It’s been five years, so I’m going through all the household’s disaster preparedness plans and kits: updating, improving, replacing. I think this is what has made me very melancholy the past several days.
It’s wise for every household, even a household of one, to have a well thought-through plan in the case of disaster. Anything can happen, and when a brain is in crisis mode it does not think well. Having a plan means you don’t have to think, you just do what your calm, logical mind has already deemed best.
There’s not a place in this world that’s safe from every disaster: typhoons, earthquakes, tornados, blizzards, volcanos, landslides, floods, baseball-sized hail, electrical storms, etc. Nature isn’t nice; matter of fact, it does not care about you or your dreams. If the sun has to balance a build up by releasing a solar flare that overloads our planet’s electrical grid, it won’t care. Never has, never will.
Even we, as humans, are a never ending threat to ourselves: greed, corruption, envy, an innate ability to concoct justifications to kill each other. We really are our own worse enemy. You never know when someone with just an ounce of power and a stupid idea is going to unleash wonton murder for a fabricated “just cause”.
All this and so much more are possible because it has happened, and it will happen again. No one is immune. So I try to be prepared, at least a little. I can’t move to an underground, self-sufficient complex in Antartica. I just do what I can with what little resources I have. I only hope I can keep my family alive long enough until some semblance of a peaceful society returns after the panicked looting, fear-fueled violence and lack of speedy or adequate governmental aid.
But to try and be prepared means I have to think about all that is possible and what I could do now to lessen any effect on my family. And thinking about the state of the world makes me terribly sad. So I feel crummy.
In many ways, I wish it would just be an all-out nuclear war; I live next to one of top five targets, so I won’t feel a thing. Instant vaporization. Dead before I see the explosion or feel the heat. Anything less would just be a hellish struggle.
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