Can Your Family Survive An Unplanned Crisis?
When I look at all the news available to me nowadays, I can not get over all the calamities that we are all facing such as natural disasters, mass shootings, economic turmoil.
I then start to get concerned about the well being of myself and family and ask what would it take for my family and myself to survive an unplanned crisis?
Crisis’s come in all shapes and sizes, however, with a little proper planning and some common sense thinking, you will be surprised just how easy it is to prepare yourself a simple yet effective family survival plan.
By getting started now, not right before or after the crisis, you can rest assured that you thought things through calmly and your ready for what crosses your path.
Always keep this question in mind:
“What steps would I take to ensure my family’s safety and
security after a crisis or natural disaster?”
Creating A Disaster Plan For My Family
Before any plan is established, an understanding of the whats and whys of things that can and will come up is going to help you come to grips on what you will have to plan for.
Let’s imagine that a crisis situation descends on the area in which you live whether it is a natural mother nature type, an industrial disaster, a financial meltdown, or a conflict type disaster.
Depending on what falls into your lap, that disaster in and of its self might not even be the biggest concern or killer. it’s the aftermath that can often do the most damage to an insufficiently prepared population.
Common Killers
Lack of water. This may come as quite a surprise, but thirst is one of the major killers in nearly all disaster scenarios. You can survive three weeks without food, however only three to four days without water.
Because the water supply is often one of the first things that can get affected in a catastrophe, it is incredibly important to have access to clean water. And if you do not have access to clean water, you should have a basic knowledge of how to purify the water you do have so as to have it drinking.
Lack of shelter. Just like we often take water for granted today, we often take protection against the elements for granted. But insufficient protection against weather weakens and kills. And it is not just a matter of obtaining and owning tools to stay warm in the cold or cool in some stifling hot climate situation.
Without staying dry and out of the wind, you’ll become more susceptible to the weather elements.
You will need to have a knowledge of the hows and whys of using those tools.
Hygiene is another factor that we take for granted, however, in a survival scenario, poor hygiene could lead to all sorts of problems to your overall health that could weaken you to a point of no return by affecting your survival odds.
Basic knowledge of how to maintain some basic hygiene practices will help you and your family increase those odds.
Violence is the human factor that I consider the scariest part of a developing or ongoing crisis.
As much as we would like to think that an emergency brings out the best in us, our most compassionate selves, in some people it unleashes the beast.
However, more so than making already ambiguously moral people bad, disasters have a way of bringing out the opportunists and giving rise to already violent tendencies.
And here is a sobering fact: In Houston Texas when the victims of Hurricane Katrina were sheltered there, homicides went up by 23%.
Nobody woke up that morning expecting that in a day or so they would be ‘refugees’ in an unfamiliar area. Many did not think or even believed they would need some basic self-defense skills or options to keep themselves alive.
Many did not have a family survival plan in place and the consequences were alarming.
Food Preparedness For An Extended Crisis
What about feeding yourself? What about hunger?
Hunger leaves you weak, as well as making you more suspectable to viruses and bacteria. But if you had a plan, you would know all about that.
You would have prepped for it or are considering doing so now before it’s too late.
Your family probably won’t be dying from hunger.
That said, when it comes to longer-term disaster situations, food availability does, of course, play an important role.
Faced with long drawn out disasters, your food preps will run out if supplies expire before the crisis does. And if all you have are beans and rice, you may suffer from palate fatigue and fall prey to illness.
Incorrect prepping kills. That said, it’s not usually incorrect food prepping that is the most immediate killer. The real problem arises when the entire family’s needs aren’t fully considered.
For example, if you have young children their needs will be different from yours, and if you don’t prep properly. And don’t forget about those pets of yours.
This goes far beyond food and water and into other aspects such as protection against the elements, first aid, hygiene products, and more.
Additions To Your Survival Planning Checklist
Bug-out scenarios are particularly precarious. Fleeing home means that incorrect prepping becomes all the more dangerous.
Medications Failing to prep medications is a killer in a large number of scenarios that most preppers would not even consider disasters or emergencies.disasters or emergencies. Even a few days of being snowed in can become highly dangerous if you don’t stock your medications and supply is running low.
Dependency is the deadly cousin of incorrect prepping. In particular, I am talking about dependency on people. Let’s say that there is a bug-out scenario and you are far away and unable to get to your family.is strong enough to carry the main bug-out bag with the necessary supplies?
What would that mean for them if you are the only one who knows how to use all of those survival supplies?
What if you have designed the entire bug-out plan around your very specific survival skills?
Your family will be dead in the water without you.
There are some dependencies that you just have to accept, of course. An infant will not carry on without you, nor will a weak elderly or handicapped family member.
Insufficient skills Last, but certainly not least, your family simply might not have the knowledge or capabilities to survive. When you are the lead survivalist in the family, their insufficient skills can lead to dependency.
However, insufficient skills can apply to anyone and do not necessarily mean that some family members are more dependent than others.
Insufficient skills often boils down to not enough drills and nails.
It is not enough to have the tools; you have to know how to use them in a given emergency. That will give you the ability AND the confidence to see it through.
Survival Planning for Children
Don’t forget about the little ones. A lot of smaller children have routines that they are used to and will have a massive meltdown when those routines are broken.
Your toddler won’t be able to learn to build a shelter, but he should, for example, be able to fall asleep, to eat, and to stay relatively quiet in an emergency scenario.
Remember they are going to be out of their element, far removed from their comfort zone.
It is going to take extra patience and extra planning on your part to make sure they are well cared for by having all the things needed to keep them healthy and occupied.
I hope that was more eye-opening than terrifying, although a little bit of fear is not necessarily a bad thing!
Use this post to make yourself aware of possible situations that can come to you and your loved ones at any time. It’s not being paranoid. It’s just using common sense.
Nobody wants or usually expects a long duration crisis to overcome them, however, it happens almost every day, to someone, somewhere in this country.
Would it give you some peace of mind that you did something about that?
Consider A Family Survival Kit
A survival kit is a package of basic tools and supplies prepared in advance as an aid to survival in an emergency. Civil and military aircraft lifeboats.…Read On…..
