User:CraigKelley62/sandbox

Despite the severity of a spate of both natural and man-made disasters since September 11, 2001, personal disaster preparation, something termed “Personal Resilience” for the purposes of this discussion, have not advanced very far. “Personal Resilience” is the term of choice because terms like Disaster Preparedness and Personal Preparedness are both scary and thinking about disasters is generally not a pleasant thing. Link. There are, of course, a number of more vibrant disaster planning efforts underway. Business continuity planning promotes Disaster Recovery Plans. Community-based response efforts promote field response teams and inter-agency planning. School-based response teams cover everything from live shooters to gas leaks and nearby bank robberies. But for the average family, disaster planning by families is itself a disaster, with a 2013 survey finding that only 19% of American families felt that they were “very prepared” for a disaster. Link. The Department of Homeland Security’s Read.gov page has loads of information to include a Family Emergency Plan Checklist Link, ran a Thunderclap Campaign in 2014Link and has a whole webpage devoted to readiness for kids, complete with cartoon-style superheroes LINK. The Center for Disease Control has a Zombie Apocalypse website. LINK  Even the University of Massachusetts has a draft disaster mitigation plan covering everything from Cyberattacks to Wind Storms. LINK But none of this is really working. If a disaster happens, whether it be an earthquake, a tsunami or a regular structure fire, the vast majority of American simply are not prepared. The trick to being prepared is to make preparations both relevant to everyday life and useful in an emergency. The everyday part is what keeps things from being scary and, it turns out, what is useful in everyday life is generally pretty useful in an emergency as well. LINK. Of course, using condoms for storing water is exactly the sort of extreme adaptation program that helps people decide not to bother, but the underlying theory is a good one.