We are a family of five living in Houston, Texas. Within the past several years, we have faced several dangerous situations where we were caught blindsided. Among those where several hurricane evacuations, and most recently, we experienced a forced evacuation from our home, after a chemical plant leaked and exploded nearby. Prior to these incidents, we had no thoughts of survival skills, prepping or preparing for disaster. While these experiences were very unpleasant, we are actually thankful for them because they served as a huge wake up call for our family to prepare.
One of the most important things we did was to write out a “risk mitigation” plan to help us through the upcoming hard times. This was a very basic plan of action that would help our family better weather any crisis, whether it be an economic, job loss, or any other natural disaster. This article is a synopsis of our plan.
Risk mitigation is the process of assessing certain risks, and developing a plan to minimize the impact of those risks. Your plan should include three basic steps:
Step One: Identify and assess which potential risks threaten your family. Examples of risks that you may want to consider are accidents, job losses, crime, acts of violence, natural disasters, economic collapse, long term unemployment, food shortages and medical crises.
Step Two: Prioritize the risks and determine which are more likely to occur. Do you live in an earthquake prone area? Do you have a chronic medical condition? Do you live in a large metropolitan city? Are you financially stable? No one likes to examine their weaknesses, but it is critical that you take a realistic look at your present situation, to find your weak areas. These are the cracks that may later grow into huge problems. It is better to work through them now!
Step Three: Develop a coordinated plan to minimize, monitor and control the impact of the risks.
I am going to share a basic overview of the basic plan that we came up with for our family. While it is not comprehensive, it will provide some readers an opportunity to see what our family is doing, and perhaps encourage others to get started. We recently had to put our plan to the test after we faced a huge setback – a job layoff! We were so thankful to have been prepared to help us navigate safely through the crisis!
We divided our plan in to four main categories:
1. Financial Security
2. Food Security
3. Home & Personal Security
4. Health Security
Financial Security
· Our first priority was to get and stay out of debt. If you are like most Americans, this will be a huge hurdle, but not an impossible one. We used the principles set out in Dave Ramsey’s web site and attacked our debt aggressively. We are Christians and committed our plan to God. He empowered us – miraculously – to pay off a huge debt that seemed like a bottomless pit. After years of struggling and feeling hopeless, we can say that “Nothing is impossible with God.” We are now living debt free. We follow Biblical principles with our money management and trust God to provide.
· We set aside a cash savings for emergencies. It is important to have funds accessible in a crisis. The amount isn’t as important as having something set aside. In a crisis, the ATM machines will likely be out of order or nonfunctioning. We experience this during Hurricane Rita. Make sure you have some cash.
· Eliminate as many extra bills as possible. We focus only on the basic needs of our family such as food, clothing and shelter. We have given up cable, fitness clubs, and instead read, garden and have learned new skills.
· We examined our investments and made some changes to better protect our assets. This included moving a larger percentage of our investments into gold, silver and precious metals.
· We save as much money as we can every month.
Food Security
· We started to maintain a three month supply of food in our home, at all times. This is our short term supply. Most of this is ready to eat or food with a shorter shelf life. We stock up on basic items and have built up our pantry.
· We slowly built a reserve of freeze dried foods for long term storage. This is costly so we are taking it slow, buying only what we can when we have the extra money. We would like to build up to having a year of food storage. Again, this is a work in progress.
· We store a two week supply of water, and have resources for purification in an emergency. We have purchased a Big Berkey water filter, water purification tablets, store extra bleach.
· Most importantly, we have become avid gardeners, and have started growing our own food in our backyard. We have several fruit trees, and several raised garden beds. We have planted foods that our family enjoys to eat, and have learned how to plant, grow and harvest heirloom garden seeds.
· We have alternative methods for cooking our food, should we lose power. We have a camp cook stove, propane, Sterno fuel and purchased a Volcano emergency cook stove.
Home & Personal Security
· Car Safety. We keep our cars well maintained, stocked with basic emergency supplies, a first aid kit, a tool box and maps. After watching the runs on gas stations during the Hurricanes’, we learned to keep our vehicles filled up with gas at all times. We maintain at least ½ a tank at all times, and store a small gas reserve in our garage.
· Personal Security. We took a class on gun safety and learned how to shoot a gun. This was very difficult for us, as we have never owned a gun. We have secured our home with alarm system, property lighting, guard dogs and a weapon for self defense. We are alert to our surroundings and are learning new evacuation routes using back roads.
· Bug out Bags. We have them packed and ready to go on a moment’s notice. They contain food, clothing and basic supplies for 3 to 5 days away from home.
· We have started saving to buy land and secure a retreat in the country. This is a long term goal for our family. We desire to become as self sufficient as possible.
Health and Well Being
· We focus on eating right; taking vitamins, exercising and getting proper rest.
· We are Christians and maintain an active relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ. We attend church, read our Bibles, and surround ourselves with fellow believers who offer encouragement and moral support. We cast our burdens on God, and pray for wisdom in decision making.
· Due to a chronic medical condition, we store extra prescription medications. We have also assembled a large and well stocked first aid kits. We keep one in each vehicle and one in our house.
In conclusion, risks are always changing and you may never be fully prepared to face all of them, but that is not a reason to ignore them! Take some time to write down what dangers your family might face, and do your best to mitigate the damage by preparing for them now. Use all the resources available in the SurvivalBlog archives and start doing something today!