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Fifth National Climate Assessment and Being Prepared
Carolyn - November 20, 2023 This week the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) was released. This report can help people prepare for changes coming to their neighborhood. The report stated that at this point, every region of the United States is experiencing climate change. (https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/#overview)
I’m part of a team working to analyze the studies behind NCA5, and look for sound corroboration (or lack thereof) in its conclusions.
Our ultimate goal is to present the information in regular language to help people and communities get ready for what’s ahead in their part of the country.
Different kinds of disasters will hit different places. The NCA5 not only helps folks understand what kinds of serious events they can expect, but also how frequently those events are likely to take place.
It also presents a longer view. No matter where you live, your climate is actively changing. Here in Colorado, we are still enjoying the lovely blue-sky days of fall. It’s delightful until you look at the Front Range and see almost no snow on the high peaks. And it’s the middle of November.
The USDA reports that Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is changing to look like Virginia does now. (https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=96088b1c086a4b39b3a75d0fd97a4c40)
So much of the time, prepping is about surviving an immediate catastrophe. Or it’s about some dystopian science fiction world.
As I study the NCA5, it dawns on me that preparation is about anticipating change. The change can be bad, or it might be good; in any case, things are different now, and change is continuing to accelerate. We must be able to grieve our losses and then turn to our different world and figure out what to do next. Preparation is always about flexibility, and sometimes, it’s about rolling with the punches.
Read MoreFramework for Prepping
Carolyn - October 3, 2023 I’ve always loved survival stories. It’s fun to see how people face adversity.
Then I started prepping, and, just like that, I was overwhelmed. Each expert, class, or book had great advice for making things work under this circumstance or that. There were ideas on how to run away if necessary, and how to build a compound to run to. It was all very authoritative, and intense.
As a suburban mom of preschoolers, I was more than a little intimidated.
I looked for a unifying framework. Prepare by scenario? Focus on the immediate crisis or the aftermath? How long will the aftermath last – forever? How will I learn all those survival skills?
Then, yesterday, I watched a video on YouTube by Dr. Emily Schoerning of American Resiliency. Her message is: be alert for challenges and opportunities, then let’s get ready!
She suggests three levels of preparedness: three days, three weeks, and three months.
First, get ready to be stuck at home, without help from the grid, for three days. It’s easy to imagine and we probably already have most of the stuff we’ll need. Have extra water, food, baby formula, diapers, flashlights, etc. on hand.
Then think about getting by for three weeks. This takes a bit more forethought. A longer food list, more first-aid supplies, more awareness of what’s most likely to happen in the local neighborhood, city, or region. Create go bags that will be useful whether bugging in or out.
Finally, three months (and longer). At this point, it isn’t about rugged individualism anymore. It’s about surviving as a community. The question is, have you found or built a community ahead of time? How will you contribute to the well-being of your fellow survivors? Preparation at this level is, yes, about having a water source, food, and supplies. It’s also about knowing how to work with folks, playing to your strengths, and supporting theirs. If you’ve already worked with these folks before, all the better.
This is the best strategy I’ve found for organizing my approach to getting ready.
Do you have a framework that really works for you? How do you organize your thoughts around preparing?
Read MorePrepper Chat Night – Friday March 17
Gideon ParkerStaff - April 2, 2023 March prepper chat nights are Friday, March 3rd and 17th at 6pm PST/9pm EST.
And as a reminder, Prepper Chat Nights are on the first and third Friday of every month on Discord by video or voice chat with other members of the community.
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How to donate to The Prepared? and Happy New Year!!!
Sharon - February 25, 2023 Happy New Year Fellow Preppers! May 2023 bring health and happiness to y’all!So, I am (as usual late lol) doing my 2022 donations and would like to include the Prepared as I am very grateful for the information and community it has provided. I could of sworn I had seen a “donate” button on the website before, but cannot find it now. So if any designated grownup can help me out with that info, I will be very grateful.
Read MoreWhat was the catalyst that compelled you to begin prepping?
Steve Martin - December 12, 2022 I’m curious about what caused you to begin your journey to being prepared. For me, it really started in 1962….We lived in the Washington DC suburbs and most of our neighbors were government types or military. The trouble brewing in Cuba was only a secret to the rest of the country. Amongst federal employees, they knew something was afoot, maybe just not how serious is was about to become. Washington DC was ringed by Nike & Nike-Hercules missile sites….and the one near our home was 1 of only 2 who had nuclear payloads in those missiles, designed to shoot down incoming Russian missiles. ( although no one knew it then) One afternoon, we were driving home when we passed by the Lorton Nike Missile Site…and all of the missiles were erected and pointed skyward. We had never seen that before. We went on home and my dad turned on the tv and we heard like most others in the US, just how close we were to launch. My dad threw a bunch of our camping gear into the pickup and we headed to our normal camp grounds SW of Washington in the Shenandoah National Park. We stayed there until the trouble was over.(We bugged out!) I don’t remember exactly how long, I was only 8 at the time, but it was several days. I do remember the park being totally full and the new arrivals were sent off to camp in the “overflow area”. Little did we know then that we were camped next to a primary target not far away. The Greenbriar Hotel and Mount Weather…which was still very much a secret. The Cuban Missile Crisis is what spurred me into later becoming a prepper. By 1978, I had 6 weeks of supplies stored away but still living in DC area. The DC area used to have air raid siren tests once a month and the gov. would hold practice evacuations via helicopter a couple times a year….I lived within sight of the Pentagon….and the choppers would come right over the house during the practices. So survival was frequently on my mind as a young man and a couple years in Army Intel didn’t do anything to slow that down. So what’s your excuse? 9/11? Today’s troubles in Ukraine? Banking collapse?
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An observation on prepping in 2022
Bill Masen - December 3, 2022 Two years of Covid 19 and the shortages of everything from food to lumber, people basically locked down for months on end, economic chaos that followed, Everything more expensive etc.
That event alone seriously stifled the mocking voices who laughed at those of us who were wise enough to get involving with prepping.
Then just as Covid 19 started to fade from the news along comes the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the mad panic to rearm by NATO, The conflict itself and the growing wave of sanctions plunged the world back into a situation once again of shortages of energy, food, fuel and raw materials, massive price rises, security threats and risks.
OPEN threats of nuclear weapons being used, mass migration from the east have followed. The global economy taking yet another pounding, tax rises are inevitable, already wheat, animal feed, diesel, fertiliser, nickel, titanium etc prices are rocketing and shortages announced.
In my country energy prices have risen FOURTEEN times faster than wages already, the combined gas and electricity bill for the average British house has gone up from around £1200 to £1900 and is forecast to get as high as £4500 by October. Petrol has rocketed up in days from £1.45 a litre to £1.70 a litre.
All rather grim reading I’m sorry to say, BUT The mocking of preppers has stopped all together, and people enquiring about how to get started in prepping / off gridding and homesteading is increasing every day.
