Inside My Canoehead

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There are a range of preparedness specific goals and missions. From those who ascribe to cataclysmic societal outcomes requiring a considerable investment of resources, or those who simply seek a slightly more favourable insurance coverage, we are executing in the preparedness space. Your purchase of coverage against hazards in the form of disability, life, automobile, tenant, fire, and contents insurance are all preparedness measures. The budget allocation of an emergency fund of several months expenses and continuing your education while employed are both notable preparedness actions. The former protects against immediate pain and the later prepares you to pivot to an alternate line of employment.

Preparedness is not a mystical activity for doomsday, but an active ongoing consideration for everyone.

An approach I champion is to frame your preparedness strategy as the insurance plan for your goals and dreams. If you clearly articulate what it is you’d like to achieve, in specifics, that facilitates the strategic roadmap. This is the plan you create to get from here to your goal. while simplistic in nature, many fester at this point, they can express what they desire, but the pathway to reach it is unclear. By creating a plan to achieve your strategy, to reach your goal, you’ve delineated what must be protected.

Then all that remains is a series of questions on what might derail this idea and what must I do to mitigate against that event’s ability to alter my plan to reach my goal. Those actions derived from these questions in your preparedness strategy. Go forth and get your piece of the pie, wrapped in a blanket of preparedness insulation.

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The war in Ukraine fosters many an opinion, individuals who rally for the world consensus against invasion of sovereign states, those who seek to disrupt global order and those who seek to economically gain from continued conflict. The Ukrainian question is one where everyone wants to be right, to be on the winning side, the righteous, the benevolent.

The challenge with Ukraine is that everyone is right, if you look through the perspective of the waring parties, you understand why all sides fight: the Russians, Ukrainians, NATO, North Korea and the numerous unnamed belligerents who comprise the estimated dozens of nations with soldiers in the field. With an economic lens, you most certainly understand the value of a destroyed Ukraine to the reconstruction companies that made an almost unmeasurable fortune in the war on terror, or to the munitions companies whose latest technologies are employed on a modern real life proving ground. The Ukraine war is fuelling the goals and dreams of a vast swath of political and economic interests, which makes it incredibly hard to stop. Too many powerful interests have stakes in the continuation of this conflict to see it coming to a close, without a dramatic event.

In general, we understand preparedness to be the totality of physical and cognitive efforts to ready oneself, household, community, nation - etc., to navigate exogenous shock with the least disruption possible. These shocks are categorized into five main arenas, though in some cases the catalyst will be a combination of these origins: natural, economic, political, cultural and familial. To understand the implications of the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine on our lives, especially far removed from the conflict zone, we consider the five origins and frame a series of questions related to the effects on how we live our lives.

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The argument is this: I believe that within a decade or so, the losses from disasters will be so expense that irrespective of the damage, there will no longer be any government assistance for those who are uninsured. Residents will simply have to go bankrupt and walk away. Were need a solution to stop that outcome.

We cannot order insurance companies to make policies cheaper, they’d go bankrupt. We cannot order residents to pay premiums they cannot afford, they’d go bankrupt. We cannot order the government to pay for disaster losses, they’re going bankrupt.

Insurance is best viewed as an investment, not an expense. We protect that which we deem valuable, from ourselves through medical, our loved ones through life, our cars through automobile, our stupidity through personal umbrellas and our domiciles and contents through house insurance. Hence, it is an investment to hedge against exogenous shocks that are largely outside our control, to cover the recovery costs post event. A simple idea that suffers from two main problems - personal responsibility and coverage from the taxpayer.

These are tough conversations we're not having, how do we as a society navigate this reality?

Why are we assuming the government will always be able to fund this expense?

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Research from across the discipline over the past twenty years has argued that the most influential and correlated variable to better post event outcomes is the sense of community and belonging. Whether found in hundred year old disasters in Japan, recent hurricanes in the USA, floods in Europe, earthquakes in Asia - all point to one singular variable that is an indicator of a household’s likelihood of recovering from a disaster and made whole. In a previous article, I wrote about the strategies to build a resilient community, one where it is not individual household fending for themselves - the translation of public sector preparedness communications, but an intertwined web of networks and social connections that move as a whole. A force greater than the hazard and far out sizing government, community is the centre of gravity for successful preparedness operations.

We’re in the slow burn phase of a paradigmatic shift in the preparedness sub-field of EM, the evidence is present, the experiments continue to confirm community as the most influential variable, but change has yet to come. As Khun writes, this often takes considerable periods of time, where stalwarts hold onto previous ideas and theories, often due to sunk cost fallacy, educational structures in the discipline and organizational norms that reinforce the existing framework. We need to continue to champion the idea that the unit of measure in preparedness is not the human or household, but the community. Embracing what the science informs is more difficult than simple acceptance, as it challenges that which has framed and governed our efforts for generations. The world has changed, innovation is present at our doorsteps, but many continue to hold onto a comfort, the known, the accepted, the simple path.

It begins with changing the unit of measure to community and embracing technologies, being innovative and understanding that the government, community organizations, the corporate sector and households are equal partners in success. One is not superior to the others, collectively the four sectors of society are greater than the sum of the parts. 

