All across the internet, there are swaths of blogs and YouTube channels with people pushing you to prepare for disaster.
Listen, its good. For the most part, its good that anyone is paying attention to this because, Lord knows, the population of this nation is not worried about disaster preparedness.
To shine a light on this subject takes effort and an understanding that you will face ridicule.
However, we also have to be careful about what we are talking about. There are some pretty serious segments in this emergency readiness business.
Short-term wilderness survival is very different from long-term urban survival. The tools, tactics, and techniques are all very different.
You cannot write an article about “Survival” and just hope that it works for everyone. These things vary.
So let’s look at the difference between short-term and long-term survival. Which are you preparing for?
Short Term
While it might seem extreme, we only need to look at recent history to begin to understand what a short-term disaster looks like.
Here is a brief explanation of what a short-term disaster looks like from a high level.
We could look at this situation as up to a month of interrupted services and resources with the assumption that things like power, water and lights will return.
Long Term
For a long-term disaster, we are talking about a situation that lasts longer than a month, and those essential services are not coming back on.
This could mean not for a few months or never again. As you can see, its a very different beast than a short-term disaster.
Its easy to get certain aspects of preparing for the two mixed up. Obviously, we want to get the short term down first before the long term.
The short term is more of a checklist situation, while the long term looks like a life-changing event.