Sales of Heritage seeds is UP, people getting Allotments (small food growing plots of land) is UP, people installing WOOD BURNING stoves UP, People caching and stock piling UP, People buying Micro wind turbines and PV panels UP, People selling up and relocating OUT OF TOWN up over 30% according to some UK media sources etc
So my oberservation is this
” Why does it take TWO global crises to make people wake to to the vulnerability of society to disruption, and for them to see the benefits of prepping”.
A report I read about two years ago estimated that 30 million of you folks in the Americas are into prepping in one form or another. I think that number is likely to rise now.
Read MorePrepper demographics updated with 2020 FEMA survey data: over 20M people in the US alone!
Dr. Chris Ellis - November 19, 2022 Editor’s note: Colonel Chris Ellis, PhD, directs a disaster cell for the US military at India-Pacific Command. In part via his fellowship as a Goodpaster Scholar at Cornell University, he’s spent years analyzing data about the preparedness community.
The last time we analyzed FEMA survey data, it caused a bit of a splash, becoming #1 on google for “prepper demographics” and leading to a wave of mainstream press coverage about how this community has grown and moved into the mainstream. (Such as today’s 60 Minutes episode about the market growth!)
But that was using 2018 pre-Covid data (which is released years later), and we’ve since been anxious to get hands on the data FEMA collected after the pandemic changed everything. Everyone’s been expecting that Covid — and everything else that’s made ’20-22 so much fun — did nothing but continue to pour fuel on the fire of this growing community.
I’ve finished crunching the numbers using FEMA phone surveys collected in the first half of 2020, comparing it with annual data from the National Household Survey (NHS) going back through 2017.
So this does capture the Covid effect, but perhaps may have been too soon to really reflect the long-term changes, as people were still caught in the chaos the first months of 2020, just trying to figure out how to get toilet paper or not be a cat on their courtroom Zoom. The future batch of data that covers ‘20-21 should be more telling.
Key takeaways:
The number of people who can handle >31 days of self-reliance grew 50% over the 2017-20 period. The 20 million US preppers mark has solidly been crossed. If you use the broader definition of a prepper as someone who can handle at least two weeks of disruption, the number gets even higher. That means around 7% of all US households were actively working on self-reliance in ’19-20, solidly increasing from 2% to 3% then 5% in recent years. 10% is only a matter of time. While the “basic preppers” segment was consistently growing year over year before Covid, the “advanced preppers” segment had been flat or even shrank a little — but that trend reversed in 2020, showing that many people saw the need to go beyond the basics in response to world events. Nothing major changed around geography: the same states that prep a lot (eg. Montana) and those that don’t (eg. Washington D.C.) stayed in their relative rankings. Islanders, such as people in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, continue to prep at rates 50% higher than mainlanders. Rural households are still more likely than urbanites to prep, but we continue to see strong growth among city dwellers. Asians disproportionately embraced prepping in ’20, which perhaps makes sense given what they may have been hearing from friends and family back in Asia during early Covid combined with some of the anti-Asian racism that grew in the US in ’20. Perhaps most surprising: the trend in recent years was that preppers were getting younger. But that trend reversed in 2020, with the average age actually increasing a little to 52.6. The number of younger preppers still grew — 25-34 year olds are still the largest segment on The Prepared — but there was even more growth among the older crowd during this period. There’s some weird results in this data, though, which show there’s still a disconnect between reality and how a typical household thinks about risk. But we’ve started getting a peek at the ’21 data, where FEMA changed some of the survey questions to be clearer, and I think it will result in better data going forward.While the term “prepper” is ill-defined quantitatively, in my research I use a simple heuristic from the NHS: how long can you survive at home without publicly provided water, power, or transportation? I quantify anyone with 31 days or more of self-reported preparedness as a Resilient Citizen. Those with 30 days or less are Regulars. Highly Resilient Citizens (HRCs) have 90 days or more and Ultra-High Resilient Citizens (UHRCs) are at 97 or more days (the maximum allowed response in FEMA’s survey).
Preparedness trends
Americans collectively have increased their levels of disaster preparedness from 2017 to 2020. For Regulars, the effect is small – an average of seven days in 2017 to just over eight days in 2020 – but still measurable. For this group, each year saw a slight increase. When including Resilient Citizens and averaging all Americans, the mean jumped from just under 10 days of resilience in 2017 to 12.4 days in 2020.
The overall number of Resilient Citizens in America has also increased every year. In 2017, approximately four out of every 100 people was a Resilient Citizen. In 2020 it had increased 50% to nearly six per 100. In sheer numbers this means 14.9 million Americans had 31 days or more of at-home preparedness in 2020. Ultra-Highly Resilient Citizens (97 days or more of preparedness) jumped from four million people in 2017 to 6.7 million in 2020. There is still a heavy stereotype against “preppers,” but as more people prepare from across the political spectrum – and in various ways – the stigma appears to be slowly eroding.
Geography
Where do these households reside? I analyzed the data in two different ways. First was by US state or territory. Generally speaking, lower population, rural states have the highest rates of preparedness. Montana, Idaho, Alaska, New Hampshire, Maine, Utah, Wyoming, West Virginia, Delaware, and Hawaii make up the top ten, in descending order (i.e. Montana had the highest average). The lowest average states were, with the exception of Texas and Illinois, all east coast states or the District of Columbia (Washington, DC was the lowest, followed by Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina). A cursory look at yearly changes, by state, yielded no discernable pattern. California and Florida saw annual increases in Resilient Citizens all four years, but Texas and New York saw random fluctuation.
Another pattern that held from my previous research was that of higher aggregate rates of preparedness in US islands (Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands). The four-year average of residents of island locales indicates preparedness rates ~50% higher than those on the mainland (15.7 days versus 10.8 days respectively). I maintain my original conjecture that primary drivers of this disparate finding are a “fear of state failure” coupled with an inability to easily flee larger disasters for island residents.
A second way to geographically analyze the data is by an urban-rural delineation. The US Department of Agriculture bins zip codes into one of ten population density categories (1 = an urban area with 50,000 people or more, 10 = rural at less than 2,500 people). There is a positive correlation between ruralness and higher levels of preparedness across all Americans. 80% of Regulars surveyed lived in an urban area. However, a sizable two-thirds of all self-identified Resilient Citizens and 56% of UHRCs lived in an urban area as well.
Race
In regard to race, the four-year aggregates of all Americans yields that the category “Alaskan or Native American” had the highest average at 14 days of preparedness. After this was Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, then Whites, Hispanics, Blacks/African Americans, and Asians, in that order. Whites and Blacks saw yearly increases while the other races had fluctuations. Asians were very stable from 2017-2019 but saw a major jump in 2020. Several possibilities explain this latter finding: increased discrimination, higher cultural or social transmission of preparedness, news consumption patterns, or affinity to stories emanating from China and Asia writ large at the beginning of COVID.
