High Level Risk Management

Remember the old saying "You can't see the forest because of the trees" or some such iteration? Well, it's a genuine thing in preparedness circles. Regardless of your intentions, bad choices in the beginning of your planning pretty much set you up for failure. You can shoot yourself in the foot by not assessing your choices without the emotional baggage of assuaging your ego. We all make bad choices, and until you can admit you made a mistake, you will continue making the same mistake.

Taking into account your plans for weathering whatever storm you are planning for, you must re-assess every once in a while to make sure you aren't digging yourself a bigger hole. If you move away from the big city to get away from the Golden Hoard, you need to make sure the place you are moving to is sustainable. If your previous location was more sustainable for mid to low level events, such as flooding or loss of employment, you might remain there until a more suitable location is in your budget. Planning for a high level event like a large scale civil disturbance, apocalyptic inflation or alien invasion is prepared for prior to lesser events, you are less likely to comfortably overcome your issues. Let's face it, it's more common to have a flood or tornado than it is for a high level event.

One could argue that in all likelihood, you would be better served to plan for things that you have dealt with before, rather than world ending scenarios. Can you fix your own flat tire with a plug kit and a pump? Do you carry them in your vehicle? Hopefully you are picking up what I'm putting down. Here's a list of things every American should be prepared to deal with any day of the week. Until you can positively answer that you can counter these rather benign problems, you don't need to spend a bunch of cash on exotic preps.

-Flat Tire
-Lost job
-Burglary
-First Aid
-Traumatic injury
-Winter storm
-Tornado
-Loss of water pressure
-Loss of wallet/purse
-Power Outage
-Broken windows
-Defensive use of force scenario
-Loss of access to bank accounts
-House fire
-Chemical leak
-Police action
If you have children
-Rally point to meet up in an emergency
-Plan for an abduction
-Code words for duress
-Counter surveillance techniques
-Established safe places and people

There's not much logic in preparing for an EMP when you can't even get home with a flat tire unless AAA shows up. If you can't deal with the little things, you need to start there! Don't get emotionally invested in a dystopian future you read about if you're not squared away in your self defense techniques. All that freeze dried food will be enjoyed by someone that's not you if you can't defend it or prepare it.