Emergency Preparedness 2.

By TLS

Many people, myself included, take emergency planning fairly seriously. Many can think of little else while others wouldn’t last six hours in a real emergency.

Ironically, much of emergency planning is actually fairly fun. Much time and considerably much more money can easily be spent in this pursuit. Supplies, gear, weapons and ammunition, medical supplies can occupy a large portion of the preoccupation.

A lot of emergency planning is focused on sheltering in place. However, as often as not, one may need to move to a different location. I would be willing to bet this one detail often gets overlooked, or at least does not receive the attention it deserves. But relocate to where?

Emergency relocation area’s will often be very dependent on why we’re bugging out in the first place. Additionally some emergencies may be bad but very short term, a few hours to only a few days. Others may be longer, a few days to a week or so. Then there is the larger or more severe disaster or emergency which requires relocating for weeks or possibly longer. Each of these may have a different need or requirement.

Let’s take the West Coast as an example. Some disasters such as a very large tsunami or major flooding might necessitate evacuating to the east, either inland or to higher ground, or both. Conversely, fires along the Cascade mountain range might require evacuating west towards the ocean and what is usually oncoming air. Another environmental whopper such as one of our many volcanos might push evacuees north or south into areas which may receive less ash fallout.

The point here is, do you have a location in mind? Do you know where you’re going to evacuate to? Will there be available resources? Will there be space??? These are all just more threads that can be pulled on in the emergency preparedness tapestry. How far down the rabbit hole we go should depend on how likely one of those situations, or something completely different may be.

We can’t plan for everything, but we can plan for enough. Hopefully, if we ever find ourselves in a large emergency, we’ll have enough to survive. Ideally we’ll also be prepared enough to help others as well. Apocalypses belong in the movies, let’s work together to keep them there.