When it comes to female preparedness, men, have you ever wondered how the ladies of our prepping community view things? And ladies, have you ever wondered if other women preppers see prepping the same way as you do? Well, if either one of those questions applies to you, then this is the episode to answer…

Disasters can happen to anyone, anywhere. These tips for disaster preparedness can help people save their own lives. By taking the time to review and analyze your situation before a crisis occurs, you'll find yourself better able to overcome emergencies. 

1) Perform a Personal Risk Assessment

A personal risk assessment will help you identify the major disasters and emergencies that you should prepare for. After all, if you live in Miami, preparing for a blizzard may not be a very good use of resources. However, preparing for a hurricane is probably an excellent use of your resources. Similarly, if you live in California, you’ll probably want to focus on earthquakes and wildfires rather than tornados. It’s important to remember also to consider situations that many people don’t typically prepare for, such as an EMP or another often overlooked possibility.

Red Cross Disasters Page

If you’d like to check out other possible scenarios to make sure you’ve done a thorough job with your risk assessment, you can go to the Red Cross website. There, you’ll find a long list of potential disaster scenarios along with disaster preparedness tips to help you prepare for each possible scenario. It’s well worth the time to check it out.

Normalcy Bias

Now, I doubt any of you Mind4Survival Survivors have this issue, but we never know. However, if you are someone who believes your area won’t be affected by disasters, you’re sadly mistaken. If you’ve ever said, "That could never happen to me," you may be suffering from normalcy bias. If you believe a disaster or other emergency won’t ever impact you, you’re probably wrong, very wrong.

2) Prepare for Bugging In

Regardless of the situation, when disaster strikes, you only have two choices. You can bug in or bug out. Bugging in means you’re going to stay in your home and attempt to ride out the situation, whatever it is. The primary key to think about when making your decision is that you may be stuck once you choose to shelter in place. Think of the people stranded by floods. If they were slow in getting out, they often couldn’t get out.

If you decide that bugging in is an option as you make your disaster response plans, you’ll want to make sure you are prepared. After all, if the situation is dire enough to consider leaving your home, it’s probably so tricky that you may be stuck on your own for a while. So again, you’ll want to make sure you follow these disaster preparedness tips for a shelter-in-place scenario.

Some reasons to consider bugging in are:

Disabilities: If you or a loved one has a disability that makes bugging out very difficult. The fact of the matter is that not all of us can quickly pack up and leave our homes. Due to life circumstances, some of us may be forced to stay at home and ride out a disaster.

Prior Preparation: You have prepared ahead of time for a bugging-in scenario. This means you’ve stocked up on food, fuel, and water. You should consider alternate means of communication. Since cell phones and hard-lined phones may be down, having another means of communication to receive updates on the situation and to let people know how you’re doing will be significant. Additionally, as we saw in Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, evil people try to capitalize on the situation to do bad things. So, you’ll want to be ready to defend yourself. Fortunately, not all the people you’ll meet in a bug-in scenario are dangerous. Some may be stuck in a bad spot just like you, and you may want to be prepared to help others. Yes, that’s a controversial subject within the prepping community. Ultimately, it’s a personal decision each of us needs to make.

Reliable Transportation: If you don’t have a reliable means of transportation, bugging out could put you in a worse position than bugging in. Think about it. Would you rather be in your home during a disaster,

Absolute anarchy is something that all preppers think about and try to plan for. However, how do you know if you’re planning right? Well, that’s easy. You speak with someone who has lived in a state of absolute anarchy. In this case, our special anarchy expert is Vietnam Green Beret, Johnny Jacks. Lastly… Never forget, you’re just…

In this episode on Absolute Anarchy with Johnny Jacks: Assumptions Two Die-Offs Maximizing Your Chances of Survival The chances of our society melting down into absolute anarchy are slim to none. However, a little over fifty years ago, many would say landing on the moon is impossible. In reality, given time and effort, many things…

Everyday situational awareness should be your constant state of being, but how do you focus with constant distractions?

Challenges to situational awareness lurk around every corner. They pose a problem to all of our safety, security, and our very survival. Fortunately for all of us, many of the challenges to everyday situational awareness can be minimized and possibly overcome completely. However, to do so, you first need to understand what the problems are, and that’s what this episode is all about.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is our tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that supports our pre-existing beliefs and assumptions.

An example of confirmation bias is the gun control debate. People on both sides of the debate seek out information, news stories, etc., that support and paint their position in a positive light. At the same time, they seek out information that discredits the other side's positions and portrays them in a negative light.

In the end, even if both sides read the same story, they are both likely to interpret the story in ways that support their position and beliefs.

Overcoming Confirmation Bias

Unfortunately, all of us have confirmation bias, even those who believe they’re open-minded. Luckily, we do have the ability to minimize its impact on us. However, while it’s challenging to overcome confirmation bias, we can limit its effect upon us.

The first step is to recognize that it exists. Then attempt to look at issues through other people’s eyes. While you may disagree with them, you may learn to understand their position. Then, as a result of that learning process, you may end up expanding your thought process broadly enough to benefit you and your everyday situational awareness in a way that affects your decision-making abilities.

Here’s an excellent article to learn more about confirmation bias.

Hyper-Focus

Hyper-focus occurs when we focus only on one specific thing. In so doing, it becomes difficult to switch our focus to another situation or task.

An example of task hyper-focus happens when a person is treating an injured patient and focuses on a specific injury. While the person is focused on the one injury, they overlook a more serious but less apparent injury. For example, a medic could be focusing on a fractured limb because it looks awful and not paying attention to something more serious, like life-threatening internal bleeding.

Often, even after a person treats the first injury they are focused on, they’ll neglect to search for other problems. This can also happen in different situations that are non-medical.

Overcoming Hyper-Focus

It’s important to remind yourself from time to time to take in the entire situation. Make sure you mentally step back and honestly observe what is happening in case you missed something before.

Hyper-focus can relate to all sorts of things, like worrying about one specific threat while another lurks right behind you. Hyper-focusing on only one particular aspect of a problem causes your everyday situational awareness to suffer.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE) is a person’s belief that he or she is more capable than they are in physical and mental ability, i.e., overconfidence. This overconfidence can cause someone to miss or ignore warning signs about potential trouble or try to resolve a situation believing he or she is capable but aren’t.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a theory that establishes a relationship between a person’s knowledge, experience, and training about a topic or situation and their confidence in dealing with that topic or situation.

People with no knowledge of a subject usually have no faith in their ability to deal with that topic. However, some people with only a small amount of experience or even incorrect information often have the highest am...