I am happy to have a guest blogger today. You all know her as Chocofishie although her name is Janine.
I think she's done a great job with her article and I appreciate it. Maybe she'll come back again soon.
Survival of the Smartest
With the increasing urbanism prevalent in today's society in terms of
survival in the face of disaster most of us are screwed. Don't believe
me?
Recent large examples on our planet prove otherwise, think Hurricane
Katrina (2005) and the Asian Tsunami (2004).
Many more disasters happen on a daily basis, from flooding and
earthquakes, to tornadoes and the follies of man. Today it's not survival of the fittest; it's the smartest that will prevail.
Most of us live our lives in a just-in-time state. We never believe we
will have to prepare for disaster; it's something that happens to other
people but not to us.
So what's just-it-time? It's the reliance on the resources provided
centrally that we utilise on a daily basis. This includes power, water,
sewage, roads, stores, hospitals and everything else you see as being
staples of your daily existence.
Look around your home and ask yourself these questions. Do you have
enough food to last your family a month if suddenly there were no stores? Have you enough clean and safe drinking water to keep everyone alive? How would you cook? What would you do for heating? What if you got sick? How would you protect those you love from others? And in this urban world we live in, can you depend on your neighbours to help you?
If you don't know the answers to these questions, how do you think you
would survive? There are many sites on the internet telling you what you need to do to prepare, I suggest you do a search and look into it now.
So that prepares you for disasters your area may be prone to, but are
you prepared for the unexpected disaster?
In this day and age we expect certain natural disasters will occur, they
shock us and remind us of our humanity. But it's the unexpected which
is really what frightens us. And that means terrorism, in its many shapes and forms. It's the threat of the unexpected which we don't and often don't know how to prepare for.
Until 9/11 the threat of terrorism was mainly for those countries where
it was traditionally seen as a problem. There have always been factions
around the globe who are at war with each other or their government. It just wasn't something that happened to people we knew. And the threat hasn't gone away.
What scares me the most is the threat of nuclear terrorism. With over
27,000 nuclear warheads worldwide it's not so much if it will happen but when. So how do you prepare for something like that?
It's like any other disaster, if you are in the centre of things it
doesn't matter how prepared you are the survival is minimal. However if you are in a fallout zone you are able to survive if you are smart.
From my beloved internet I have found two interesting guides. They are
probably the smartest and easiest guide I could find.
http://www.nukalert.se/resources/guide.pdf and
http://www.slate.com/id/2148772/entry/2148774.
So you prepare but what about your neighbours, family and friends? Will you band together to face disaster, or will you disintegrate into war?
I would like to think we would all be like the fictional people of the
TVtown of Jericho . We would overcome
personality differences and allow our humanity to shine through so we can survive to build a better world.
However if upon reading this you think disaster will never happen to you in your lifetime, I hope you're right. But just in case ask yourself this
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are you smart enough to survive?
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