The story among Resilient Citizens is slightly different. For four-year aggregates, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders topped the list at 92 days, followed by Alaskans/Native Americans (79 days), then Hispanics (77), Whites (76), Blacks (71), and Asians (65). A large word of caution is in order here though, with all races other than Whites, the number of minority resilient citizens is quite low in any given year. There are not enough respondents in these categories for me to confidently depict any racial patterns among Resilient Citizens on a yearly basis. Relatedly, when conducting multi-variate analysis and controlling for things such as income, education, and an urban vs. rural home location, the variable of race was a poor indicator of being a Resilient Citizen or not. The maximum observed impact across numerous calculations was only 2%.
Age
Resilient Citizens are slightly older (52.6 years old) overall than Regulars (51.7), but this difference is less than a year. Interestingly though, the steady growth in Resilient Citizens is NOT among the young. The 35 and under crowd make up a much smaller percentage of Resilient Citizens in 2020 (14.4%) than they did in 2017 (20.6%). Comparatively, growth in those aged 36-49 is nearly 50% and for those 50+ it is 62% from 2017 to 2020. Isolating those 60 and over saw a near doubling; the increase was 92%! Some of this differentiation between young and old could be due to income levels and overall net worth.
Other variables
In all of the data analyzed, the most shocking finding to me was the reported rates of experiencing a disaster. FEMA asked, “Have you or your family ever experienced the impacts of a disaster?” Among all respondents, the 2020 data – in the midst of COVID – was slightly down as compared to 2017. Among all Resilient Citizens, it was down nine full percentage points. The 2020 survey was conducted in the summer of 2020, at the height of the first lockdown and several months before any vaccines were developed and available.
A higher percentage of women reported being Resilient Citizens in 2020 than in 2017, but the numbers were too small for any statistical significance. Another interesting jump was in the number of Resilient Citizens with a disability. There was a 50% increase from 2017 to 2020. Of note, the FEMA data indicated, at best, only a 3% rise in disabilities in the overall population during the same timeframe.
Among preparedness circles is the concept of “bugging out”. That is, quickly leaving your home at – or just prior to – disaster onset with an already assembled bag of emergency supplies. Among Regulars, even though they reported higher rates of at home preparedness, their reported ready-to-go rates saw no discernable patterns among the four years studied. By contrast, Resilient Citizens reported a 35% jump in bug-out readiness in 2019 and maintained that new high in 2020.
Homeowner’s insurance levels increased in both groups slightly, however there were just three years of data, so this could be observed randomness. Money saved for an emergency increased among Regulars but decreased among Resilient Citizens. My hunch is that Resilient Citizens converted cash into preps.
What didn’t change? Education levels between Regulars and Resilient Citizens continues to be nearly equal across all four years. Income levels were relatively stable with Resilient Citizens on average earning a few thousand dollars more per year than Regulars. Resilient Citizens still report higher levels of confidence in their ability to take the steps necessary to prepare for a disaster than Regulars. Resilient Citizens also maintain they are far more likely to have had a disaster plan for at least a year.
Looking forward to 2021 data
FEMA has just released the 2021 National Household Survey raw data. The survey instrument has undergone some substantial changes. First of all, it’s a larger query of America. 2021’s sample size is around 7,200 people versus the roughly 5,000 per year in each of the 2017-2020 datasets. Secondly, some of the key questions have been modified. For example, people are no longer asked their monthly income, but rather their annual income. I personally think this will yield clearer results.
Another question modification that will have significant impact on comparing 2021 to previous years is my key variable of days of total survival at home. 2021’s new survey instrument no longer asks about how long one could last at home without power, water, or transportation. It now breaks these down into separate questions. For example: “How long could you live in your home without power?” And, the answers are no longer discrete numbers, but rather chronological heuristics such as “More than one week” or “More than three months.” If you assume that those who answered at more than one month and more than three months, combined, for both the power question and the running water question are analogous to Resilient Citizens, then the percentage of Americans in 2021 at this higher level is now 8.3%, or roughly 21.5 million Americans. Analysis is ongoing and I hope to release findings in 2023.
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60 Minutes segment this Sunday Nov 6 about TP and how sane prepping has gone mainstream!
John AdamaStaff - November 12, 2022 Edit: The segment is streamable here, but we don’t know how long it will be public/free.
Excited to share that 60 Minutes is doing a major piece about the modern prepping community, featuring TP and myself! It premiers this Sunday Nov 6th right after the evening NFL game on CBS (west coast might see local news first). So it depends on the game, but might be around 7:30pm Eastern. We are slated as the third 15-minute segment in the show, of which I should be around 4-5 minutes. It will be available to stream on Paramount+ starting the next day.
Our friend Dr. Bradley Garrett (author of the Bunker book) is also featured, along with some ‘sane’ families showing how they’ve embraced this lifestyle. Here’s our past interview with Brad. Another friend Col. Chris Ellis, PhD, also contributed to the data analysis (he’s posting updated FEMA survey/demographic data in the forum soon!)
We’ve spent the last 8 months working with the CBS news team on this segment, and while I haven’t seen the outcome yet, I’m optimistic — the team truly understood what’s happening in our community and sincerely wanted to show that in a non-sensationalist, rational light. (Although I’ve heard the marketing folks have made some more cliche bunker-ish type promo teasers to air during the morning shows and NFL games… sigh)
Personally, it’s been refreshing to see a mainstream news source put so much effort into getting it right, fact checking, etc. — we’ve spent months just on fact checking what I said on tape, like how the number of US preppers has crossed 20 million people.
Tune in! Hopefully I did a good enough job representing us, but I appreciate your forgiveness if not 🙂
In the meantime, three weeks ago some of the same folks at CBS did this segment about Taiwanese civilians learning resilience skills, such as austere first aid, to prepare for the eventual Chinese invasion: https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/OnkKy0mQ3p1HNzMhGH84MGsKQwDy__n1/
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Preview of whole new TP website launching soon
John AdamaStaff - November 11, 2022 Timing update: The person building the website got sick with the ‘tripledemic,’ so we’re delayed at least into January.
Crossposting this from the blog since some people only visit one or the other (which we’re fixing in the new site, haha!)
This first version is more about cleaning up the existing site/experiments and laying a solid foundation for faster future improvements. For example, the current site tech prevented us from improving the way threaded convos happen here in the forum / how you could track what was the newest comment. The new foundation will let us do that.
More details and sneak peeks here. Example:
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September is National Preparedness Month, join us for good conversations and community challenges
Gideon ParkerStaff - September 2, 2022 September is National Preparedness Month, and to celebrate we are going back to the basics in a rational way while following along with The Prepared’s Emergency preparedness checklist: Prepping for beginners article. WAIT… I already see some of you veterans clicking away, hear me out. We are visiting the basics and making sure we are well rounded and level headed in our prepping. Maybe we have focused too much on our home preps and haven’t spent enough time on our skills or finances, this is an excellent time to reevaluate what you have and bring your entire prepping game to the next level. And if you have never even heard of the word prepping before, now’s a great time to start! At the end of this month, if you have followed along with our guides and participated in the community challenges that we will be releasing, you will see areas of your preps that needed attention and improvement.
