Emergency Preparedness

Status: Authoritative. The material in this workshop has been honed for years by militaries and emergency preparation groups.

Objectives

1. To assess our current disaster and emergency risk susceptibility
2. To give all Guild members the basic skills and tools of emergency and disaster survival

Instructional Material

• Disasters and Emergencies
• The Sane Prepper's Mantra

Pre-Meeting Assignment

1. Identify Your Top Scenarios

Figure out which emergency and disaster scenarios expose you to the most risk. Make sure to factor in your location and the complications of having other people included in your plan.

Once you have an idea of which scenarios are the most plausible, plan for the worst-case version of them. Then, add 50% more damage to your plans.

Example. If your house catches on fire, what do you do?

It takes an average of five minutes for a house to become completely engulfed in fire. This gives you just 2.5 minutes. An initial plan might look something like this:

Get up, get emergency bag, grab the cat and get out.

But that's not the worst-case scenario. What if the cat freaks out and tries to run away? The new plan to account for this could be:

Have a carrier near your room so you don't have to worry about the cat.

Now, what about your valuable property? Depending on your house, the most valuable object could be your computer by several orders of magnitude. It might be worth insuring these objects — in which case, you'll also need to put the insurance papers and identifiers in your emergency bag.

Now suppose that you live in a multi-story house. What's your plan to escape if you're on an upper floor and can't use the stairs? The new plan might be:

Escape through the front or back doors if you're on the bottom floor. Use the windows if you're on the second floor. Otherwise, use a fire escape.

But what if the windows or doors are blocked off?

The walls are weak. Break through one into a neighbor's home, if needed.

And so on.

2. Practice

Choose one emergency technique and spend ten minutes practicing it.

3. Emergency Bag

Start your emergency bag by getting one item from the Categories of Gear list in the Disasters and Emergencies article.

Cohort Activity

1. [10 minutes] Share with your cohort 1 thing you hadn't thought about when imagining disaster scenarios that this has brought to your attention and why it is important.
2. [30 minutes] Taking turns, each person chooses a disaster or emergency scenario that seems intractable. Then, have the cohort brainstorm for five minutes about first steps or techniques to handle the scenario.