To Survive Disaster, Plan for the Worst

I strongly believe that financially preparing for a disaster is an exceptional idea. With all of the new technology that we have, it is becoming easier to track disasters and to plan for them before they occur. Although countries will not know the extent of the damage until after the disaster strikes, I think that having a sum of money available to at least start the process of cleaning up the country is essential. At this time, there is no technology available that would completely predict the outcome of a disaster, but by using the technology that is available to us, we should be able to get a good idea of what to prepare for.

You can not plan for everything but there are simple things you can do. My son lives in CA, the local government gave them a good size booklet with all kinds of emergency info such as what to have in your grab and go bag, what clothes should you have really to wear. They also gave a list of what to have and what not have in a fire prone area. A number of years ago a friends sister’s house was robbed. They had just had a large party there to celebrate some renovations and fortunately a friend had taken a number of pictures which they were able to give to both the police and insurance company. You may not be able to completely avoid bad situations but you can sometimes do things to minimize the stress of having to handle the aftermath.

We should have already learned this lesson and we would have if we had been thinking clearly. We already have many examples not based on disasters. A farmer terraces the land, grows crops in rotation, harvests and stores them in a granary because he knows all these things are needed for success in the coming and in future years. A student studies to achieve a desired degree or certification for future success. A employee contributes to an IRA and pays into Social Security for future retirement. A pregnant woman seeks prenatal care to improve the chances for her child yet unborn. It is but a small step to add insurance in so many other forms to encompass not just the vagaries of life but major dislocations as well. The real challenge will be in lifting our eyes to a more distant horizon to address climate change and income inequality, for two real examples. As Ben Franklin told us, death and taxes may be the only sure things, but investments in planning can make the course of our lives much easier.

How can one plan for disasters when we're seeing with each new event that the impact is worse than the time before? Things are happening with such gravity that planning in advance is nary impossible. Japan had walls erected up to 18 feet high to ward off tsunamis. They didn't expect that in 2011 they'd be hit with waves unseen in centuries. How high is high enough? How does one win the fight against Mother Nature in today's Earth that's roasting thanks to global warming?

I strongly support the concept of planning for disasters as described in this article. All too often the responses to disasters come too late to benefit those most in need and most impacted. However, since disasters can affect huge numbers of people, the costs of helping just those who barely participate in the monetary economy are enormous. In this article’s first example 5,000 particularly vulnerable families were given, pre-disaster, $53 per family to assist in rescuing themselves and their livestock. $265,000 is a lot of money, and one must ask 1) are governments in second- or third-world countries willing and able to set aside even that amount and 2) how can these countries handle disasters that are expected to impact tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of their people? If, as the article suggests, disasters this year will affect 168 million people, and if the cost is even $10 per person (likely to be much higher), it would cost $1.68 billion, a total that even first-world countries would find daunting. Given the vast sums of money required, it would be informative to know more about how the insurance programs work—who takes the risk, who makes the payments, how rates are calculated, etc.

Ms. Rosenberg is making the distinction between mitigation and recovery. You need both. The balance depends on where you live and what emergencies you'll most likely face. If floods are the problem: Try levees, drainage, irrigation, and breakwaters. This large scale investment is safety. Also known as public infrastructure. This requires planning. As a last ditch effort, you can buy everyone some plywood and a box of nails. The gesture is sort of like buying everyone a bottle of aspirin right before Chernobyl though. Nice gesture. Helped with the headache. What's up with all this radiation now? That's where recovery becomes involved. Just because you saved the furniture doesn't mean the house isn't flooded. Someone still has to clean up the mess. Recovery doesn't rely much on financial flows. The car is already off the bridge. If you manage to survive, we can talk about how much the whole mess is going to cost later. The real problem is solving the gap between mitigation failure and disaster recovery. What we might call "rapid emergency response." This doesn't need money either. The problem here is distribution. How do we get the right supplies from one place to another without making things worse. Transferring funds to my electronic bank account doesn't help much when you have no phone, no electric grid, and no supplies to buy anyway. In a long emergency, you need water, food, and shelter. Mitigation already passed. People are dying. Can you survive until recovery?

We should ponder preparedness now as the COVID 19 pandemic is poised to sweep the world. We have not limited air travel and we have not prepared for large scale quarantines and our preparations are inadequate to the scope of the problem looming. We have limited stockpiles of antibiotics and medicines. The supply of these materials comes from China. After just the first few weeks of a pandemic our hospitals will run out of medicines, causing us to regress to early 20th century treatment for pneumonia.

All the pre-planning in the world can’t change certain serious problems related to the places humans inhabit. There are just some areas of the planet that are not feasibly habitable, yet they continue to be more and more inhabited. Deserts, low-lying coastal areas, known active earthquake fault zones, the slopes of volcanoes, river flood plains. The planet has mechanisms to control populations through disaster and the coming decades will see those mechanisms in full aggression.

In the next few decades this would be good advice, to prepare for the worst, because the frequency of events is still intermittent. That will not be the case in a few decades and thus no amount of preparation will matter because there will never be a recovery. I look forward to seeing New York City under water. It is from there that our great oligarchs and their criminal president spring. And now they run up another wealthy liar in the democratic party. That is why I eat healthy and exercise. I want to see the beginning of the end. Especially for New York. If you think about it, it is the best time to be alive, here where we know what is coming but have yet to feel the very harsh affects that are inevitable. Inevitable because humans are simple cowed animals with no ability to alter their behavior collectively.

The more hundreds of millions of citizens and government do not prepare for natural disasters the more deaths there are, and it is a big positive for the entire planet.

While you may know hurricanes or tornados are coming, you don't know whose home will suffer damage. It might veer east, t might veer west or it might veer out to sea. Whom do you give money to, in anticipation of the damage? Will precious resources be given to families, who in the end, suffered no damage?

This is great to know and great to get the word out. Suggest getting this info in front of the hundreds of Billionaires on the planet who are looking for some good to do...Seriously, target the Forbes 500 individuals and companies and raise Billions for this...