Natural Disasters

The most likely events that you will need this information for are the natural disasters like:

• Hurricanes
• Earthquakes
• Floods
• Tornadoes
• Wild Fires

My experience is mostly with hurricanes, which allow you time to get ready. That time frame to be ready isn’t the case with the other options listed above.

This is why it is better to have a plan and things ready to go at all times. Even though I have the time to do preparations for a hurricane, and official hurricane season is June – December, I operate as if they can happen at any time.

The things you will need to have ready, how you go about your planning, and everything is highly dependent on many factors:

• How many people you are prepping for (just you? family? friends?)
• Where you will meet (plan A, B, etc)
  • ALWAYS have multiple plans that go into effect depending on the various situations you can foresee based on your group’s bulk experiences of the natural disaster your area typically faces
• Do you have hidden caches that can help you get from your starting location to your bug out location?
  • Are these caches checked regularly to be re-stocked with certain items?
  • Are these caches needed only in certain situations? Does everyone know when these caches are needed and where they are located?
• If you are with a group:
  • Who is responsible for bringing what items to the meeting location?
  • Does everyone have multiple routes they are familiar with to get to the location?
  • If communication by normal methods (cell phones, email, etc) isn’t an option, do you have a way to communicate should travel plans/routes change?
  • Do you meet up on a regular basis to review and practice your plans?
• If you are alone:
  • What are you carrying with you if you need to leave your house?
  • How far can you get on a full tank of gas?
  • Do you have alternate routes to get to a bug out location that you have practiced?
  • Will you be able to carry everything in your car with you should you run out of gas on the way to your destination?

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is a starting point, and the questions, answers, and everything else largely depends on different factors that are relevant to the group, the number of people in the group, and the different disasters they face.

Start where you are and make gradual, continual progress. Something is better than nothing.

The areas that dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Dorian (Both Category 5 hurricanes) were not really prepared for the aftermath.

The preparations I do for my hurricane experiences are more for how to live should the worst happen after the storm….you can only sit and wait for it to be over essentially during the storm and prepare for the aftermath as best as you can before the storm.

Hurricane Michael

Hurricane Michael was a low-grade Category 5 hurricane. Hurricane preps tell you to have at least 3 days of water, food, medication and anything else you need should the worst happen.

They got the worst. It took about a month to get stable power back running in the area hit. A year later, and people are still waiting to hear back from insurance adjusters and receive money from the various claims. One year later, and life isn’t back to the way it was fully before the storm.

In my experience with hurricanes, you prepare for the worst and pray for the best. Most of the people I see getting their preparations in order, I don’t think have ever been through a hurricane – they have carts full of refrigerated items, which are no good unless you have a generator or a few teenage boys at home. They wait until the day before to get gas, food, and water only to use what gas they have finding there is no more gas, food, or water available and then complain on national television that they can’t find anything.

This generally being the case, no one was prepared to handle a month without power, and not many people know how to function without their cell phones (and those were difficult to get charged or get service). When stores opened up again, it was cash only – how many people do you know that have cash readily on hand when we live in a world of plastic and mobile payments?

Hurricane Dorian

This one is far worse than Hurricane Michael. Hurricane Dorian camped out for over 24 hours over those islands and was much stronger. Some say that a Category 6 needs to be created especially for this storm’s devastation.

It will likely take much longer for Hurricane Dorian sufferers to recuperate from the damages compared to those with Hurricane Michael, which is over a year now (as of October 2019).

Other Natural Disasters

Other natural disasters I am not quite as familiar with, but I do know that with many of them, you have little to no time to prepare and you generally have to make split second decisions that could potentially be the decision between life and death.

Although I don’t know how to handle these situations, I would hope that there is a method or plan in place to put oneself and one’s tribe in the best position possible to get through the event and be able to operate in the aftermath should modern conveniences not be an option. If you have a non-hurricane natural disaster that you face, comment below on how you prepare and handle those situations.

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