Situational Awareness

[NorthernRaider]

Situational Awareness
Post 2 © NR2013

YES I know that nine times out of ten if a disaster SUDDENLY occurs it’s a matter of pure luck that you are watching it on tv / listening about it on the radio/ or downloading the story from the web and not being actually overwhelmed by that disaster that’s just life and there not much you can do about it.

But equally if you are not making a deliberate and conscious effort to be aware of the world around you MAY be overwhelmed by an approaching disaster you could have avoided if you paid attention and ensured you were situationally aware as much as possible.

Recent examples that spring to mind are

FOOD, multiple news reports from across the world report that the various extreme weather events of the last few years are not only driving up the prices of basic foods (bread, flour, vegetables, milk) to eye watering levels AND making them scarce in many regions. The AWARE prepper will have noted these individual news stories and collated them into a cohesive single issue, they will have ran a quick eye over commodities prices on the stock exchanges and seen how the basic essential foodstuffs are becoming damned expensive and also harder to find. The switched on preppers will have bulk purchased extra stocks of those foods whilst they are still affordable / available and some preppers will have made efforts to grow some extra foods themselves.

(The main news story about food I have been alarmed by came out on the 4th Jan 2013 when it was reported in various UK media sources that very large numbers of farmers were not bothering to plant ANYTHING in the year 2013 because of the atrocious ground conditions, this could see UK food shortages and price rises in excess of 30%)

FUEL, It’s the same story with fuel as with food, surging demand in other parts of the world, older wells and mines drying up, winter demand from central Europe causing gas shortages, Speculators buying up super tankers full of oil and parking them up to drive up prices, bankrupt European governments pushing up fuel taxes etc the list is endless. The AWARE prepper will have noted and collated these various news stories and reacted where possible such as fitting wood burning stoves to replace oil and gas powered heaters, stockpiled firewood whilst affordable and available (some parts of the UK have seen shortages of firewood). Others will be insulating their homes or moving stuff around so that all or most daytime activities are confined to only ONE heated room.

HEALTH, Many people across Europe are now aware of a very large outbreak of Norovirus this winter, this is spread by hand to hand contact in shops, schools, hospitals, buses, trains etc, the AWARE prepper family will have greatly limited their exposure to the virus by doing more online shopping rather than visiting the town, cut back on visits to open public venues etc, just as they would if the outbreak was everything from bird flu to Ebola Niger. Being situationally aware is the ADVANTAGE you give your family to avoid being overwhelmed by a crisis.

SECURITY, C’mon people we can all see the stories of the desperation among our southern European neighbours 25% unemployment, entire towns thrown out of work, medical services closing, hundreds of thousands losing their homes, and to that the surge in food banks relying on peoples good will to donate food to the needy, ever growing numbers of refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers pouring into western Europe and in many cases ending up living off state welfare systems that are already near breaking point. Soon you see the combination of those events growing in cities like London where gangs based on race and skin colour flourish and become predatory and criminal.
The AWARE prepper families in the cities are altering their lifestyle to reduce exposure and risk from street gangs by avoiding going out after dark, increasing the security fittings on their homes or joining the mass migration out of the cities to live in safer places.

COMMS, on a lesser scale I noted that not only are the UK authorities wanting to monitor / record more and more telecommunications between citizens, but so were the Americans and the EU under the usual “” Anti Terrorism”” banner. This increases the need for preppers to be able to communicated more securely between groups and families and to find easier ways of arranging secure rendezvous, the more AWARE preppers have been actively researching and discussing the benefits and short comings of various two way radio systems from HAM to CB to PMR and everything in between, The switched on preppers will ensure they obtain and master radio kit that will allow them to communicate with each other AFTER TSHTF.

Today I checked the news servers as soon as I arose to find a cluster of four earhquakes affecting Alasaka and British Columbia with an associated TSUNAMI alert for coastal areas, I immediately phoned a relative in BC to tell them, they had not heard anything because they were still asleep but were very grateful for the call and started reacting. Nothing came out of it but my call in theory could have given them the middle of the night early warning that could have meant the difference tween life and death if a tsunami was heading towards the shore.

Equally I noted few prepper forums with realtime news alerts, indeed most had few fresh or impending news articles but plenty focusing on future gun laws, how to preserve cheese, phone apps, how a prepper was proud to be gay!!!, How government cuts would affect their benefits etc.
But little real time incidents of note are being checked out and reported BEFORE we go onto more mundane issues.

The lowland Brits, Dutch, coastal Danes etc for example need a real time MET report feed to their homes / offices ESPECIALLY as climate change is giving us ever more extreme and severe weather events, We need to know in advance that storm surges or flooding rivers are breaching the dykes, levis, flood barriers and NOT finding out only when we see water coming up through the floor.