Do you ever get frustrated trying to explain the fundamentals of preparedness to people? Shows like Doomsday Preppers have done us a bit of a disservice because it shows the extremes, rather than realistic prepping for everyday people like you and me.

What Is Emergency Preparedness

When working to understand something, it's usually best, to begin by defining whatever it is you want to understand better.

In this case, Dictionary.com defines preparedness as "the state of being prepared; readiness."

In other words, preparedness is your ability, based on instincts, knowledge, and personal effort to be able to face the adversities of life with skill and confidence. These things combined help improve your chances of successfully overcoming the situation. 

That sounds like a lot and can be kind of overwhelming. But if you focus on realistic prepping, then it feels a lot more manageable. Just think about the stories of people who weren't prepared and how you don't want to be one of them.

Why is Realistic Prepping Essential

Also, just as important as understanding what preparedness is, we need to understand why realistic prepping is essential.

The reason why emergency preparedness is important is two-fold.

First, helping others who are in need is a crucial part of preparedness that humans have practiced throughout our history.

The fact is that more often than not, we, as preparedness-minded people end up helping others out during disasters and other difficult times.

Why is that?

Well, that's because we tend to be more aware, more ready, and better able to avoid personal disasters that others may not.

Personal Survival

Secondly, when we are personally involved in a difficult predicament, we've moved into the arena of preparedness survival. It's time to use our skills, knowledge, and instincts to successfully move past or deal with the problem, whatever it may be.

This is when all of the time you put into your preparedness will pay off. You will be successful at minimizing or altogether avoiding the effects of a disaster.

The Fundamentals of Realistic Prepping

When it comes to the fundamentals of preparedness, there are five critical areas, which are:

Mindset

Situational Awareness

Safety

Shelter

Sustenance.

We'll be covering each one of these in more depth in future posts but let's take a quick look at these topics.

Mindset

Your prepper's mindset is more important than any gear you can carry or supply you can stockpile. Briefly, your prepper's mindset encompasses the knowledge and skills that you have acquired to help you through a crisis. Educating yourself about the most likely disasters in your area and getting your family involved is also part of your mindset. Learning to make quick decisions by walking through the "what ifs" is key to your prepper's mindset. This is realistic prepping because it costs little to nothing to develop.

Situational Awareness

One of the most important factors in realistic prepping is your situational awareness. Being observant about the things going on around you, the people, and subtle shifts in mood can help you escape before a bad situation happens. It can also help you to avoid needless accidents because you've paid attention and side-stepped the danger. (We've all seen those videos of people so engrossed in their phones they walk right into a wall or a telephone pole.)

Safety

Safety encompasses a lot. It covers our personal safety when we're out and about, either alone or with our loved ones. It can also cover the basics of home security, letting people know where you're going to be and when you're expected to return and avoiding dangerous situations when possible. Safety also encompasses understanding and mitigating the risks of the most likely dangers in your area,

Often one of the first steps to becoming more safe and secure includes performing an evaluation of your risk assessment components, which consists of assessing both your home and personal risk. This sets the stage for managing any potential threats to your safety.

The truth is, at some point, many of us have had it with leaving the protection of ourselves and our families up to fate. Instead, we decide enough is enough, and it’s time to take charge of our future safety and security. When that happens, if you want to be effective and efficient with your time, effort, and resources (including money). You’ll need to take stock of the threats you face and the vulnerabilities you have to those threats.

Taking stock of your threats and vulnerabilities is a less technical way of stating that you will conduct an evaluation of certain risk assessment components. After all, unless you perform a personal and home risk assessment, managing your risk will be at best, a guess.

What is Risk?

Before we dive into risk assessment components, though, let’s discuss exactly what "risk" is. Risk is when we know a potentially lousy situation can happen to someone or something. However, at the same time, we don’t know when or if it will happen. For example, in my case, every time I cook food, there is a risk of it tasting awful! However, I don’t know when I’ll whip up that terrible-tasting meal. Ultimately, it depends upon some factors. Those factors include the freshness of the ingredients, my knowledge and ability around the kitchen, combined with the randomness of chance.

