to survive. To have a story about how you were safe and had exactly what you needed.

You don’t want to be a victim with a PTSD story and you don’t have to be. 

Following the basic steps from one and two will help give you a place to start. Of course, this is just the beginning basics, but you want to be prepared for anything. And be prepared before the media tells you to prepare for something. 

If you’re ready to level-up your preparation, start with planning your bug-out bag. Everyone in my family has one in their car and this is essential for basic preparedness.