It’s the motto of the Scouts and is nothing new, most people are usually prepared to some degree, whether it be as simple as carrying a jack in the boot of your car or saving into a pension fund, or paying insurance, by taking these actions doesn’t mean you hope for a flat tyre or accident! or are in any hurry to reach retirement! But nevertheless we take these actions as insurance against what could happen. Prepping in the true sense of the word is no different except that people with this mindset or lifestyle are tending to expand this into many more aspects of life.

I have heard many people’s versions of why they live a preparedness lifestyle ranging from the very basic to the extremely unusual, for me the reasons are totally scalable, and it’s a logical assessment of the likelihood of something happening and the potential severity of the disaster and its impact upon me personally, what you then find is that the way you prepare for one thing generally covers you for a multitude of other scenarios.
So firstly I break these down into two levels of likelihood of occurrence.
Level 1 (Likely) – These are things that regularly occur or may have occurred several times in my lifetime.
• Personal Disasters Job Loss, Redundancy, death of a loved one
• Weather – Bad Winters, Blizzards, Ice Storms, hot Summers, fire, excessive rain, flooding, Storms, electric out, trees down
• Local Disasters – Localised Water or Air Contamination, Riots, bomb scare.
• Economic – Recession, Stock market crash, Housing market crash, Interest Rate increase,

Level 2 (what’s possible) – Things that could possibly occur.
• Global pandemic
• Electromagnetic pulse (or other variations with the same effect)
• Meteor or comet strike
• Global Economic collapse
• Invasion or war or world war

Secondly I consider the severity level of how this affects me and my family.
• Personal – This is a directly impact on me or my family, e.g. Job loss, a house fire, death or health emergency
• Immediate area – At home, work or my commute, e.g. evacuation, Gas leak, flooding, power cut, vehicle break down or accident, weather change, storms
• Town – local area to my location, e.g. Riots, mass blackout, or civil unrest, chemical spill, water or air pollution
• County – Wider spread issue of above, Weather issues, and power plant explosions.
• Country – Severer weather & climatic issues, economic collapse, pandemics or civil unrest.
• Global – Global economic collapse, pandemics, meteor strike, or volcano eruption.

By protecting yourself in the first instance on a personal level as much as possible, so food, water, shelter, insurance, maintain good health, multiple sources of income, self-reliance, little to no debt, whilst remaining legal, will cover you for most of the likely events (Level 1). This means being prepared on a daily basis, for example every day carry; car kits; black out kits; food and water storage; learning of skills
The remaining, more unlikely issues, are more difficult to completely prepare for, however by preparing for Level 1 you will automatically have better chance of surviving them.

next time ….. I will go through aspects of my preps and how I cover off these potential disasters.