I’m sure all of us have seen or heard someone make statements about how it’ll be when it hits the fan. Very often, the people saying this have the very worst case scenario in mind. I want to bring up three articles I have written that I hope can help people have a more open minded, broad approach to their preparedness.
Levels of Hitting the Fan
The scale of an incident can vary based on geography, time of year, length of incident and countless other criteria. Just last week there was a storm that dumped three feet of snow on an area just a few hundred miles away from me. When it got here, we only got a mild thunderstorm.
If we would have gotten that much snow here in Minnesota, my city neighborhood might have fared better than some, as we have underground power lines, creating no real danger of local power lines snapping from the added weight of ice and snow.
When Would You Say “It Has Hit the Fan”?
I wrote an article called When Would You Say It Has Hit The Fan? In it, I make the point that this is largely subjective. Let’s say we got the three feet of snow here in Minnesota. While my family would be dreading the shoveling, we would be warm, fed, and safe and secure, even if we lost power. I believe that there are some of my neighbors who would have to venture out to get more groceries. They are ill prepared. For them, the stuff might be hitting the fan, but for us it would be an inconvenient bump in the road.
Disaster Probability
Someone recently made a comment about how one wouldn’t want to cook outdoors once it’s hit the fan. I replied that under a worst case, total melt-down, he was correct. As I explain in Disaster Probability, those types of worse case scenarios don’t happen very often. If they do happen, they rarely start off as a worst case scenario. One of the scenarios people mention is a total economic meltdown where people are rioting instantly; there is no food anywhere and the hordes kill anyone they want to take whatever they want.
The truth is, in an economic collapse, things will most likely get bad slowly. Job losses will increase, social programs will swell and the value of the dollar will decrease as prices increase. The people who riot and cause havoc will most likely not make a noise until their social programs are cut and the price of food increases to a level that makes today’s prices look cheap. In my version of what an economic collapse will look like, I’ll be safe cooking outside for some time. It would only be dangerous to do so once the price of food is burdensome or the stores just don’t have any.
The major events that the doomers among us point to like major economic overnight meltdown, EMP, and so on just don’t happen very often, if at all. The truth is, the stuff hits the fan for many people every single day. Loved ones die. Jobs are lost. Houses burn. Cars are stolen. The scenarios go on and on. Some of these may seem small to you, but they can and are life changing events for others. The events that are most likely to happen are the ones that only affect a small number of people. When I lost my job it really impacted my family, but no one else has been impacted by it.
Don’t Get Tunnel Vision
In the Article called The Downfalls of Tunnel Vision I make the point to explain that it can be dangerous for us to think an event will only take place a certain way. This is why I don’t recommend preparing for event’s, but instead to take a general approach to preparedness. If you only prepare for an EMP, you might not be prepared for or see a pandemic coming.
In being prepared for the things that are most likely to happen, we will eventually be prepared for the larger things that have a small chance of happening but will effect a large percentage of people.
If you liked this article please think about sharing it on the social media listed below, thanks!