Similarly, the same is valid for risks related to our safety and security. It’s no secret that we all run the risk of having our cell phones stolen. Unfortunately, while we know people take cell phones, we don’t know if, when, or where it will happen. In other words, risk is something that we know is possible, but at the same time, we don’t know if it will ever happen to us.

Another way of looking at risk is to consider it as the probability of an unfortunate event happening. Now, if you eliminate the possibility of something wrong happening, you’ll remove the risk. Unfortunately, as we’ll discuss later, the potential to eliminate all risk is highly unlikely. Heck, I’ve spent decades working in professions that attempt to eliminate risk. Unfortunately, despite that, I can still break myself on occasion or have other bad things happen.

The Bottom-Up Risk Assessment Components

A personal or home risk assessment is required when managing your risk. The purpose of performing a personal risk assessment is to identify potential threats, their chances of occurring, and their potential impact. While there are various ways to assess risk, for our purposes, we’ll use the more straightforward-to-implement bottom-up approach.

The bottom-up personal risk assessment requires that we identify as many of our potential risks as possible. In other words, before you start making safety and security plans, sit down with a pad of paper. Then, make a list of all the potential risks you think could impact you, your family, and your home. Another great way of creating that list is to have a brainstorming session with friends and family who can help expand on your list of possible risks.

Risk Assessment Components Can Cause Overwhelm and Worry

It’s good to know upfront that some people may feel overwhelmed and worried when brainstorming potential risks. If that happens, remember that it’s normal to feel that way. Thinking about the potential for future problems can be difficult for some. However, while it may be difficult, it’s good to consider that most of us get nervous when thinking about unknown possibilities. The fact that we’re thinking about unpleasant options makes it even worse.

One way to overcome the unpleasantness, overwhelm, and worry is to think less about the potential problem and more about the results....

The reality is that once you begin thinking with a criminal mind, you’ll be better prepared to stop a bad guy.

The lesson of thinking like a criminal took hold with me during my time providing diplomatic security in places such as Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere. When I say diplomats, I am speaking about protecting everyone from members of the US Senate, Congress, and the White House Cabinet, to lesser diplomats and representatives of the US government.

Learning to think like a bad guy was one of the first lessons we received when going through the high threat protection course. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but instructors expected us to look at our missions from the bad guy's point of view during training. They taught us to think like the attackers to determine their most likely courses of action when attacking us. Then, armed with that knowledge, we'd work our plans to address our vulnerabilities.

I do have to say that it worked spectacularly because we never lost a diplomat to the bad guys.

Thinking with a Criminal Mind

Thinking with a criminal mind, especially when contemplating how a criminal may target us, can be unnerving. After all, when we honestly think like a burglar or a person bent on violence, we are forcing ourselves to confront our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. However, once we move past any uneasiness of delving inside a criminal mind, we'll find ourselves in a much more safe and secure position. We can discover the chinks in our armor and work to repair them.

Some things to understand when thinking like a criminal are:

Knowing the trends in crime.

Studying your neighborhood.

Studying your home.

A Few Crime Stats to Consider

To begin with, according to the FBI, US Department of Justice, and others,

One property crime, which the FBI defines as the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson, happens every 4 seconds, with an average of over 1,000,000 home invasions happening each year between 1994 and 2010.

One burglary occurs every 20 seconds, with over 2,000,000 homes experiencing a burglary or break-in this year.

One violent crime occurs every 25 seconds.

One aggravated assault occurs every 45 seconds, with 38% of all assaults happening during home invasions.

One robbery occurs every 90 seconds.

One rape or attempted rape occurs every 5 minutes, with 38% of all rapes occurring during home invasions.

Know the Trends

Sir Francis Bacon is credited with the Latin phrase “scientia potentia est,” which translates in English to “knowledge is power.” In thinking of getting inside a criminal mind, the phrase knowledge is power is 100% accurate. The same goes for just about anything else we do in life. Heck, it’s one of the reasons we all listen to podcasts, right?

