Coping: Which Disaster to Prep For?

This morning I’d toss out the idea that earthquake preps are worth reviewing, even if it is the holiday and subjects like prepping might best be spared for some other time of the year.

It has been observed, on dozens of forums around the net, that quakes seem like they happen around major holidays and we’re in one of those periods right now, where we have major holidays all over the place.  When you look at the various maps, you can see that earthquake potential is particularly high for the US as plates do the “bump and grind” with us dancing on top of ‘em.

There’s possibly a scientific reason why seasonality would be the case:  Maximum stress on the tectonic plates would reasonable come when the earth’s tilt is at any of four conditions during the year:

• When the summer solstice occurs in North America around June 21
• When the winter solstice occurs (about now)
• And the two equinoxes about midway in-between

The “holiday thing” doesn’t act alone:  There are probably other factors at play, as well.  Southern California lore suggests that quakes happen 18-months to 24-months after periods of exceptional rain.

Another theory – and this was shown in the movie 2012 in the opening scenes where particles from the Sun were the culprit.  Since we have just had a boatload of those arrive, we’re left to ponder whether planets “condense” energy into matter around Suns.

Earthquakes seem like an easy thing to prep for, too:  Food, water, enough pipe cement to put PVC pipes back together, and maybe some other items, as well:  Routes to work which reduce the amount of time spent on (or under) elevated roads and bridges.  Few have the luxury of moving from post and tension construction buildings, but in the past dozen years, countries like India have been paying much closer attention to earthquake resistance of post & tensioned buildings.

OK, about here you’re thinking “OK, Ure has his little neck hairs up about the possibility of a major earthquake because of the solstice and Holidays.  Got it.  Next thought, please?”

Not so fast.

My real topic that I’m warming to is the definition of what prepping is, and why people do it.

After thinking about it a good bit, perhaps 10-years or so, I’ve decided that prepping as presently expressed on the web is mostly “Personal Continuation Planning.”

Yet the one thing we don’t do an especially good idea of prepping for is death.

Not that it hasn’t been heavily monetized.  Of course it has!  If you tithe me 20% of everything you make, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you in the Afterlife.  If there is such a thing.

And this gets me to what is on my mind:  I’m curious to find our (research help request follows) as to whether you have run into any of the following data which I’d find extremely interesting:

1.  Are prepper sorts more (or less) likely to believe in Something Bigger Than Them?

2.  Are preppers also seriously into alternative medicines (vitamin regimens and oils and therapies of one sort, or another) than are people untouched by the “prepper” label?

3.  Last, but not least, are Preppers any more or less afraid of death/dying than is the general population of the USA?

Every morning I get up, look at my “Threat Board” – just a collection of headings under which I store risks to “personal continuation” 

I use the seven major systems of life approach (Food, shelter, communications, transportation, energy, environment including medicine, and finance).

Then I look at each one of these every morning, or two, and assess our personal exposures.

For example, under the House label:  We have certain risks that we can quantify, and some we can’t.  An example of the risks we can quantify, I would list our septic system.  We know it works like a champ and since it’s the old style that doesn’t depend on electricity for pumping water and effluent around) we are quite happy with it.  Which means we pay much more attention than most people as to what happens at the “far end of the flush.”

That’s a risk we manage by having yearly tank emptying and we use lots of bacteria starters (and the odd can of tomatoes whose acid offsets some of the ammonia build-up) so if we needed to run five years (or longer) without service, we could do it.

Still, we’ve thought through that part of “personal continuation” a good ways and having a backup septic system may seem extreme, but hey, so is having more than a year of food and water.  At some point, you just have to get back to living sustainably, whether you like it or not.

OK, two years of food then and five years of seeds…let’s not quibble.  These are risks that you can put a pencil to and they are actually pretty low.

The number of people in the continental USA who are restarting life due to EMP of major earthquake after-effects is…uh…how about zero?

Still, the threat list keeps us honest:  Every year lots of people lose their homes to tornadoes.  So backing up everything (tax records and electronic backup documentation) off site makes sense.