How will it work –
Every Tuesday and Friday, check out the news roundup by visiting the ‘Blog’ and see what we will be talking about over the next couple days. Then, join us on Discord for friendly conversations about the topic, new prepping tips, and community challenges.
Read MoreFree FEMA webinar with TP and myself
John AdamaStaff - August 8, 2022 Excited to share that FEMA has partnered with The Prepared to improve their public content and training! (How many other “prepper websites” can say that?!)
Our first webinar is in a week, Wednesday July 13th from 1-2:30ish US Eastern. A recording will be available after, which I’ll share here.
Update: Link to recording.
Registration: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/theprepared/event/registration.html
Their announcement:
I’ll teach/soapbox for 45 mins or so, then up to 45 mins of Q&A. We’ll cover the modern preparedness framework TP’s credited with popularizing, show specific gear examples, talk about skills and next steps, and so on. Basically a crash course for both personal prepping and how to teach others / be a community leader.
If you’re already familiar with TP’s teachings, there won’t be anything new (I’m essentially teaching what’s already on our website), but you’re of course welcome to join anyway — there will be a few hundred leaders from various CERT organizations, leaders of big FEMA chapters like New York City, and so on.
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Community Discord/Slack
Arlinn - July 8, 2022 Does a Discord or Slack server exist for the community? I like forums since they’re asynchronous communication, but real time discussion has its perks too.
Read MoreMy main worries to end the week (Prices/CPI and other stuff)
Karl Winterling - June 14, 2022 My main worries to end the week are:
The economic models the Fed was using in December for predicting inflation don’t seem like they’re suited for the current economic situation. The Fed needs to seriously investigate why these models are wrong and make sure unwarranted assumptions are not sticking around or leading the Fed to be less aggressive than it has to be. We really don’t need the Fed to be too optimistic about inflation right now. Interest rates impact the price at which investors are willing to buy stocks (the other main consideration being company profitability or expected profitability), which is part of why raising interest rates slows the economy and inflation. If food and fuel costs/shortages get much more serious (or “go parabolic”), the Fed can’t do much about that but might feel pressured to raise rates more aggressively than it has to and cause a recession (or a worse recession) without a good reason. Interest rate hikes will not magically produce more fuel and food. There are counter-arguments to media reports like this (I hope those counter-arguments are wrong). If an income bracket literally can’t afford food or food is simply not available somewhere, niceties (and more) go out the window. Yes, we produce food domestically but fewer imported products = more people buy a lower supply of domestic products. (Mods: remove if this is too political, I’m trying to keep left vs. right ideology out of it and focus on the correlation between job approval ratings and crises). Biden’s job approval rating is historically low for a president, and lower approval ratings typically go along with recessions or crises like inflation in the 1970s or the 2008 Financial Crisis. Yes, Trump’s job approval rating was also pretty low throughout his presidency but (not to get too political or get into left vs. right) many people, right or wrong, found him offensive, thought he was too ignorant to do his job, thought he was an agent of a foreign power, or thought he did not respect the US Constitution or separation of powers. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that many people perceive current federal-level leadership as weak. Yes, you should be worried about what people are willing to vote for if they decide the government or economic/social/political system can’t fix their problems and those problems get too bad. Political extremists on the far left, far right, and elsewhere often spend their time sitting around and waiting for a crisis.Suggested preps:
Food (at least 2 weeks, more if possible, like a few months or a year). Assume that food prices could double within the next year, though my baseline assumption is that we will face acute rather than chronic food shortages if there are availability issues. Get your finances in order (or try your best). Prepare for possible civil unrest. Humans adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to survive. Something in the news might shock you, but remember that you will not always feel the same way. The world could turn into a place that you don’t think is worth living in, but there’s a lot that has to happen before you know that for certain. Read MoreWhat are your 2022 prepping goals and plans?
Carlotta SusannaStaff - May 11, 2022 Even though time is a construct (ahem, indulge me) and new years resolutions are often moot, I find it useful to use the new year to take a step back, reflect, and see where I am with my needs and goals. Especially in prepping, where you are never finished preparing, it is easy to get overwhelmed and lost in the millions of things you need to do (at least that’s true for me). So these are the things I want to focus on this year:
CAR: Last year I moved my BOB permanently in my car and added a full level 3 IFAK kit that is separate from the BOB and easy to access (it’s redundant, but this way if I have to leave my car quickly I don’t have to worry about the IFAK as there’s already one in the BOB ). This year I’d be happy if I only added: traction pads, flares, and a triangle (yup, I’m still without a triangle). I’m also thinking of adding a wool blanket in case I get stuck in a wildfire and need to protect myself. The thought is terrifying but I live in CO and wildfires are a grim reality I have to deal with. The BOB already contains a half-face respirator and goggles, and because of Covid I also have a few N95 respirators laying around in my center console, which would help with smoke inhalation.
GARDENING: Last year I set up a very small raised garden bed and managed to grow only a few things (I started late in the season and didn’t know what I was doing). I still have a variety of seeds from last year and, even if I still don’t know what I’m doing, I want to be organized and start planting anything I can from the leftover seeds as soon as possible and on time. My goal is not to rely solely on this garden for fresh vegetables, but rather just to get in the habit of planning a garden, and learning new things. It’s also going to be a good test to see if those seeds still germinate.
MISC: I’m training to hike my first 14er this year and, apart from it being a good fitness challenge on its own, I want to take the occasion to learn how to find water in the wild by using a map and reading the environment. I’m not planning to rely solely on wild water during the hikes and will be always carrying the min. 2-3 liters of water that’s usually recommended, but it’s going to be a great opportunity to use those map skills often and become more confident in them. It’s also going to be a good way to start training to carry a BOB for a long time. Although the pack I’d be carrying on the hikes is not going to be as heavy as my BOB, it’s still going to be filled with basic survival supplies, water, etc and it might reach 15-20 lb. Once I get the confidence that I can carry a pack for hours in any type of environment and terrain, I can see challenging myself to carry a full-on BOB regularly on walks or hikes.
There are still bazillion things I want and need to do, but I’d be totally happy if I just got these things done. What are your plans for this year?
P.S. Check out this excellent forum post about prepping challenges and experiments.
Read MorePreps for people with physical disabilities and limitations or who aren’t in great physical shape
Jonnie PekelnyContributor - May 4, 2022 I’d like to start a thread where we can discuss how to best get prepared if you or a loved one is dealing with physical disabilities or limitations or isn’t in the best physical shape. I’m particularly interested in discussing scenarios where we have to bug out. I know it’s desirable that person be in good shape for physically strenuous activity in case of the need to evacuate, but let’s get real. Some people just aren’t. Life happens; age happens; disability happens. We all do our best. I see physical fitness as an important goal to have in mind for health and safety reasons, but not something we should feel bad about falling short of.
