February 14, 2025
Day 1,232 of the Adventure
During the past few years, we, as a nation, have experienced a number of crises relating to weather events, both local and regional. A global pandemic. Food production disruptions. Supply chain disruptions. Cyber-attacks, Geopolitical events. Inflationary financial pressures and so on. Do we withstand them? Yes, for the most part, we do. Not without a measure of stress, uncertainty or redirection of resources and efforts. Even when it comes to something as simple as eggs, we are subject to outside forces that feel relentless. I suppose we can do without, do with less or just pay the price and move on. There's debate on whether or not the threat of bird flu even requires the extermination of tens of millions of chickens. We don't seem to think the extermination of any other species of bird is necessary......... And..... there are those who are critical of exterminating entire flocks rather than isolating sick birds and allowing unaffected birds to strengthen and pass on immunities. It's all above my paygrade. Nevertheless, even things like chicken eggs can have a crisis effect in our lives and we seem to possess no recourse for it.
With all of the potential problems we face, what do we consider preparing for next? Honestly, who knows! One thing is for certain though. There will be a "next crisis". Will it threaten our lives? Statistics say no. Although, from a local or regional event, the possibility is, probably so. I'm thinking California Wildfires, North Carolina Hurricane Floods, Midwestern Tornadoes. These things can all turn deadly in micro regional locations. In thinking of the possibilities, it would be easy to resort to a "doom and gloom" mindset. I do not feel that is a healthy posture to assume. A much more healthy approach is to simply become better prepared for disruptions and crisis as a lifestyle. I've lived in the Southwest Missouri Ozarks for a little over half of my 64 years. Everyone who lives here for more than just a few seasons KNOWS beyond a shadow of a doubt that we get ice storms that take out portions of power grid EVERY YEAR! Sometimes more, sometimes less. A few years ago, a major ice storm killed our power for five full days. Armed with that knowledge, almost nobody is ever prepared for it. If it's 2-3 hours, or even a half day or so in duration, we just suffer through it. Anything beyond a day and Let the Whining Commence"! That, of course, is just an example of our general lack of forward thinking when it comes to preparedness. Obviously, not everything can be predicted with as much certainty as an Ozarks Ice Storm. For example, The Hurricane Helene event in North Carolina is something I would call unprecedented. Even though flash floods were probably very common, nothing indicated there would ever be something of the Helene magnitude. On the other hand, the recent wildfires in California would be something that I would consider to be inevitable. Modest sized fires happen all the time and, in this case, a large one is simply going to occur eventually. Same with the sub-zero winter storm temps that plowed into Texas a few years ago freezing everything and causing widespread power outages.
We tend to prepare for events using the 80/20 rule. Prepare for the most likely 80% of things that would typically cause disruptions and keep in mind what we might need to do in the extreme 20% of events. Same is true for food related crisis, fuel or energy crisis and so on. Even when considering the lowly chicken egg crisis. When we saw the prices of eggs going up and saw the seeming determination to kill of millions of birds, we bought up eggs from a local farmer and freeze dried them. We buy fewer from the store now. We still buy from local suppliers, but we also have perhaps a good six months of supply of eggs in the pantry, freeze dried, powdered and sealed in mylar bags for later if the crisis gets bad. Here's the point. It did not require much in the way of planning to be prepared for an egg shortage. In fact, I would say that what we did is not out of the ordinary scope of our food plan, with or without an "egg crisis". It's just a normal and routine part of a self-sufficient type of living paradigm. The same is true with our heating sources. We set up our cabin with four sources of heat and three sources of electrical power. The chances of us ever getting any colder than a warm 70 degrees in our cabin is very remote. With or without electricity, or LP gas, or generator power. It's a redundancy of sources that took very little to get set in place and can mostly be forgotten at this point until needed.
There will be a "Next Crisis" and the severity of it may be small or large. I'm not that concerned about the 0% to 80% probability of events. The 80% -100% severe range, may leave me scrambling a little but even if that happens, I'll not be wasting my time trying to resolve things in the 20% or 30% of disaster probability. I can focus my efforts on the more serious problems. If you can't handle a power outage for more than a couple days. If you don't have a food supply resource for more than a week or two. If anything would or could disrupt your life in a way you're not at least partially prepared to handle. Perhaps spend a little bit of thinking and planning time on boosting your ability to deal with crisis. The fact is, there will be another one!
Adventure Quote: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin
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