Why You Need A Survival Analysis

When I owned my own brick and mortar business I would perform inventory and audits on a regular basis. It occurred to me that you and I should perform a survival analysis when it comes to our emergency preparedness.

If we are serious about preparedness, you need to be doing the same thing. An audit. At least once a year. You need to do a preparedness audit, a survival analysis, to make sure you always have the needed essentials on hand.

Millions of people today have been joining the ranks of preppers. People from all walks of life and all parts of the globe are now considering the stockpiling of supplies in order to be ready for an emergency.

After watching the aftermath of events like Hurricane Dorian that crushed the Bahama’s, and Hurricane Mathew which slammed the U.S, many are taking action to be prepared for the worst is practically becoming an American pastime.

And let’s not forget the fire’s out west and the devastating floods in the mid-west. Nobody is immune to the ravishing aftermaths of a Mother Nature crisis.

Learning Survival Tactics From Others 

If you’re new to prepping, you certainly feel overwhelmed. I know I did back when I started. Where to begin and how to maintain?

There seems to be too much to do and not enough time or money to do it with.

Have you been thinking about taking a few pages out of what other preppers might be doing? Maybe you’ve seen the Doomsday Prepper show and have liked the good ideas you observed. If so, you’re not alone.

Everyone seems to have a plan, but no two of those plans are the same. One guy’s plan seems the total opposite of others. And some others seem to be completely ‘off the wall’ when it comes to emergency preparedness.

All these competing opinions make it even harder to figure out what to do.

The scary thing is, there are common mistakes that preppers make that can actually put them and their families in more danger than if they’d done nothing.

Let’s explore what needs to be done and how your plans compare to what others are doing now.

Without going ‘off the wall’

Getting On With Your Survival Analysis

Let’s explore a few secrets that I’ve read about from some experienced preppers. I feel more comfortable with my plans because I listened to what more experienced preppers taught me before I learned from hands-on practice in preparedness.

Compare your planning and prepping routine to these basic survival tactics.

You should also become familiar with a little thing called the SAS Survival Handbook.

Fitting Your Prepping Plan Into Your Lifestyle

One of the reasons that everyone’s prepping plan is different is that we all have different lifestyles and live in different areas. Where I live, there’s a risk of hurricanes, but there might not be where you live. If that’s the case, my preps to make it through a hurricane will be a waste of time for you.

If you live in the city, you’ve got to do things differently than someone who lives out in the country. Apartment dwellers have to come up with a different plan than those in the suburbs. Everything is personalized.

So, when you make your plans, don’t do things just because everyone else does them; stick with what works for you.

Knowledge Is More Valuable Than Supplies

A lot of prepping is about stockpiling food and other supplies to use in the case of a disaster. Some preppers build a one-year stockpile of food; some, even more.

All that food and other survival supplies won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t know how to cook without electricity. Yes, stockpiling is an important part of prepping, but it’s not the most critical. It’s much more important to learn skills that will help you survive.

Group Survival Is Easier

There are times to be a lone ranger and times to run with the pack. Take my word for it; if you’re going to survive, it’s not the time to be a lone ranger. You can’t do everything yourself. Everyone can use a little help.

I know that movies like Rambo make it look like you can make it on your own if you’re tough enough. But you’ve got to remember that Sylvester Stallone is an actor who had a whole crew taking care of him on the movie set. You need a crew too – a trusted group of like-minded people who are committed to helping each other survive.

Learn To Keep Your Mouth Shut

This might seem a little too selfish, however, if a crisis situation does rear its ugly head and there’s a general collapse of your environment, the most dangerous people might be your family and friends.

That’s right; people who know that you’re a prepper will come looking for you, expecting you to take care of them. Be careful!

It’s hard to keep your extended family and friends out of something major that’s going on in your life. They know you and tend to know what you are doing. But when their kids are hungry, they’re going to expect you to help them. That’s going to put you in a bind; do you take care of your friends’ kids or your own kids?

Of course, the easiest way to solve this problem is to bring your friends into your prepping team. That’s what I did!  As I said, it’s easier to survive in a group. So if you have close friends you trust with your life, make them part of what your survival plan.

Redundancy And Some More Redundancy

 

If you think about it, the cornerstone of prepping is redundancy. We’re doing the things we are already doing, only more so because we don’t trust that what we depend on daily will always be there.

Supply chains, the electrical grid, and even police protection could all break down tomorrow.

Having a water filtering system to depend on is great when the city water goes down, but having a spare is even better. You never know when your primary system will fail. Have a backup for everything you can.

Emergency Preparedness Is Not Built In A Day

Everyone gets overwhelmed when they start prepping. When I started, everything I heard in the news made me think that I needed to have my preps in place by next week. I’d rush to finish projects and buy some more food, but nothing happened.