When it comes to maintaining knowledge of potential threats, a good method is to work inwards from the macro to the micro. In other words, study what is happening on a global scale and work inward from there. The global scale provides a good representation of the overarching trends in terrorism, cybercrime, and other significant criminal tendencies. It’s also good to remember when studying international crime trends that other potential future problems may become apparent. These problems include financial upheaval, infectious diseases, and other issues that warrant our awareness.

International Crime Trends

Studying global crime trends does not always provide information that requires action at the local level. However, understanding trends on the macro scale does help to establish an overall mindset for detecting developing crime trends. Additionally, when international methods make their way to the local level, having knowledge ahead of time will reduce a person’s chance of becoming a victim.

To best understand how to prevent them, you need to answer the question, "What IS a home invasion?" Understanding the home invasion process can help you to improve your strategies for preventing them.

Home invasions target you, your home, and your family and are sadly becoming more common. However, due to a variety of reasons, many of us don’t always take that threat as seriously as we should.

That Was My Situation When My Home Was Robbed in 2010

My home was burglarized, and here's a quick rundown of what happened. About a week before I returned from Baghdad in 2010, my roommate emailed me that someone broke into our house. The bad guy found the closet where I kept my gun safe. He then, due to the deadbolt lock that I installed, chopped his way through the door. Once inside, he found my gun safe, loaded with firearms and other personally valuable items. He then worked on the safe, rolling it out the front door.

So, with that in mind, you may understand why I was thinking about the true answer to the question of "What is a home invasion?"

I think it’s vital that we take a look at what a home invasion is. We also need to examine the statistics behind home invasions because it’s the numbers that often motivate some of us to take action. That is taking decisive action to make our lives,  homes, and futures more safe and secure.

Why Merriam Webster’s Definition of "Home Invasion" is Wrong

To begin with, let’s define what is a home invasion. For our purposes, I’ll go with the top-ranked definition on Google. Merriam-Webster provides the number one definition of a home invasion on Google. Merriam-Webster states that the legal definition of home invasion is:

“The crime of entering a dwelling and committing or with intent to commit a crime (as assault) while armed and while another is lawfully present.” ~Merriam-Webster

Sadly, Merriam-Webster’s definition of what is a home invasion is 100% wrong. Not only is Merriam-Webster’s interpretation of what is a home invasion wrong, but it's misleading.

Now, some of you may be saying, “Brian, you’re making a very bold statement when you say that Merriam-Webster and its definition of what is a home invasion are wrong.” After all, Merriam-Webster has been defining the English language since 1828! That’s almost 200-years of definitions.

Well, my answer to you is that you’re 100% correct. I am making a bold statement. However, please give me a few minutes to explain why Merriam-Webster’s definition of a home invasion is wrong.

What is a Home Invasion and Why Is Merriam-Webster Wrong?

To understand why Merriam Webster’s definition of a home invasion is wrong, we need to deconstruct its definition. Again, the Merriam-Webster definition of home invasion is, “The crime of entering a dwelling and committing or with intent to commit a crime (as assault) while armed and while another is lawfully present.”

For this purpose, I’m going to assume that we can all agree that Merriam-Webster’s definition of what a home is, is correct.

Merriam-Webster defines the word home as: “One’s place of residence. The social unit formed by a family living together.” So, home is both the physical structure of where we live, and it also has the greater meaning of our family living together. That’s something special and worth protecting.

Next, Merriam-Webster defines "invasion" as “An act of invading. The incoming or spread of something usually hurtful.” Even more to the point, Merriam-Webster’s definition of "invade" is “to conquest or plunder. To encroach upon. To affect injuriously and progressively.”

So, what do all of those definitions mean? Well, if we use the deconstructed portions of Merriam-Webster’s definition of home invasion to create a statement about home invasions, we come up with this definition:

“A home invasion is the act of invading someone’s place of reside...

What often stops people from taking preparedness seriously is the question, "Are preppers crazy?" It's that very question that also drives people within the preparedness community nuts. 

After all, especially with 2020 in the review mirror, does preparing for challenging times and unforeseen difficulties sound crazy? 

