(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on March 27th, 2020. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while.)
A Simple Prepping Flowchart
I wrote a couple of tweets the other day about preparing for various disasters. I was asked to elaborate on those tweets, and it’s timely as well as useful. Not to mention, I can fit in some other useful lessons about systemic thinking as well.
So here we go.
A Simple Prepping System
The problem with most material related to prepping is that you need to think in systemic terms. To-do lists absolutely do not cut it when unexpected events occur, because the chain can get knocked out and then you’re in trouble.
For instance, let’s say you’re preparing for an economic disaster. We’re currently – if you reading this in the future, it’s March 2020 – experiencing an economic disaster across the globe due to Coronavirus.
Now, imagine you’ve read various prepper things. What do they tell you about economic downturns? Things like:
- Have six months savings
- Generate an additional, collapse-proof income
- Have a store of cash
- Get out of debt
- Have an emergency kit together (that includes food, water, supplies… and a tent, apparently.)
- Stock up on survival books and products
Now, let’s assume for a minute that you weren’t caught with your pants down and thus have the things on that list. (And I took that list from the first result for “prepping for economic collapse.”)
Ask yourself how many of those things are even relevant or possible in so far as this collapse, and other likely collapses, is going.
Now Back To The Regular Programming Schedule…)
- Cash is useless in a lock down where a virus is present. Nobody wants to take it.
- Your additional income stream is wiped out because nobody is allowed to work
- Getting out of debt… good luck. Everyone else isn’t.
- Why do you need an emergency kit? You’re not going anywhere.
- Survival products aren’t going to protect you against an airborne disease.
Now, this isn’t to say you should never do any of the above things. It’s just that if your “prepping” is following a to-do list, it’s inherently useless when something, (in this case, a virus,) knocks you off-course.
And remember, I’m not talking about the virus itself; merely its effect on your plans for an economic collapse.
This is a weakness in any to-do list. What we need instead is a dynamic workflow that’s useful whatever happens.
Prepping: The Simplest Workflow
To prep properly, you start with everyday life. If you can remember six weeks ago, your life was probably normal. Get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch Netflix, fall asleep. Repeat.
That’s a dynamic system itself; because if you wake up and you feel sick, you don’t go to work. The rest of your day adapts around it.
Now, we start with our daily life because the simplest recommendations are based on how to keep the above chain going:
- What do you do if you don’t go to work?
- How do you deal with your evening’s entertainment if Netflix shuts down?
- What do you do when there’s no food to eat?
- What if your landlord evicts you?
You can think dynamically. Those questions escalate quickly for a reason.
A disaster is a quick escalation and by the time you are in one, you’ve already lost the low-hanging fruit. That’s why you prep in advance.
By doing this simple exercise, you get the dynamic feel going. That’s good, because it’s what we’ll use moving forward.
Stay or Go
There is very little point in buying a bug-out bag and stuffing it full of MREs and tents and a sleeping bag and a swiss-knife with 65 different features. What scenario is going to require all of that stuff?
For some people, it makes sense. For most, it doesn’t.
You aren’t going to lose your home and become Rambo. If there’s a hurricane and you need to evacuate your premises, then you need to fill your backpack with useful stuff, not 5 gallons of water, which you’ll likely be able to get at any petrol station anywhere outside the red zone.
Yet these things are what most prepping is all about.
But let me break it down into a simple binary to start. You’re faced with a disaster. Do you:
- Stay
- Go
In most disasters, you aren’t going to leave your house and go live in a tent in the mountains. That’s absurd. “There’s an Earthquake! Better go live in a tent!” or, “The economy has collapsed. Better raid people’s houses and eat wild mushrooms!”
Honest to god.
Our simple binary will result most of the time in staying in your home. In the other times, mostly the solution is to have somewhere to stay. It might be a hotel. You might stay with your parents. Maybe you’ve got a cabin in the woods, or a friend whose sofa you can sleep on. Or maybe you buy a little campervan and turn it into a rustic family holiday.
All of these things are better than a tent.
Anyway, in most cases, you’re going to stay.
Now…
From answering that simple binary and picking “stay” you then have a range of options with a single clear goal. If you’re going to stay, do you have what you need?
And similarly, if you “go” then do you a) have what you need, and b) somewhere to go to?
This is boring but it’s the first step to essential prepping because ultimately it asks and answers the correct questions in the same way.
If you’re staying in for a 3 month quarantine, you need 3 months worth of essential life supplies. If you think that’s a likely disaster, then your prepping consists entirely of getting those three months’ supplies. You don’t need a flashlight. The power isn’t off. This isn’t the disaster you ordered.
If you’re leaving in 24 hours because a hurricane is blowing through, you need to know where you’re going and you need to take the things with you to secure yourself and anyone you’re travelling with until you get back. In other words, pack for a secluded, self-board holiday and take your documents with you.
Final Thoughts
Most disasters are easy to prepare for. By using a dynamic system like the above and tying it up with the likely scenarios you’ll face, you can prepare for a wide variety of disasters; mostly by just doing everyday things slightly better.
Imagine you have to stay in your home for one month, three months, six months, twelve months. Then Imagine you have to do that without a job. What do you do? How do you change your life?
Imagine you have to leave in 1 minute (house on fire.) 5 minutes, 1 hour, 24 hours. What do you do? What do you need and can you have it to hand in that moment?
Think on these things. They might save your life.