None of us know when things are going to get bad. It’ll probably happen later than we think yet sooner than we want. Since you can’t get everything ready in one week, take your time. It’s much more important to keep moving forward than it is to try and set everything in place today.

Besides, there’s no way that anyone can get it all done now or ever! I guarantee you: Once you get to finish every item on your list, you’ll start thinking of more things to do. Just keep going forward; at least then you’re going in the right direction.

It’s going to take time to get prepared, but the key is to keep taking action. Even with just one baby step forward every day, you can take comfort in knowing that you’ll be more prepared tomorrow than you were yesterday.

Let’s Audit Your Survival Supplies

Often times, you think you have a lot more than you really do. You forget about those times you dip into your stockpile because you ran out of something in the kitchen. Or maybe you stashed something “out of sight, out of mind” and it expired. Maybe you’ve “lost” a case of dried food, and you know you have it somewhere.

Well, if you can’t find it now on summer break with air conditioning and electric lights, how do you think you’re going to find it in an emergency?

And this just doesn’t go for food. It goes for supplies too. If you had to hunker down due to a nuclear event a hundred miles away, you’ll need to be able to find your potassium iodide pills NOW.  Ditto for your supplies to turn a room of your house into a nuclear shelter.

Food Supply Audit

How and why you should think about your supply of food you are going to need after the lights go out.

The best way to do a food inventory is to clean out the pantry and get everything out onto one table and start a physical list of what you have.

My wife and I do this every year not so much as a survival analysis procedure, but as a general good cleaning out of a rather overcrowded and frustrating to use the pantry.

Get rid of what might have expired and write down on paper what you have and what you are planning to get. Don’t use the computer with a fancy spreadsheet. Worthless technology during a power failure.

Organize your food into categories such as:

Non-Cook Foods

Grains

Canned Fruits and Vegetables

Meals Solutions

Snacks

Scratch Cooking Supplies

Take some time to figure out what meals you could make with the items you have on hand. You will be surprised at what can be prepared with what’s on hand. This will help you figure out what you need to add to your stockpile so that you aren’t dining on canned corn and canned corn alone.

Then, take this opportunity to throw away items and to clean out your pantry area and make it spic-span and organized..

Finally, don’t think for a second you are going to remember where all your supplies are located. You need to make a treasure map so you’ll know where to find everything to save the frustration of looking for things in the dark or flashlight power alone.

Survival Supply Audit

You may have what you feel is a lot of prepper supplies and pieces of gear, however, if things are scattered all over the house, you won’t be able to find them when you need them.

Sometimes, supplies are urgently needed and if you have to dig for 15 minutes in the dark to locate them, you may introduce some frayed patience with yourself and others.

So pull out all your supplies, much like you did your food. Then you’re going to organize your gear.

For this, I use a variety of Rubbermaid tubs labeled with a place to store them with the type of supply it is on the outside. I keep printed information in each tub that is pertinent to the contents. Here are some examples:

Power Outage: This tub contains flashlights, headlamps, matches, candles, lanterns, lighters, cooking stove I can use inside the house, fuel for my stove, solar chargers, etc.

First-Aid: This contains nitrile gloves, protective clothing, bleach, heavy-duty trash bags, eye protection, band-aids, bandages, antibacterial cleaners, etc.

Tools: This contains a variety of manual tools that can be used during a blackout.

Sanitation: This contains things like bleach wipes, hand sanitizer, cat litter, contractor garbage bags, etc. Print off instructions for making a kitty litter toilet for humans.

Water Preparedness:  Large water filters such as a drip water filtration system, replacement filters and parts, small filters like Lifestraws.

Don’t forget items such as pool shock or chlorine, pH test strips so you know what’s in your water, etc.

Obviously, these aren’t all the supplies you’ll need. This is just to give you a general idea of how I organize my gear. Don’t forget a well-organized tactical first-aid kit that will be easy to access in an emergency.

While you do this organization and survival analysis, really think through the emergency that each tub is geared toward. What’s missing? Jot it down on a shopping list.

You don’t have to get it all done today, but you should work toward getting each kit well-supplied. And of course, when you get the necessary supplies, add them to the appropriate kit.

No matter how well-prepared you are, you should do this survival analysis at least once a year.

You need to check your gear at least once a year, if not more frequently.

Don’t forget winter. Make sure to see that you have your cold-weather power outage gear up to par. You do want to keep your self and family warm, right?

Do the same thing when the warmer months are approaching. It’s easy to grab something you need from your supplies and forget about replacing the item.

If you don’t take care of your survival analysis, you won’t know what’s missing until an emergency strikes and you need the item.

Take care of these things now before your lost in the darkness of a power failure.