Unfortunately, when it comes to answering the question of "Are preppers crazy?," the readiness community often suffers from a label that it has, at least in part, fostered for itself. 

Therefore, if the preparedness community wants to be taken seriously and not be looked upon as crazy preppers, it first needs to accept responsibility for its reputation and change from within. 

With that, this article will cover some of the fundamental reasons people think preppers are crazy.

Preppers Scare People

Far too often, preppers unnecessarily use fear as a tool to motivate others to prepare. As a result, the fear that is supposed to encourage others has the opposite effect. 

"Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Fear-based preparedness is bad enough when it comes from the average person. However, the most egregious use of fear-based preparedness happens when businesses and influencers from within the self-reliant community use it for personal gain. 

The fact is that those who unnecessarily use fear to convince others to prepare are taking the lazy way out. Moreover, those who needlessly use scare tactics for preparedness motivation are often alarmists who lack the most fundamental of all preparedness tools.  

The tool the alarmists lack is the mindset to understand fundamental human nature. Sadly, these Chicken Littles don't understand that more is accomplished through encouragement and helping others understand the situation than is achieved through fear. 

Surveys show that one of the most sought-after goals of preparedness-minded people is to improve their confidence to rise to the occasion when times get tough. Whether those tough times are a micro or macro disaster, people want to be mentally prepared to deal with it as best as possible. 

So, the question is, when people turn to preparedness to gain the skills and confidence to protect their families and friends, why in the hell are we as a community trying to scare them? Does that make any sense? 

The truth is, we as a community will gain more and go farther to help others to prepare by building them up instead of tearing them down through fear. 

Five Rules of Fear in Preparedness

It's helpful for those of you who are new to the readiness lifestyle to know these five rules of fear in preparedness:

Fear is a normal part of the human condition. 

Nearly every new prepper feels overwhelmed and fearful when they first begin prepping. 

Despite repeated predictions to the contrary, the world hasn't ended in our lifetimes, nor is it likely to. 

The fact that you are taking an interest in preparedness today means you're already better able to face tomorrow's uncertainties. 

Those who unnecessarily use fear to motivate personal readiness often lack the most fundamental of preps - an understanding of basic human nature.

Negative Nerd Speak

People also ask, "Are preppers crazy?" because of the negative-sounding, nerd vocabulary we use. 

Think about what preppers must sound like to someone who doesn't yet understand preparedness. Think about it in terms of the acronyms we use. 

Suppose you take a step back and listen to it objectively. In that case, you can't help but see that we often stick the crazy preppers label on ourselves without even trying.

Let's look at some of the terms and language that we, as preppers, use.

EOD: End of Days

GOOD: Get Out of Dodge

With hurricane season headed our way, I wanted to share some hurricane preparedness tips to help you get ready ahead of time. Many of these tips apply to any severe storm.

We see the same stories of hurricanes and major storms repeat themselves time and time again. Despite the loss of life and massive damage that hurricanes cause every year, people continue to be caught unprepared. The tragedy of this is that preparing for hurricanes isn’t that difficult. As any preparedness-minded person will tell you, successfully preparing for a hurricane or major storm takes some time, effort, and forethought.

Before we get started with these hurricane preparedness tips, I want to urge those of you who are in the path of a hurricane to please take it seriously, play it safe, and avoid becoming a statistic.

Hurricane Preparedness Tips: Before the Storm

Most of the work for getting prepped for an impending hurricane or tropical storm happens long before landfall. Some things can be done well in advance if you live in hurricane country, while others need to be done shortly before the storm.

And you'll notice that many of these preps apply to a wide variety of emergencies, so the general preparedness you already have in place will provide you with a firm foundation (without the need to go out and fight the crowds for that last case of bottled water.)

Stay Informed

Start by keeping an eye on the news. When you see a storm forming that may impact you, increase your level of awareness about the weather. Pay attention to the weather apps on your phone, check the National Weather Service at weather.gov, and keep tabs on the forecasts for your area. Remember, weather.com is an entertainment money-making website when checking the news, and weather.gov is there to pass on weather information. Learn more about weather preparedness here.