I have very personal reasons for starting this thread. I am in my 50s, not in great fitness shape, although not horrible. I have some repetitive usage disabilities and long standing foot problems and now some knee problems. Nothing extreme, but I’m pretty keenly aware that hiking out of Dodge with 25 or 30 lbs on my back would wear me out pretty darned fast. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d even make it a mile on foot. I also have a mother who is much MORE disabled, living part time alone after having a stroke two years ago.
I want to be practical so am looking for ideas of what I can do at my current size and shape and fitness level to prepare.
Read MoreWhat can we learn from the war in Ukraine?
Conrad B - April 21, 2022 One of the main lessons I’ve seen so far is the need to reassess my bug out plan. There was a 6 mile (10km) long traffic jam of refugees fleeing to Poland.
At what point do you abandon your vehicle and trek it on foot? Is going on foot any better?
Another thought I had was having enough water, food, and fuel on hand. You don’t want to run out of food during the middle of an invasion and try to go through a war zone to buy groceries.
My heart goes out to all those affected. Even to the Russian soldiers who may not like what they are doing but have to.
Let’s learn from what is going on and prepare for the future.
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A list of places where you can find TP other than the forum
Gideon ParkerStaff - April 20, 2022 Hey folks, here are other places where you can follow or interact with us:
/theprepared: Interesting, educational, and entertaining prepping related Reddit posts. Facebook and Twitter: Top articles and forum posts are shared throughout the week. If you want to have more real time conversations you can join our Slack group (leave a comment down below if you would like a private invitation to join), or Discord server.Thank you for being part of this community!
Read MoreFiction book review: Blue Fire by John Gilstrap
C P.Contributor - March 19, 2022 Blue Fire by John Gilstrap. Published March 2022 from Kensington Books.
TL;DR: A well-written, apolitical post-apoc page turner that emphasizes group dynamics more than gear or gun play. I would recommend borrowing from the library over buying. The first book in the series is available on Kindle Unlimited.
Blue Fire, the second book in John Gilstrap’s Victoria Emerson series, begins with a gun fight. Yet unlike most post-apocalyptic thrillers, the fight is not the result of a prison escape or government totalitarianism but rather a failed negotiation. And the aftermath of the brief fight features less blood and guts and more politics. As such, it sets the tone for much of what is to follow.
The Victoria Emerson series begins in Crimson Phoenix. In the opening of that book, Victoria Emerson, a Congresswoman from West Virginia, and two of her sons are awoken by a pair of soldiers tasked with escorting them from Washington, DC to a secret government bunker in preparation for an American-supported strike by Israel on Iran. When she discovers that the bunker will not accommodate her children, she refuses to enter and leaves with her reluctant military escort. The Middle East tensions trigger a wider global conflagration, including nuclear attacks on the United States, which Victoria and company weather in western Virginia. Various adventures ensue.
Blue Fire begins where Crimson Phoenix leaves off, with Victoria and her party helping lead the small town of Ortho as it weathers the challenges of life without power, external resources, or the rule of law. Secondary story lines follow her oldest son, who was away at boarding school at the time of the attack, and the members of Congress in a government bunker, including the former Speaker of the House, now reluctantly turned President.
The books deviate pleasantly from much of prepper fiction, which tends to focus on the survival of individuals and small groups. Typical stories stress individualism and are rife with male, ex-military leads with either heroic powers or startlingly good luck. Blue Fire and its prequel cast all of that aside. At its heart are two contrasting efforts to create order: one by Victoria and her allies in Ortho and another by a National Guard leader who has devolved into a de facto warlord. The characters in the book who are in the most danger are actually those who are most isolated – Victoria’s eldest son Adam and his girlfriend.
All the characters in Blue Fire read like fairly normal people. Even the military members are quite ordinary. The lead officer, Major McCrea, is most needed for his planning and organizational skills. Sergeant Copley is valued as much for his carpentry hobby as his military training. Neither are superhuman fighters. Victoria herself is both skilled and flawed: she is smart, forceful, and driven to get things done, but even her own sons are unsure if she remains in Ortho because she really wants to help or because she cannot give up her love of being in authority.
The books also get points for being very intentionally apolitical. No political parties are ever referenced by name; there is only the majority and the opposition. While the Senators and Representatives described in the book are given home districts, they are always districts that could plausibly be blue or red. No clearly Democratic or Republican political position is ever ascribed to a character. The effect is a sharp departure from the partisan politics often found in prepper fiction. Instead, there is a clear message that the real cause of ineffective government is a thoughtless focus on holding power, posturing, and scoring cheap points. I am sure that many readers will agree.
Lastly, I appreciated the books’ focus on people and skills more than gear. Far too many prepper novels focus incessantly on the names of specific guns, knives, backpacks, and boots. The worst sound like the author is regurgitating parts of a gear catalogue. There is almost none of that here. Gilstrap clearly knows enough about firearms and outdoorsmanship to describe shooting, hiking, and camping accurately. But he also knows that it does not matter much where you bought your equipment, as long as you know how to use it.
In short, Blue Fire (and Crimson Phoenix) will be appealing to a wide audience, including many people who find typical prepper fiction off-putting. But what does the book teach about prepping? My objection to books like A. American’s Going Home is not just that the incessant gear descriptions make for tedious reading. It is that the book sends the message that slogging hundreds of miles with a 50+ pound backpack loaded down with three different cooking systems is the best way to ride out the apocalypse. Other books contain may similarly miseducate the reader, by implying that you cannot survive danger without a rural farm, prior service as an Army Ranger, or a stockpile of silver coins.
On the one hand, Blue Fire’s description of the disaster that befalls America is both vague and a bit unrealistic. Nuclear war is a possibility, and maybe one that feels more salient given the current tensions with Russia. However, Gilstrap, as he explains in an author’s note at the end of Crimson Phoenix, has put aside much of the science about the effects of a nuclear exchange in order to facilitate his storytelling. In particular, the characters do surprisingly little to deal with or avoid nuclear fallout. The story is also told from the points of view of characters with limited information, sparing the author the task of detailing exactly what happened. In short, this book (and its prequel) will not provide edutainment on nuclear disasters.
Where the book really shines is in its emphasis on community and human relations. While other books may prompt the reader to ask, ‘Where will I go in a disaster?’ this one prompts the reader to ask, ‘Who will I know when I get there?’ Or while a typical story may lead you to think, ‘Do I have supplies for my family?’ this one may prompt you to reflect on what you will do with families that do not have supplies. Ultimately, survival is not just a solo activity but a community one. The book gives few readymade answers on how communities can prepare, but it nudges the reader’s thinking in a useful direction.
Read MoreBook Review: “Deep Survival” – Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
brownfox-ffContributor - March 7, 2022 (image credit: “mountains” by Enrico Strocchi is licensed under Creative Commons – CC BY-SA 2.0)
“Deep Survival” by Laurence Gonzales
If you’re looking for a book that explains strategy and tactics to build mental resilience and make it through tough events, this is a good one. I’ll cover the highlights so you can get started.
