Why Survival/Preparedness?

I'm not sure where all my readers live, but natural disasters happen everywhere, so I'm sure the term "preparedness" is familiar to all. I live in Calgary Canada. According to the Calgary Sun in 2013 "...The single largest loss event in North America was extensive flooding in the city of Calgary, Alberta, and surrounding area..." (see article here: http://goo.gl/ZHZZ7l ). Luckily I was living in Edmonton at the time but some of you were here in Calgary when it happened. Were you ready for a disaster like that? I know Calgary wasn't. Consider the flood in High River Canada, or the BC fires, ice storms in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, mudslide in Washington State. These happen all the time. We don't know when natural disasters are going to happen so we need to be prepared for when it does.

When my wife and I were living in Lethbridge, there was one sunday I remember coming out of church meetings and the sky was black. There was a grass fire west of Lethbridge and the high winds were pushing the fire towards the homes on the Northwest side between Lethbridge and Coalhurst. "thousands...forced out by grass fire" read one article ( http://goo.gl/Gs4Oy9 ). Luckily we were not evacuated but it got me thinking. If the knock came to your door that you have 5 minutes to grab your family and some things, what would you grab? Would you have everything you need to survive? Most of us would probably grab our kids, our pets and then stall wondering what else to save and what to leave behind. Would you grab your birth certificate? passport? insurance documents? computer? Snowboard? Food? That brand new PS4 you just bought?

I wanted to blog about survival and preparedness because I feel it is one subject that a lot of people dismiss as something that can be done later because most of us live in pretty safe areas. How many times have you been evacuated out of your homes? Me? Never. So for me the need to prepare for it was small.

It's funny. The biggest reason this got on my mind wasn't because of the fires or the flood. It wasn't the leaders of my church telling us for years now that we need to have 72 hour kits and food storage. It was a TV show. The Walking Dead. That is what set it off. 

So why would a real fire and real flood not push me to get my 72 hour kits done, but a TV show about zombies would? I don't actually know. It's silly really. It doesn't matter what gets us motivated to get the 72 hour kits ready. As long as we get them ready. 

I will get into the zombie thing another time. I feel I could write a few blogs on that subject, so I probably will. For now though, I wanted to tell you why I want to write and blog about it. Mostly it is going to be me writing about cool articles I have found on the subject and blogging about my families progress with our preparedness. There is more to it than just 72 hour kits and food storage. But what ever it entails, we need to do it all so when the time comes we are prepared and can continue to survive, even if surviving is as simple as making it to grandmas house.