When staying informed about tropical storms and hurricanes, make sure you understand the differences between weather advisories, watches, and warnings.

Advisories are issued when conditions are expected to cause substantial, potentially dangerous problems. If people use caution, these conditions should not be deadly.

Watches are issued when a hurricane or tropical storm may occur within 48-hours. When a watch is issued, it’s time to double-check your preparations, make sure your vehicle is fully fueled, and start getting ready things in case you need to get out of dodge.

Warnings are issued when a hurricane, or tropical storm is likely to occur within 36-hours. When a warning is released, wrap up your preparations and consider launching your evacuation plan.

Form a network with others to help keep each other informed and help out in a disaster. The minute one of you notices something terrible headed your way, pass the word on to others.

Understand the Categories of Hurricanes

One of the most important hurricane preparedness tips is to understand what meteorologists are talking about when referring to the "category" of the impending storm. Meteorologists rank hurricanes using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. They are categorized on a scale of 1-5 based on the top sustained wind speed.

The National Hurricane Center explains the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Category 1: 74-95 mph

Very dangerous winds will produce some damage: Well-constructed frame homes could have damage to roof, shingles, vinyl siding and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallowly rooted trees may be toppled. Extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that could last a few to several days.

Category 2: 96-110 mph

Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage: Well-constructed frame homes could sustain major roof and siding damage. Many shallowly rooted trees will be snapped or uprooted and block numerous roads.

This week, we’re going to cover overcoming adversity so that you can help yourself and others successfully overcome a disaster, emergency, or another critical event. One of, if not the primary goal of preparedness is to overcome adversity. That’s because as survivors, we prepare for what Merriam-Webster defines as: “a state or instance of serious…

Coping and managing stress can be difficult during normal times. During a disaster or another stressful situation, the difficulty is even greater. And if one of the people dealing with the situation has PTSD, the need to manage this reaches an entirely different level.

Now, while I’m not a therapist, I know a lot about this topic because I’ve had my own dealings with stress in the form of PTSD. That has caused me to sit on the couch side of the therapist’s office. Yes, they all seem to have couches. During that time, I’ve worked on my mechanisms for coping and managing stress. I’ve learned a great deal about how the mind works for those of us who deal with very stressful conditions, which disasters bring and like those we’ll all experience during long-term events, should they happen.

My Personal Story of PTSD

After being home from overseas for a couple of years, I started having problems. I had no idea what was going on. I had panic attacks. Also, I got light-headed, agitated, and was not understanding what was happening. Then, on August 30th, 2017, a fair amount of stress was happening where I worked. I was a Stateside program manager, overseeing a large security contract in Iraq. Well, this week was not fun. Tuesday the 29th was bad, but when I woke up on Wednesday the 30th, things were definitely worse.

It’s hard to describe, but in a nutshell, I was a wreck. I felt like I’d been awake for a week and as if somebody had worked me over with a baseball bat. I was agitated, confused, short of breath, and on and on. Not sure of what was going on, I asked one of my co-workers to take me to the hospital.

My heart and everything other than my blood pressure were fine. My blood pressure, though, was through the roof and wouldn’t come down. Luckily the ER doc and my boss both recommended I talk to someone, so I set an appointment up with a counselor. I did that and was sitting in his office the next day.

Stress and Conditions Such as PTSD Are Related

Shortly after that, I was diagnosed with PTSD that goes back to my years working for Blackwater in Iraq. Since then, it’s been a roller coaster with some challenges, many of which manifest themselves in the next section on Common Stress Reactions. Now, before we move on, I want to say that until August of 2017, I was someone who thought PTSD and stress-related problems were overrated and used as a crutch.

I'm here to tell you and will speak with anyone who wants to know. PTSD, stress, etc., are real problems that can be very challenging. So, if you know someone with a stress-related condition, don’t discount the challenges they face. And, to those people like me who didn’t put much stock in it, you’re very wrong. Stress and stress-related conditions do exist, and at times they can be crippling. It's especially important for people with PTSD to find healthy methods of coping and managing stress.