Laurence Gonzales is a pilot and journalist who has spent several decades writing about risk and survival. He has read thousands of accident reports, and has interviewed experts from many fields that involve danger, risk assessment, and staying calm under pressure: fighter pilots, firefighters, mountain climbers, wilderness rescue guides. “Deep Survival” is his synthesized analysis of: Why do some people beat the odds and survive?
Part 1: Mental Models and Why We Fail
In Part 1 Gonzales outlines how accidents happen – how our brains work to create mental maps and models of the world, and when these can be right and wrong. He notes when the world can become too complex for humans to understand, and several failure modes that cause us to make mistakes – making assumptions, not updating our mental map when something changes.
The top skill for survival is self-control, and the ability to stay calm. Staying calm helps us to perceive and act clearly rather than rashly. Laughter helps with this. Laughing makes the feeling of being threatened more manageable. It also spreads quickly and unconsciously between people. When you laugh you can feel more relaxed, which helps you to stay calm and focus.
Gonzales discusses our brain’s ability to create “emotional bookmarks” – shortcuts to skip to and perform a certain action without thinking, so it is able to act faster. This can be both good or bad – if your brain has bookmarked the correct action or a harmful action – e.g. removing your breathing regulator while diving. This is why practicing skills helps so much – your body can learn how and when to take the correct action even – or especially – when you’re not thinking. Often this can mean the difference between success and failure.
Another problem getting in the way of survival is not being open to new information or changes. A survivor must expect the world to keep changing, and keep their senses attuned to “What’s up?”. You have to be able to keep processing new information about the world, and let it inform your mental model. Being actively curious helps with this.
When in doubt: don’t.
The last topic Gonzales covers is knowing how to read your environment, and how to react if things get unsafe. You want to learn and build a general understanding of the systems, world, or tools you are working with, and need to be able to recognize and admit when the environment is too large, or too complex. You might be right on the boundary edge of failure and danger, but not realize it. Humans tend to let their guard down when we think we have reached our goal. It is easy to be fooled and think we have things under control.
His overall assessment: “The most efficient preparation is general physical, mental, and professional readiness nurtured over years of training and experience”.
Part 2: Useful Tactics to Think, Act, and Survive
Some people are better at updating their mental model than others. They’re called survivors.
Gonzales spends seven chapters detailing tactics, attitudes, and mental tools used by successful survivors to persevere and get through their situation.
The most important skill is keeping an up-to-date mental map of the current situation or environment. If we are not able to create a mental map, our brain treats this as an emergency, and triggers a physical and emotional response. “Being lost is not a location; .. it is a failure of the mind”. Training and practice beforehand help with this, as we better understand the systems and environment.
Gonzales discusses the importance of quickly moving to the “Acceptance” stage in any situation, so you can avoid wasting time denying reality, and focus on calm, forward progress. “Perceive, believe, then act”. The best survivors spend almost no time getting upset about what has been lost, or feeling distressed about things going badly. They take charge of things within their power, and leave the rest behind. They usually don’t take themselves too seriously, and are therefore hard to threaten.
A large part of maintaining the correct mental model is being open to new possibilities and change. Gonzales covers keeping a humble “beginner’s mindset” and developing “active passiveness”: the ability to accept the situation you are in without giving in to it. Several stories demonstrate how survivors commonly experience a bit of split personality that separates out the emotion from simply focusing on the task at hand. They can skip fully processing or worrying about the events until later, once they are safe. Often this helps to be slow and calm, and think through scenarios before acting rashly.
The book is threaded with solid, real-life examples of survivors getting into and out of tough spots, with stories of their mental process. Whether it’s a mountain climber breaking their leg at 19,000 feet, yet being able to separate emotion and repeatedly take small, correct actions to return; or a river rafting guide having enough experience and wisdom to recognize when conditions got too dangerous and say “No, not today”, saving the life of their group while two other parties perished. The stories are gripping and informative.
Gonzales concludes with a powerful synthesis summary of two lists: How to stay out of trouble; and what to do once you’re in trouble anyway. I am sharing here a partial list in the hope that it is useful and thought-provoking. As Gonzales says – some concepts and advice can be applied to any stressful situation; not just ones where your life is threatened.
Tips to stay out of trouble
Know your stuff.
Take training that is available, including basic survival skills. This may improve your ability to react or predict Do some homework and understand what environment and conditions you’re going into; this helps to inform your equipment, route, strategy Essential tools of adventure: Planning, Caution, Training, Learning good decision making skillsCommune with the dead.
Read and learn about what other people have done, and learn from them See if you can avoid making the same mistakesPerceive, believe, then act.
As the environment changes, you must be flexible and open to new information. You need to perceive what is actually happening, what is changing, and then react to it Survival is adaptation based on a correct reading of the reality around you You should have a plan, and a backup plan. But hold onto them with a gentle grip, and be willing to let go You want: Focus, Control, Courtesy, Humility, ConfidenceDon’t rush.
e.g. Move at half normal speed Avoid impulsive behaviour. You may be able to get away with a few mistakes if you can adjust your behaviour and take corrective action in a timely fashion Stop. Observe. Think. Plan. Act.Be humble
Just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re good at all things Don’t get cocky or think you can’t get harmed Keep a beginner’s state of mind; be open to change and possibilityPractice focusing on the positive.
Don’t waste time blaming others; just deal with the situation you are in This mentality helps you to be a rescuer, not a victim It is helpful to work on and develop this attitude regularly, and before you need it By embracing the natural pain points that happen in everyday life, and thinking “What can I do about this?”, you are practicing and preparing for a survival situationWhen in doubt, bail out.
Trust your gut; avoid bad situations when you can This is often the hardest thing to do “It’s better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground.” Applies to pilots, mountain climbers, etc. Sometimes it is better to turn back and get a chance to do it again, rather than push on and never come back This takes patienceTips to deal with trouble, once you’re in it
1. Look, see, and believe.
Keep taking in information from your environment Ask “What’s up?”. This is fast, and keeps us questioning, taking in new information Move to the “acceptance” stage for your new situation quickly, so you don’t waste time or energy2. Stay calm.
Use fear to focus. Turn it into action, or anger and action Use humour to stay grounded and going. Guard against emotion3. Think, analyze, plan
Get organized, and set up small, routine tasks you can do to help Create small, achievable goals for yourself, so you can accomplish things Celebrate even small successes Act with the expectation of success Listen to rational thoughts and make forward action4. Take correct, decisive action
Be bold yet thoughtful while carrying out tasks Just focus on: what is the next correct action? Break down very large tasks into small, manageable pieces of work Do those tasks well Deal with what is within your power, from moment to moment; hour to hour; day to day Leave the rest behind5. Celebrate your success!