But back to point:  Is that to be considered prepping or is that just personal continuation planning?

I’m debating whether I should add an eighth and ninth item to my “Threat Board.”  Death/Dying is one nominee.

There’s plenty of reason to:  We know for example, that excess weight kills.  Directly from heart attack and from companion disease like diabetes and so forth. 

The reason I’m adding that to my threat board is that it dawned on my this weekend while I was working on my novel, that I do far too much sitting and writing.  I need more exercise and a lack of that will kill you slower, but with far more certainty than a dictator in North Korea or furious mobs from Ferguson.

Elaine is one of those people who automatically works out every day.  Some kettle ball reps, some free weights, yoga-like stretches for 15-20 minutes, and being exceptionally active around the house.

I have trouble with that, although lately I’ve been taking the odd call while on the treadmill walking.

Our latest vitamin testing continues with L-Carnosine  (NOW Foods L-carnosine 500mg, 100 Vegetarian Capsules) and, when it gets here, PQQ (such as PQQ 20mg (Pyrroloquinoline Quinone) 30 vegecaps).  We’ll let you know how the additional research goes and no, this is not medical advice, just an update on what we’re doing.

Hat tip to reader Douglas for the PQQ tip and there’s a ton of data on the stuff over at the PubMed site of the National Institutes of Heath. Or, just put it into the search engine of your choice and sit back and be amazed.

And that’s the point:  Adding Death/Dying/How to Avoid or Postpone It as a tab on our Threat Board (which has gotten big enough to become a OneNote workbook in and of itself).  And secondly, that we are not giving up on the personal testing of vitamins and our responses to them.

Last, but not least,  we are becoming extremely concerned with the increasing levels of polarization in America.  Those six corporation that control 90% of news coverage are working us – us being the general public- to their own profit-oriented ends.

When media touts and promotes divisive views by working the public’s “hot buttons” it simpley makes them rich and raises the general stress levels in life.

We don’t need that.  When positive economic feedback encourages negative social feedback which is precisely what’s going on.

The biggest unstated socioeconomic problem out there is the impact on society of rewarding corporations for “steering news.” 

When assignment editors began to receive bonuses based on shares and ratings, America’s collapse began in earnest.  Instead of a focus on “What Unites Us” we’re now wallowing in a sea of “What Divides Us” while the profiteers of racism and sexism use classical divide and conquer to destroy America.  Us versus Them is a load of crap.  We’re all us, at least around here.

What’s more, when organizations take up slogans like “No Justice, No Peace” it’s an affront to the social order.  I would suggest that calls for “No Peace” are thinly veiled calls for insurrection and anarchy.  Just fuzzy enough to skate and pull partisans into false debate. 

Let’s think this through, though, shall we? Destroy peace and what do you have left?  What’s really on the other side?   That lack of analysis is what gained Al Sharpton the label “racial arsonist.”

Of course this enrages the left. Especially coming from a Jamaican-born American and  Harvard chair at that.  Comes down to it, the only thing more dangerous that radicals is radicals with corporate complicity.  Which gets me to…

The corporate monetization of Ferguson, Garner and the assassination of two NYPD cops this weekend demonstrates division at work and is each is a tragedy.  Unless you’re a corporate entity.  Then it’s a monetization opportunity.  A chance to put on “hotter” guests who will what?  Further enflame the situation. And bump ratings.

Since we’ve seen ratings and social media increases demonstrated, guess what’s sure to follow?  Corporations don’t care where their money comes from.   Until people turn off media at all levels, learn to resist following the charlatans and profiteers, and get back to one-on-one honesty, the die is cast.

Looking at my OneNote workbook I’m debating whether I should have Death and Dying and Dividing and Conquering as separate data tabs, or whether it should be a single tab (Death and Division).

It’s a decision we shouldn’t have to make, but that’s one angle to the arriving Digital Anarchy I was telling subscribers about this weekend.

Write when you break even,

George   george@ure.net