what disasters are you looking to prepare for?

We're in the country and only a few minutes from a 300,000 person city, which has TONS of defense contract companies (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.), TONS of biotech companies, and an Army arsenal. It's not so much a terrorist attack that I'm worried about (although during the 1980s we WERE #4 on the "hit list" behind Washington DC, NYC, and NORAD). No, today I'm more concerned about a virus escaping one of the biotech companies, one of the missile manufacturers blowing up half the city, or some toxic ooze escaping. Plus, we're 22 miles away from a nuclear power plant (Though safe, it's just something else to think about). Any of these situations, while bad enough, would also certainly cause people to panic/freak out. And that's what I also try to prepare for - the "human factor", which is often more dangerous than an actual event.

Like we saw several weeks ago with gas prices, there doesn't HAVE to be a crisis - just the assumption of one - to actually create a crisis. If there's a catastrophe locally, all Hell's going to break loose, and I want to be sure that I can ride out the situation. We have a decent stockpile of supplies. They come in handy, since we're always getting tornadoes, floods, ice storms, and other "fun" weather. Just pays to be prepared for many reasons.

I think there are probably 2 categories of disaster one can prepare for.

1) Common disaster

The Common disaster is the bad storm, when you get bad storms once every few years. Tornado Alley, Hurricane Alley, these places know this problem. The Northwest gets good windstorms every so often. The mid-atlantic, too. California gets earthquakes. In any event, it's something that happens, has happened many times, and is sure to happen again. It's disruptive, you need adequate supplies to hold you over until things get rebuilt or back to normal, or if you're in the epicenter, give you time to relocate/rebuild.

2) The Uncommon Disaster

Uncommon Disasters are major terrorist events, biohazards like bird flu, massive infrastructure shutdown (pipeline destruction, Interstate collapse, etc), economic implosion that leads to supply disruptions. These are the times where a year's supply may come in handy, and where subsistance gardening, water catchement, and dry storage allow you to live for an extended time without going to the store. If the banks go down for a week or more, and your ATM card doesn't work, do you have enough? If the truck supplying your local food mart doesn't arrive, do you have enough? If there's a quarentine on your neighborhood, and limited supplies are trickling in, do you have enough?

I think #2 is what most people think of on this forum, from what I've seen so far. And it's good to have a stockpile, and a plan. I try to consider the various #1 scenarios as "practice" for a possible #2. If I can keep the family going just fine for a week, cut off from the community for resupply, that's an excellent beginning. By then, in any major disaster, the next move will be clear, whether it's to shelter-in-place, head to one of my distant evacuation places (extended family and friend's places), or adapt to a massively changed environment where the rules are all different (apocolypse scenario).

I agree with BKT & Smithy. Even though the threats of a global disaster are always lingering in the backs of many minds, I truly think the elected powers will keep it in check.
More common disaster preparedness to me is from a natural disaster, such as a bad winter storm, loss of power, extreme cold, flooding, tornadoes, high winds, etc. Living in the Ozark Mountains, we have experienced all of the above, on several occasions in the past few years. We stock up on supplies, and hope for the best. In my families case, we have a heat pump, propane heaters, and a fireplace. The latter two will run without power. We keep a big generator ready to go, should the power outages last more than a day or so. Back in the sticks as we are, our priorities are pretty low,compared to the big cities. When the power lines go down, we are prepared for whatever is dished out.
About 10 years ago, I built a nice substantial storm cellar, while my neighbors stood around and snickered, making remarks, like "chicken little" etc. But now that it is completed, and it's the only one for miles, EVERYONE knows where we live, and will be inviting themselves over.

Jack said:

I'm wondering what people are preparing for ?

tornadoes we dont get here but think they would be similar to cyclones we do get

presonally i am looking at larger , more global problems

reversal of the global magnetic feilds is on the cards, just when ..

meteor strike , the world goes through a meteror cloud every year in August some of these are 30 miles acros but most are pea size or smaller

the polar ice is now melting at a rate thought to take 1000 years but its taken 3. if this does not stop, the sea could rise 20 meters globally. reducing living areas by 60% .. 90% of cities are below this level.

what do you or are you preparing for ??

Click to expand...

Same thing farmers always prepare for....
A bad crop season!
Everything else is just minor to that!

Floods, droughts, tornadoes can kill the growing season, you you need about two years worth of canned goods to get you through at about any given time...

We had a flood this spring, we did fine and fed a bunch of our neighbors...
We made it fine through that.

We had hurricane in '92 that simply removed the garden and most farm goods from southern Fla. where I was living.
We made it fine through that...

We had a tornado that removed large sections of cities, farms, gardens in '90.
We made it fine through that.

'89 we had floods of epic proportion,
We made it fine through that.

'77 & '78 we had blizzards that lasted about 6 weeks,
We made it fine through that even though we had to dig tunnels in the snow to get to the firewood stacks!

Same as always, you need to preserve food for short and intermediate storage, storing some potable water isn't a bad idea, about a gallon per person per day,
And if you don't have a cool, dry place in a non-flooding area, DIG/BUILD ONE!

National Preparedness Guidelines

See

DHS | National Preparedness Guidelines

Critical Elements

The Guidelines defines what it means for the nation to be prepared.
There are four critical elements of the Guidelines:

The National Preparedness Vision, which provides a concise statement of the core preparedness goal for the Nation.

The National Planning Scenarios, which depict a diverse set of high-consequence threat scenarios of both potential terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Collectively, the 15 scenarios are designed to focus contingency planning for homeland security preparedness work at all levels of government and with the private sector. The scenarios form the basis for coordinated federal planning, training, exercises, and grant investments needed to prepare for emergencies of all types.

The Universal Task List (UTL), which is a menu of some 1,600 unique tasks that can facilitate efforts to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from the major events that are represented by the National Planning Scenarios. It presents a common vocabulary and identifies key tasks that support development of essential capabilities among organizations at all levels. Of course, no entity will perform every task.

The Target Capabilities List (TCL), which defines 37 specific capabilities that communities, the private sector, and all levels of government should collectively possess in order to respond effectively to disasters.

The guidelines document can be downloaded at:

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/National_Preparedness_Guidelines.pdf