Take joy in completing all tasks, no matter how small You want to create an ongoing feeling of motivation and positivity6. Count your blessings
Be grateful for the things that are going well This is how people turn from survivors into rescuers Often people imagine they are doing the work to help someone else. Even if that other person is not present7. Play
You want to stimulate, calm, and entertain your mind Give it time to rebuild and de-stress You can use music, poetry, math, anything that helps Or just give yourself one small task for focus on The more skills and areas you have and are exposed to beforehand, the better Have a mantra you can repeat, or something that motivates you E.g. dedicating each 100 steps to someone you care about Play leads to invention. Invention may lead to something new that may help8. See the beauty
Pause and see the wonder of the world around you Have some appreciation for nice things This helps relieve stress But also helps you to pause and take in information9. Believe you will succeed
Survivors consolidate their personalities and fix their determination10. Accept and store bad information
You can hide it away until later. Don’t let it bother you or take up thought “surrendering” to the situation, and moving on anyway11. Do what is necessary
Be determined Have the will and the skill Survivors don’t expect help Are coldly rational Obtain what they need And do what they have to do12. Never give up!
There is always one more helpful thing you can do Survivors are not easily frustrated, or discouraged by setbacks Accept the world you are in Be ready to start the process over again: break down the reality into small, manageable bits, and begin to make progress on them Survivors always have a clear reason to keep going on See opportunity in adversity Afterward, learn from and be grateful for the experiences that you’ve had Read More
Quantifying safety
Frozen22 - March 6, 2022 After Putin’s threat of nuclear war last week, I would have hoped it would remind many unprepared people that they can never be 100% safe. Also it made me think that we often seek things out because they make us “feel safer”, but that can be irrational.
If you spend $10,000 crime-proofing your home but live in a very low-crime area, you might be only $100 safer. But if you’d used it to pay down debt or saved/invested it, you’d be at least $10,000 safer. As someone who isn’t wealthy and lives in an apartment in a city, I’m mindful of the potential for me to waste money on gear that might ultimately have little value. The water, energy, hygiene, and food preps I have seem to be of the highest value, but perhaps I could do more though it might be best to invest those funds.
So how do others quantify safety? I’m genuinely curious how other people do the calculus of prepping, including the basics of physical and financial health.
Best wishes to all.
Read MoreTime to break out the prepping crystal ball. What’s next?
Conrad B - February 28, 2022 I know it’s impossible to know the next disaster to come but I think we as preppers keep a look out for the signs and can make good guesses of what might come.
What do you think the next disaster or situation will be that we need to prepare for?
Gas prices are rising, is that just because Covid is diminishing and people are driving more?
Do you think we will enter WW3 from the tension going on with the Ukraine and Russia?
Will there be a third spike in Covid, or are we on the downhill journey with that?
Will food prices going up lead to other issues?
What issues did Covid bring that we have yet to see the impact of?
Will the huge financial toll of Covid and government bailouts impact the economy and lead to a recession or depression?
What else should we be looking out for and prepping for over the next few weeks to months? No wrong answers here, just guesses and predictions.
Read MoreHave you ever heard a quote that stops you and makes you think about how you live?
Bill Masen - February 2, 2022 Over my 65 years I have often pondered about life, how I live, where I live and what my choices actually mean to me. I’ve debated off gridding, prepping, survivialism, homesteading, urban prepping etc with my piers and friends and other preppers. I’ve tended to focus on how I as the individual lives and rarely thought no further on the issue than my immediate family.
I’ve seen and read images, texts and witnessed real life scenes that often give me food for thought, but rarely has anything made me stop what I was doing and give serious thought to a QUOTE or IMAGE , perhaps four maybe five times something has gotten my full focussed attention.
Today whilst watching a simple sci fi movie one character looking out over the city made a comment and it stopped me in my tracks, I would like to share that comment with you. I have added it to an image to give it greater meaning. I wonder if it will make any of your pause for thought?
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It’s time for our annual environmental charity donation. Where should we donate?
John AdamaStaff - January 26, 2022 Edit: Thanks everyone! Based on your feedback, I just made our donations to The Bee Conservancy, Alliance for the Great Lakes, and One Tree Planted.
TP is part of 1% For The Planet, a program where 1% of every dollar that comes into TP is donated to fixing our biggest long-term threat: climate change and the destruction of the planet.
It’s time to make our modest 2021 donations. I’ve gone through the searchable database of possible charities and picked out the ones below that I’d suggest we donate to.
Wanted to open this up to the community for feedback. Which of the list below do you like most? Any others from the database you want to propose?
Alliance for the Great Lakes. When you look at climate change projections, the great lakes region is one of the best (maybe the best) places to move as preppers within the US. That region, thanks in large part to the lakes, is expected to ‘weather the storm’ of the climate crisis. Those lakes hold ~20% of the world’s fresh water, so it makes sense to protect that precious asset as we move towards a water-scarce future.
This picture is from the annual event where the Alliance organizes 15,000 volunteers to remove plastic waste from the lakes. Last year they removed 18 tons.
The Bee Conservancy. You probably know that bees/pollinators are crucial for ecosystems, yet their colonies have been collapsing in recent years. This decade-old group has a few programs, one of which is running hives in urban gardens throughout New York City.
One Tree Planted has actually planted over 40 million trees in over 40 countries. Trees are one of the best chances we have of reducing the harmful carbon building up in our atmosphere, since trees inhale the bad stuff and exhale clean oxygen. You can read more about this topic in our recent interview with the former Reddit CEO who’s trying to enable a trillion new trees.
Water.org, founded by Matt Damon, gives microloans to impoverished people who need help getting access to clean water and sanitation. They’ve helped 40 million people so far.
Conservation.org (Conservation International) has been around 30 years and has a wide range of initiatives, including ocean protection.
Earth Guardians is a 30-year-old charity that runs climate programs for young people. Some of it is on the advocacy side, such as getting underrepresented youth more involved in voting and civic duty. Other programs work directly in the environment, such as planting trees or running a class in Africa to teach farmers how to reuse farm waste for new products.
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What if history really isn’t any guide?
Jon StokesStaff - January 10, 2022 In a past life, I used to be a historian. Or at least, a historian-in-training (I bailed on a PhD). I spent ten years at two good schools reading dead languages and writing papers, and in one of my seminars a professor said something that has stuck with me ever since (I’m paraphrasing): “there are two types of thinkers: lumpers and dividers.”
What she meant was, some people (lumpers) spend most of their time arguing that two seemingly disparate things are actually alike, while others (dividers) tend to argue that these two things that look alike are actually very different.
This insight isn’t all that novel — in Plato’s Timaeus, the universe is laid out on the axes of “same” and “different.” But it is useful, and I recall it every time I get into a lumper vs. divider fight with a practicing historian over a current political issue — the historian is usually trying to win an argument by analogy with the past (lumping), while I’m on the other side of the table pounding my fist that this new thing is very different from that old thing and the attempted historical analogy is just plain wrong.
I’m now having more and more of these arguments around the topic of the pandemic, as different kinds of thinkers begin to tackle it with the tools they have at hand. For historians, the main tool is the historical analogy. And the results are a kind of master class in how to royally screw this up.
