After Emergency Number 1, Comes Disaster Number 2

By: Jeff Davis Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Reuters reported today that "SEC and Homeland Security need Web backup." The gist of the article was that if millions of people were staying home to get over the H1N1 Flu or simply to avoid it, there would be more people working from home and the extra web traffic could potentially clog up networks and possibly the entire internet. Now, at first, this sounded like a made up story to me to gin up controversy and fear and that may be the case. However it does illustrate how one disaster can lead to another. In most cases, there is a great "ripple effect" after every disaster weather it's man made or natural. Most of these ripples don't have an affect on the greater population, but after some major disasters there have been huge aftershocks that, in some cases, were worse than the initial emergency.

Case in point: 9/11. After 9/11 there was a huge impact on the economy. During that time the government stepped in and manipulated interest rates in order to keep things flowing. However, whenever the government artificially raises or lowers rates it can create a large economic bubble that will eventually pop. (Could that be part of our economic problems today?) So the only way to prepare for a disaster is to take a holistic approach. This is because you can't predict what the ripple effect will be. You should make sure that you plan for the high emergency threats in your area. Then you should add to your list of probable ripple effects of those disasters. Keep adding to the list and getting prepared until you reach the point where you are working on getting prepared for things that are less and even remotely probable.

Now the hope is that you will never encounter any of these disasters, but that really isn't likely. Plan for everything from man-made to natural disasters. Take a little extra care to be ready for whatever may come your way. Of course there are some things you can do that will prepare you for many different kinds of disasters. One of those things is Food Storage. If you have the basic emergency items in place you will be ready for most disasters. Then you can move into medical emergencies with First-Aid, and pandemic preparations. All the while you should be preparing for financial disaster by putting some money away in savings.

Just remember that just because there is one disaster, it doesn't mean all other disasters will be put on hold until you get that one taken care of. The wisdom of previous generations was to prepare for everything they could, with a "When it rains, it poors" attitude.

This doesn't mean you have to be scared or live in fear, on the contrary it means you can live in peace knowing you are ready!

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About The Author: MRE