How Does PTSD Work?

PTSD, as I’ve experienced it and it’s been explained to me, works like this. A person is exposed to one or more stressful incidents. When a stressful event happens, our bodies are probably in a fight or flight stage.

In other words, your mind isn’t able to take the time to process what is happening correctly. Instead, it focuses on just what it needs to do to survive the situation you’re in. So, instead of processing your thoughts so they don’t bother you later, your brain stashes the information brought in from your senses in the frontal lobe of your mind. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your mind that is responsible for thinking, analyzing, etc. However, the prefrontal cortex shuts down when your stress-related heart rate hits 180  to 220 beats per minute.

It means that your brain isn’t capable of processing the event, so it is stopped in your frontal lobe and is never handled to be filed away in another part of the brain where it is mostly forgotten.

If you enjoy spending time in the great outdoors, these safe hiking tips can help you enjoy it more.

Do you know that, according to the CDC, the third most common source of injury in the wilderness is hiking, with only sledding and snowboarding being more likely to result in injury? Do you also know that more deaths and injuries are attributed to hiking than to more dangerous activities such as rock climbing?

On top of that, Search and Rescue (SAR) teams report thousands of searches each year, with a significant number of those searches resulting in deaths. What makes these deaths and the thousands of injuries sustained each year in the wilderness is that these instances can be attributed to three things, poor judgment, lack of experience, and lack of knowledge. In other words, people overestimate themselves and their capabilities while underestimating Mother Nature.

These safe hiking tips can help you better enjoy your experience.

Now, I know that many of you enjoy getting out into the outdoors, getting off the beaten path, and hiking, which is incredible. However, I have one question for you. Do you ever think about your capabilities and work to minimize the potential danger to you and those who depend on you?

In the end, hiking is fantastic, and these safe hiking tips can help you enjoy it without incident.

1) Don't Go Off the Trail.

Staying on known and marked trails makes is one of the easiest ways to avoid being lost and, therefore, one of the most important safe hiking tips. However, if you become lost, or as we said in the military, temporarily misoriented, staying on a known trail will help search and rescue (SAR) teams find you sooner.

SAR teams most commonly search along trails. So, the farther you wander away from a known path, the less likely your chances are of being found and the longer it will take.

Even though it may be tempting, avoid shortcuts. Typically taking off-trail shortcuts is discouraged. You can harm the area by blazing your trail. However, if you must take a shortcut, make sure to take a few minutes to look at your map to make sure you're not going to get yourself into a jam.

2) Be Prepared for the Hike

Carrying the right gear and supplies is super important no matter how long of a hike you are going for. Just like on Gilligan's Island, what starts out as a short, but fun adventure can turn into an extended survival situation should Murphy rear his ugly head. Prepare for longer when heading out for your three-hour tour.

While traveling light is always good, at a minimum, you should consider bringing these essentials with you:

Water: The amount of water you need to carry depends upon your environment, the difficulty of the hike, and how long you'll be hiking. Remember, it's always best to err on the side of caution when it comes to a life-sustaining resource such as water. If you're absolutely positive there is water that you can safely filter, you can get away with carrying less with you. Here's more information on purifying water.

Food: Bring some lightweight, hard-to-crush snacks like trail mix, jerky, nuts, and dried fruit.

Flashlight:  If you become lost, there's a good chance you may be spending the night in the woods, desert, or wherever you are. Therefore, a flashlight will help you to be able to see and signal to others. White light is visible for miles at night. 

Fire Starter: If you are stuck in poor conditions or stranded overnight, fire-lighting for warmth and signaling is very important.

First Aid Kit: Spending the night or a few days in the wilderness can result in some small and also severe injuries. The downside is that even minor injuries can be a problem when out in the wild. Having the ability to clean and cover a wound is essential for proper hygiene and safety.

When prepping your first aid kit,

In this day and age of technology overload, traditional archery is a mystery to many. However, one person who has made a life and career out of traditional archery is Scott Moore. When it comes to preparedness and also to the simple enjoyment of the outdoors, picking up a bow and learning traditional archery…