Decision Science for TEOTWAWKI, by Dr. P.F.

This article describes how to figure the Who, What, Where, When, Why, How Long, and How Deep of preparedness. Preparing for TEOTWAWKI is a lot like buying insurance. You hope you never have to use it, but the consequences of being uninsured or under insured are severe enough to warrant the investment. Determining how much, and what type, of insurance to get can be a daunting task. The purpose of this article is to provide starting points for discussions on how best to allocate your resources in preparing for catastrophic events. It considers only those calamities, natural or man-made, at the scale of a community or larger. Getting struck by lightning may be catastrophic for you, but does not pose a threat to the survival of a community, culture, nation, or species.

Before we start, a word about psychological preparedness. In her book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why, Amanda Ripley discusses how training and mindset preparation can have a major influence on survivability. Hopefully, her research will provide you with the motivation to overcome the ‘readiness fatigue’ and the Black Swans that you will undoubtedly encounter in this journey. A mantra of ‘If it is to be, it is up to me’ will serve you well. The bureaucracy is unwilling and incapable of responding to disasters in a timely or proactive manner.

Risk assessment is one means of guiding resource allocation. Obviously, high probability, high consequence events deserve more attention than low probability, low consequence events. When trying to make the best decisions about the allocation of resources, questions about the relative importance or ‘weight’ of the various factors can play an influential part. Identifying meaningful ‘weights’ is sometimes difficult due to the sheer number of factors and their variability. Decision matrices can be a starting point for discussions. They provide a way to rate, rank, grade, and compare the relative importance of factors for your situation and modulate your responses. A review of some of the risk parameters will help us engage in prudent preparation versus “Chicken Little” activities. The traditional questions of Who, What, Where, When, and Why, as well as the questions of How Deep and How Long, provide a framework for this article.

WHO (caused the problem)
This part of the WHO question isn’t central to our discussion. Other than armed rebellion against a corrupt and/or dysfunctional government, retaliation against the instigators of a man-made disaster is above my pay grade. As far as natural disasters go, they too, are above my pay grade.

WHO (is involved)
This part of the WHO question is very dependent on location and event scope, and is covered later.

WHAT (to prepare for)
The first part of the WHAT question promotes discussion in terms of the overall odds of a particular event occurring. In the example below, some selected events are ranked in the order of likelihood from most likely to least likely and some probabilities are listed from high to low – rank your event in the list, select a probability and use the number in the cell where they intersect to help you determine relative importance as compared to any other event and probability. Scientific American magazine, September 2010, has an article which rates the possibility of eight catastrophic scenarios in case you can’t come up with any. By their account, there is a 50-50 chance of a terrorist nuclear attack in the next fifteen years and a 50-50 chance of a pandemic in the next thirty years. A terrorist nuclear attack with a one in two probability (50%) has a relative importance of (9) as compared to a Super Volcano with a one in one million probability (.00001%) and a relative importance of (2).

A second part of the WHAT question promotes discussion for the odds of an event peculiar to your locale. For example, California has a low probability of wind events (per FEMA 320) and a high probability of earthquakes. Parts of the Midwest have a high probability of wind events and low probability of earthquakes. Use Financial Crash, Wind Event, Floods, Forest Fire, Earthquake, and Hazardous Material in your Event column for those discussions.

The WHAT question matters only in the short run. Whether an EMP, pandemic, financial meltdown, etc., these national, continental, and global scenarios differ mostly in how long it takes society to spin down to the common outcomes depicted in Patriots, One Second After, Lights Out, The Postman, etc. If you’ve prepared, protected, and shielded yourself enough to survive the acute phase of the catastrophe (e.g., gamma radiation from a solar event), you will find the chronic phases will be remarkably similar. In any of the scenarios, you will need resources for however long it takes to regain social and economic viability.

WHEN
The WHEN question is a SWAG (Scientific Wild Axxed Guess) and subject to many prophecies and conspiracy theories. It is “Scientific” in that there are probabilities touted by various parties – some more responsible than others. The Scientific American issue mentioned above has some proposed probabilities that are probably as good as any. It is “Wild Axxed” in that there are some paradigm busting theories such as Planet X, etc. It is a “Guess” in that you can work the odds and still be surprised when you get hit by your personal Black Swan, a meteor from the edge of space. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, trust (God), but prepare.

As an example, a financial crash which occurs within 1 year has a relative importance of (10), and warrants the most attention. There are those who say we’ve already started the Financial Crash.
                                                                                   
WHERE
The WHERE question is posed in terms of how wide spread the impact of a catastrophic event may be. Use a table that has possible events on one axis and event scope on the other axis. An example of a local event is a tornado; an earthquake can either be local or regional in scope; Katrina is an example of a regional event; an EMP, as described in the book One Second After, can be an example of either a national event or a continental event; a solar flare or CME could be an example of a global event. Though a local financial crash does not have the relative importance (1) of a global financial crash (5), both pale when compared to a global solar storm (8). One of the ways to use this matrix is to discuss external agency (e.g., FEMA, Red Cross) response and recovery times for each possibility. For example, compare response/ recovery times for a local tornado with those of a hurricane – how long will you be on your own? Will they ever show up in the case of a national or global event? As one blog entry asked, How Long Can You Tread Water?

WHY
The WHY question has two answers. The first answer has to do with human originated disasters. The second has to do with fate. For the first example, the bad news about Haiti was that 250,000+ people were killed. The good news is that 250,000+ people were killed thereby reducing the population load on a country that cannot sustain itself agriculturally or economically. Among other things, they chose to not limit their population growth and are suffering the consequences. As for the second answer, I recommend that we all be ready to meet our Maker at any time.

HOW DEEP and HOW LONG
You now should have enough knowledge and information to construct decision matrices for answering the questions of How Deep and How Long. Consider that the answers to those questions interact and will depend in part upon how soon we start addressing the possibilities and remedying the causes. As the saying goes, Pay me now, or pay me later . . . and lot more if it’s later.

Another useful decision matrix has event type on one axis and preparation type on the other axis. It also may provide an opportunity to discuss ways to save resources by making an item multifunctional. For example, a storm shelter is appropriate preparation for a wind event. With a little modification, a storm shelter can also be used for a solar storm shelter and/or a nuclear bomb shelter. Note that the below matrix is for the acute phase. You may wish to modify your shelter into a bunker for long term scenarios.

           
Restoring society and the economy after a large scale disaster will take some time – the less we have to restore, the faster we get back to our “new normal.” When I was growing up, we could always milk the cows or pump water by hand if the electricity was out. Now, we would have to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools needed to regain the level of technology we currently enjoy. Some estimates say recovery would take ten years, others say more or less. Making the correct decisions about disaster preparedness may help you achieve your “new normal” sooner and may even save your life. More importantly it may save the lives of those you love. Choose wisely.

Authors Note:
In 1974, I made a presentation to my OCS class based on the book Limits to Growth. Few understood the implications of increasing competition for decreasing resources from a military standpoint. Growing up on a farm with an industrial arts and agricultural education followed by a 32-year military career has increased my understanding of the significance of World Watch’s State of the World series, Montgomery’s Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth, and The Limits to Growth – 30 Years. We have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth, and it is a disaster. Jared Diamond’s book Collapse plus his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies are harbingers of our future barring our intervention. It would be better if we reduced the load on this earth voluntarily; nature will be less kind with her culling process. Witness the ruins of the great civilizations throughout the world. They never thought it could happen to them… but it did.