I’ve heard an amusing assessment of the difference between boys and girls. Girls are said to look at a dangerous situation and think, “I might get hurt,” and back away. Boys, by contrast, think, “I might not,” and plow ahead.
I’ve seen some of that among my own children, but then again there are no hard and fast rules about temperament. One of our daughters is a front-of-the-roller-coaster, screaming-with-glee, can-we-do-it-again type while her closest brother would avoid them altogether.
Think It Can’t Happen? Think Again
In many ways, people often fall into two basic groups when it comes to preparedness. There are those who want to do whatever is necessary to prepare for any eventuality they can foresee and those who put it off thinking that “none of that is going to happen to me.”
You can guess where we fall. “Prepping” has consumed much of my waking time in thought or action for the past few years.
For those who are prone to writing off all this “survivalist stuff” as over-the-top, tin foil hat, hand-wringing, let me pose a few questions.
- How secure is your job? You may be an excellent employee, but do you know what your company balance sheets look like? Has your industry “taken a hit” in this economy? If your company was bought out by another, are you sure you’d still have your job then?
- How close are you to a fault line? Scientists have been surprised several times lately by earthquakes in areas unknown to have fault lines (most recently in Hawthorne, Nevada). How close do you live to a known one and how might one impact you?
- How would $5 per gallon gas affect you? How much wiggle room is there in your present budget to accommodate significant rises in the cost of not just filling your car, but the shipment of everything you eat and use? Do you feel confident that our government can keep gas prices affordable with the turmoil in the Middle East?
Continue Thinking
Those are just some beginning questions too. I could go on about things like widespread serious illness, weather-related disasters and crop failures, etc.
Are you sure none of those things could ever happen to you?
PreppingToSurvive.com 
May 12, 2011 at 5:57 pm
More recent news:
The two earthquakes in Spain today (May 11) that killed several people and caused significant damage struck an area with a tame seismic history. Their shallow point of origin contributed to the deaths and destruction.
The quakes, which occurred along a yet-unidentified fault, were shallow, rupturing just over a half-mile (1 kilometer) below ground, said John Bellini, a geophysicist with U.S. Geological Survey.
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/earthquake-spain-coast-1509/
May 12, 2011 at 6:04 pm
From the whitehouse.gov site:
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 39 U.S. states have moderate-to-high earthquake hazard.
Clearly, when it comes to a giant U.S. temblor, it is not a question of “if” but of “when.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/10/understanding-earthquakes-and-their-impacts-part-i