The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government.
It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home".
Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems.
In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful.
On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events.
Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had?
When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution?
BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts.
What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.
Hm, I sort of suspect that you skipped much of the first part of the guide, which talks about identifying the relevant risks, including - say - studying flood maps, identifying nearby industries, walking around the home to spot fire hazards, etc? And talks a lot about not obsessing about unlikely issues, when your greatest worries may be your own financial security or a house fire. It specifically instructs people to map out plausible risks and write response plans before they buy a single thing listed in part II.
The whole purpose of part II is to go over some cost-effective purchases iff you have a robust basis to prioritize a particular threat and a rough idea of how you want to solve it. So yeah, for example, the mention of respirators has to be interpreted in that context; very few people can meaningfully benefit from a respirator.
There are also mentions of being able to board up windows in locations prone to severe weather, etc. I would really like to address your concerns and improve the doc, but as it is, I'm sort of struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(
I double-checked, and I still see nothing about the process of how to identify the risk level.
For example, it says 'For example, do you live in a 100-year flood zone?' but does not describe how to find that out. It doesn't mention the term 'flood map', or where one finds a flood map. Do you go to the library? Is it easy to find online?
I tried now for Santa Fe, NM. http://www.newfloodmap.com/mountain/ doesn't list Santa Fe county, and in any case I can't tell if it's a legit site or a value added site trying to scam money out of me by looking official and packing together resources that are freely available. I gave up trying to find it online - I think I can get it from City Hall.
Regarding chemical risks, as I pointed out, it doesn't mention the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Quoting Wikipedia:
> Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), Local Emergency Planning Committees (LEPCs) must develop an emergency response plan, review the plan at least annually, and provide information about chemicals in the community to citizens.
Someone who is looking for a guide to help with preparation, and doesn't know to keep extra water around, is likely also someone who needs help to map out plausible risks, and could use a pointer to legally mandated resources that are supposed to be available to help with those risks.
Then again, if I don't believe the government is going to bail me out of problems, why should I believe that those government maps and government information is worthwhile for my planning? Are they reliable? What is the experience of others with that information?
As a case in point, regarding 'relevant risks', the text says "Although we are entering the realm of very unlikely events, if you worry about encountering an overturned chemical tanker.."
This would be an excellent example of how to do a cost-benefit analysis. A first approximation is easy - how many people have been killed or injured by a chemical tanker where a mask would have helped? What's the probability of that happening to the reader? What does a mask cost, including the need to recharge or replace it? If it's a 1:1 billion chance per year, and it costs $10/year, then that's saying that your life is worth about $200 million to you.
But if that's so, then perhaps other things, like storing important documents, or copies of important documents, in a safety deposit box is much more worthwhile. Or driving at a more sedate speed (the first paragraph of safety tip #2 is very true!) Or remembering to not drive into flowing water, which kills many more people every year than gas from an overturned chemical tanker.
> board up windows in locations prone to severe weather ... I'm sort of struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(
My complaint is that the document tries to take on a lot, and yet does too little.
There are a lot of resources for many of these disasters. There's no way your document can cover all of the things to worry about with a hurricane. You have to point to more complete resources elsewhere. It's not a simple matter of "boarding up windows", since that's only one of several options. I mentioned hurricane shutters; my parents had corrugated metal shutters for the window, stored under the house because when a storm is coming, everyone is trying to get boards for their windows. While on the other hand, a hurricane is more predictable. It's okay to wait until the last 24 hours to fill up the tub with water to use for flushing the toilet, which is not an option in earthquake country.
Accept that your document will be incomplete, and point people to where to go for more information.
The most common major threats (tornado, blizzard, hurricane, flooding, wildfire, sinkhole (yes, I'm from Florida), earthquake, avalanche, volcano/lahar flow, tsunami, etc.) all have official guidelines for how to prepare for them. Use them, and add to them. Don't try to be an all-in-one solution.
The guide doesn't go into specific instructions on how to find flood maps and doesn't do a risk analysis on everything (although it provides numbers for many of the more common risks) chiefly because (a) it's difficult to provide answers that are universally applicable no matter where you are; and (b) I sort of trust the reader to be able to search / ask around; (c) it's already 60 pages of text.
The other thing I sort of learned is that when you spam people with links to hundreds of external resources, you actually lower the odds that they will stay focused and read any of them.
But yeah, maybe a catalog of links to ready.gov and the like may be useful at some point. I actually had several, but I think I lost them in subsequent edits.
For the chemical tanker bit, see section 3.7, which talks about doing a risk analysis before wasting time on such stuff; and in general, most of part I, which tries over and over again to drive across the point that there are some things you really need to worry about, and that they don't involve gas masks and night vision goggles.
These are people who you remind - quite well, I'll add - that commonplace things are more deadly than apocalypse planning.
And you remind them that they need water.
And you humorously recommend they download an XML dump of Wikipedia.
You recommend a Garmin Foretrex 401 Waterproof Hiking GPS, but while you recommend 'both a country road atlas and a more detailed map of your county or state' it's in a context where you likely mean road map, and not something where a hiking GPS would be that useful.
And you bring up gas masks in the context of local factories as well, with recommendations of masks to buy; why do you have the text unless you think it's useful?
Sure, the reader can search / ask around ... but then why have this essay in the first place?
Another thing that's missing is to train for emergency situations. The only times I found "train" or "practice" was in the context of weapons and fighting. But you also need to practice using the GPS in hiking situations, if only to learn what basic terms like "datum" mean and what the modes do, and practice making a fire (else why have the matches?), and replacing the tubes on your bike. It mentions 'dig out a latrine' using a shovel and a pickax .. now where do they go for learning how deep to dig, or even that there is such a thing as good latrine practices? (Me? I learned it from the Boy Scout manual.) It's better to practice setting up a tent instead of doing so the first time in a dark.
Sure, you can assume the reader just knows to do this .. but why don't those same people know they should 'sign up for a basic course or have someone truly competent take you to the range' to practice with a gun?
Go to back to an earlier theme of mine, one of the points is "Biking on public roads? Wear a helmet and bright-colored clothing, stay well clear of the doors of parked vehicles, move in a straight line instead of weaning in and out of the traffic, and watch for cars trying to make right turns."
Like most of the rest of the document, this is a very individualistic response. A community response would be to join cycle advocacy groups and fight for usable dedicated bike paths. These are even safer. Yes, helmets, etc. can be a short-term solution, but the long term solution should be to minimize the need for these expensive, personal solutions and reduce overall risk.
"Prepper culture", on the other hand, seems to avoid these sorts of community solutions to the same problem. This document also ignores them.
>Rational prepping is meant to give you confidence to go about your business, knowing that you are well-equipped to weather out adversities. But it should not be about convincing yourself that the collapse is just around the bend, and letting that thought consume and disrupt your life.
I don't think funding watchdog organizations really fits the goal of the article.
The article also went over realistic and unrealistic risks and urged the reader to focus on realistic risks and not zombie apocalypse scenarios.
While I think it does. Focusing only on myself is near-sighted planning.
If I trusted FEMA or the Red Cross - which I don't, for reasons I mentioned - then I would likely face simpler adversities.
If those relief organizations were able to get tents, food, and water to New Orleans within 2 days after Katrina hit - which they could do if they were well-run and funded - then I wouldn't have to plan for possibly two weeks of self-sufficiency should a major hurricane hit.
Is it better for me to spend a lot of money on myself for something that isn't likely? Or pay less for something that is of overall more use for myself, my community, city, state, and nation?
The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government.
It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home".
Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems.
In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful.
On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events.
Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had?
When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution?
BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts.
What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.