Here’s an example of an historian-in-training (at an institution I spent five years at, no less!) doing some misguided lumping:
people are losing sight of the distinction between "things are going to be weird for a year or two" and "things are going to be weird for a year or two, therefore they will stay that way forever" pic.twitter.com/9KMySqMEKs
— Jake Anbinder (@JakeAnbinder) May 13, 2020
I did a short Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1260961277033185281) in response to the above, but I’d like to come at it from a different angle, here.
There’s a trap that historical lumpers so often fall into, not just with the pandemic, but whenever they try to bigfoot everyone in a current events debate by jumping in with their 10,000-foot historical perspective.
Lumping together two historical events/groups/trends that are both in the past can work because there are agreed-upon boundaries for the two historical things. In other words, because in the process of writing a “history” of things X and Y, historians have drawn some temporal and social boundaries around X and Y in order to “construct” (*gag*) them as objects of historical inquiry. (I can’t believe I just wrote that but whatever.)
Where historians get into trouble is when they try to lump together an historical event with an event that’s still unfolding and is open-ended, where it’s impossible to draw the necessary hindsight boundaries needed to make the analogy truly work. This is especially treacherous when historians undertake to make predictions about the future based on a historical analogy.
But as fraught as the practice of predicting the future based on analogy with the past is, the whole thing comes completely and hopelessly unglued when you’re trying to do the historical analogy thing with a pandemic.
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The act of constructing an object of historical study out of events of the past — of drawing a circle around a collection of things that happened, and saying “this is all connected, and I’m giving it a name and telling you how it worked” (i.e. “lumping”) is what the kids these days would call a powermove (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Powermove).
And the act of taking someone else’s historical object and whacking it until it cracks apart and then reassembling the pieces into two or more different historical objects (i.e. “dividing”) is also a powermove.
The sport of making an historical object, and then rallying your camp to defend it, king-of-the-hill-style, while some other faction within your guild tries to smash it to pieces in order to create their own object out of the same material, is “history.”
When historians bring these powermoves into the area of a live political debate, they’re deliberately trying to shape the debate and the eventual historical outcome. It’s an overt attempt to intervene and steer the unfolding of events by means of analogy. In this respect, they’re taking a strategy that works for the status game they’re playing inside their guild, and trying to juke current events with it. Sometimes that works really effectively, and sometimes it doesn’t.
But a pandemic is not a purely political issue that you can intervene in and steer. Sure, it has massive political ramifications, and politics definitely affect how it unfolds in a particular geography. But in between the forces of political cause and political effect is a novel pathogen with a mind of its own, and that novel pathogen gets the final say in how the pandemic unfolds.
So while the pandemic comes wrapped in a thick cloud of politics, the novel pathogen at its heart is a force of nature, and that force of nature does not even see any of the human social constructions that are so real to you and I, much less respect them. It just burns through every clan and faction and border and popular movement and historical moment, with zero regard for what came before or what will come after. Your rhetorical powermoves have no effect on it. It doesn’t know they’re there.
It’s also important to remember that the novel pathogen is novel. We have never faced this particular threat before, which means that “long-lasting changes to important aspects of the human condition” are very much out there in the unmapped space of possible futures that will unfold from what’s happening right now.
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There is actually a family of useful historical analogies that can help guide our response to the novel pathogen. That family of analogies is the very epidemiological models that are the subject of so much present debate.
But these models-as-analogies don’t function quite the same way as the analogies that even politically engaged historians make. They aren’t powermoves in either an intra-guild status contest or a current political fight — or at least, they’re not supposed to be such.
When used properly, epidemiological models are tools for exploring and reasoning about the space of possibilities by testing different input parameters. Like all good historical analogies the best ones are deeply rooted in a high-quality grasp of the details and minutia of historical precedent — in this case, R values, fatality rates of various flavors, test positivity rates, curves, and all the other parameters underlie each model.
But to take these models as straight-forward predictions, or even worse to mistake them for political interventions or to make them stakes in a tribal political fight, to abuse and misuse them.
It’s also wrong to do the opposite — to take your facility with creating forward-looking historical analogies that only really work as powermoves in a present political debate, and turn it to the task of actually modeling out the space of possibilities for the epidemic.
Let me put all this a different way:
The point of an epidemiological model is to act as a sandbox where we can test different input parameters and visuals what their effects might be on the next few weeks’ development of the pandemic. The point of a historical analogy is that it’s a powermove that’s meant to influence a present social dynamic.So if you are trying to predict what will happen with the SARS-COV-2 pandemic based on a historical analogy with the 1918 Spanish Flu, or the Great Depression, or the Great Recession of 2008, you’ve gotten the above all twisted and are just going to end up playing yourself. This is not that, and your attempt to lump this with that is far more likely to confuse more than it is to clarify.
First, just look around at the vastly different outcomes that different countries are seeing with this pandemic, and then think about that the US of 1918 is a different country than the US of 2020. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” goes the quote.
Second, and more importantly, SARS-COV-2 is a brand new virus from a totally different family than the 1918 influenza. Again, the qualities of this novel pathogen — both the qualties it has right now and the qualities it will develop as it moves in and sets up shop in the human population — will govern the course of this event. The virus gets a vote in all this, and we have no idea what it will do next.
A properly used epidemiological model takes full account of the virus’s agency — to plug in different parameters for R0 and IFR and see what happens is to account for the fact that the virus can behave in different ways in different places. The strength of modeling as an exercise is that it gives you a framework for exploring the question of “what if the virus does, or what if it does that?”. It does not predict what the virus will do next, because that is impossible.
I think historians, investors, and everyone else who’s trying to answer the question of “what’s next” in a systematic way can learn from epidemiologists: don’t predict, just model.
Predicting is saying what’s about to happen. Modeling is constructing a little device that lets you play with different inputs and explore what might happen if the virus + human system does this or that thing.
So don’t get honeypotted into lumping a past even with the present outbreak in order to make a prediction. Just stick to a plain old model, where you can fiddle with the inputs and watch the outputs change.
Read MoreBook giveaway: “Move” by Parag Khanna
John AdamaStaff - January 5, 2022 Giving away 3 copies of the new book Move. The author worked directly for General McChrystal at JSOC in Iraq / Afghanistan (who was portrayed by Brad Pitt in the recent Netflix film War Machine.)
The book talks about the movement of people, under the context of the expected upcoming (or already starting?) mass migrations due to climate change, political and economic instability, etc.
Just reply if you’d like us to mail you one (and we’ll reach out to get mailing info). We do expect you to follow through with sharing your thoughts here, but you don’t have to finish the whole book if it’s lame.
I’d like to do more of this, where we coordinate giving away review sample products to great people in this community, so you can get some free stuff in exchange for sharing a review in this forum 🙂
Edit: Copies going out to brekke, NazSMD, and Seasons4. We’ll email you for info.
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