We’re almost there…

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We live in a technologically enabled society, where residents look to online sources for information, guidance and education. The emergency management space has been lacking investment into this field, with few notable participants challenging the paradigm of traditional communication methods.
Hazadapt represents a breakthrough, an intelligent design that presents a series of Hazards and strategies to navigate, with a separate "Prep Check" to evaluate your readiness for such an event. The data is evidence-based, drawn from specific, tested and trusted sources.
This has the potential to become a standard bearer in the industry, Ginny is a brilliant human, passionate about her mission to prepare the nation for future calamities and unfortunate life events. 
A distinct honour and pleasure to interview.

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We've seen many recent calamities that called for a shelter in place plan, with the plethora of YouTube channels and information on sheltering, we offer evidence-based strategies to enable a successful event. 
Researchers examine populations that experience disasters and seek the individual pockets of households that had better post event outcomes, suffered less and navigated the event with less disruption. We then seek to understand those variables that influenced those better results and translate those variables into preparedness education. Evidence, not opinion or belief.
We cover family considerations, communications in a crisis, your animalistic requirements of food, water, shelter, health, safety and security as well as incorporating your dependency on and exposure to sectors of critical infrastructure. 
Non-apocalyptic evidence-based preparedness education, free of charge.

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The global economic picture continues to be volatile, unpredictable and profoundly influenced by political, cultural and natural events. In the modern technologically enable society, we have three choices for a career.
We can choose a profession, those with standards, formal education and fully regulated - military, medical, legal, engineering, construction trades, et.
We can choose a salary position, where we exchange our services for renumeration, contributing to the weather building of others.
We can choose entrepreneurial endeavours, where we exchange current effort for future benefits, as the sole responsible contributor to success or failure.
The modern entrepreneur includes everyone that has a bold and innovative idea to solve a pain in society, to overcome a barrier or obstacle to provide a dream outcome to the population - via minimal investment by the client. 
Be that a side hustle, a 100% personal time commitment or a combination of both, within all our industries there are opportunities to build real wealth, only availing through being an entrepreneur and accepting full and absolute responsibility for your outcomes. Exactly the same commitment required to adopt a prepared life.

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The US is a superpower, its influence over global economic, political and cultural conflicts is profound. Your preparedness plan requires you to understand the environment in which you operate, to insulate you, your family and your economic interests against political carnage.
Whether you are on the left tor right, and let's be clear - no one cares, the direction the US government takes will impact us all to different degrees. Hence, at this time you need to understand your exposure to political, economic and cultural regulations and rules that may change when the ballots are counted. 
Further, you have an opportunity in the modern knowledge economy to exploit the election, to examine your niche to understand how a new government will influence your sector and make those preparations now. In March 2025 there will be significant alterations of the US economic and political outlook, irrespective of who wins.
It is your responsibility to understand how a change in government will affect your life, not whether you agree with it. 
It is irrelevant what you want to happen, preparedness calls for you to be ready to navigate what will or is likely to occur, that is emotionless and rational. 

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Many are lamenting the old world, where a family could earn a living wage with one parent at home with the kids, buy a house, have vacations and retire after 40 years with a company. That dream is dead and likely your future if you are pursuing that.
The American dream has transformed over the decades from the Boomer life to the world of the Millennial, Gens Z and A. Their American Dream is grounded in the freedom of the gig economy, the Internet and access to a global clientele.
Preparedness protects your dream, wraps your life in a blanket of insulation to limit the harm from exogenous shocks. If you're trying to achieve a dream that dies decades ago, you're adding risk to your life.
No one cares whether we agree on the new economy, or whether we think it is just or right. No one cares and the world will blow by you in monetary gain and expansion as you complain about not achieving what the Boomers and Gen X had, however, if you pivot to the new American Dream and adjust your preparedness to that, well, you're golden.
To be successful you must adapt to your environment, to the economic circumstances that drive the world you're in, not the one you prefer or want.

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A profound thank you, for all the subscribers, listeners and supporters who held fast throughout this journey, I am humbled and proud. Our future is bright, with a plethora of episodes to come.

Thank you my friends, I am humbled and empowered by your vote of confidence. 

My argument is that our modern technologically enabled society is robust and fit for purpose, until one of the support systems fails, or many in a cascading crisis. At that time, EM will insert their resources into the gap to mitigate harm and societal value loss, but there will remain a portion of that gap that cannot be ameliorated through government intervention. That portion of the loss falls to preparedness in the community, the role of individuals and collectives to provide for their own response operations to address loss, harm, suffering and chaos. This is the framework for the educational system created by Preparedness Labs Incorporatedand communicated for free to the globe on our podcast, Inside My Canoehead. 

If we concur that the portion of the loss not addressed by EM falls to the community, and we accept that there has been a generational loss in the skills and knowledge necessary to address the un-mitigated loss, then we agree that preparedness education is required. We cannot expect humanity to re-gain these skill sets without prompting or the conversation about the real limitations of EM. Even with the vast array of preparedness educational gurus, corporations and public sector initiatives over the last seven decades, we are continually becoming less prepared.

This is why the podcast exists, to light the fire, to fuel the initiative and to be an unrelenting force for change, the argumentative cousin at Thanksgiving who will simply not accept another annual institutional campaign of failed strategies. 

We don’t tell the population the truth, evasion by omission.

Our preparedness education regime is on rinse and repeat, with no one listening.

We will wage the just and righteous fight.

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