Lesson #1 – It Can Happen To You

Japan is notorious for its long lists of earthquakes. So it should come as no surprise after the last one, there would be another. Yet, there are millions of people living and working in Japan. From what I could tell, even in areas where the tsunami never reached, there is wide spread damage and people out of food begging for help. It’s like they never imagined this could happen.

I’m betting many of these people thought “it would never happen to me”. They gambled and they lost.

Never assume an emergency, whether it be a natural disaster or man made one, will not affect you. Everyone who lives on the West Coast should have an Earthquake preparedness kit and a minimum of two weeks worth of food and water stored up. What percentage of the people do you think do?

Also, how many people living in Southeastern Missouri, Northeast Arkansas (in the area of the New Madrid fault) and even as far away as Little Rock, Memphis Tn and parts of Illinois are prepared for a major earthquake such as the one that hit Japan?

Become aware that it can happen to you. Once you accept that you are susceptible to wildfires, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes or other disasters, you can then be more prepared for them. Sticking your head in the ground and saying it won’t happen to you will not save your ass during a disaster.

Lesson 2 – Technology is Great, but it won’t put food on the table after a disaster

The images that strike me at my core the most are those of people who are hungry and haven’t eaten in days. Sure, some are those that lived in the area ravaged by the tsunami and would have lost everything they stored, but then again doesn’t this stress the importance of planning and preparing for disasters that are likely to happen in your area?

I mean geez, if you live near the ocean and your area, (or even a region) is prone to having earthquakes, doesn’t the likelihood of one day being affected by a tsunami make you want to have alternate plans in case one hits?

Japan is known for their technology. Not only are they great at developing technologies, their people are probably the most “wired” citizens in the World. That could have affected how many of them thought about preparedness. Probably many figured their technology would give them enough warning to handle any disaster, if they thought about it at all.

Now most of them only have the Government take care of them.

I love my techno gadgets. But I also love my food stores and I know they’ll be there if a disaster strikes. I won’t have to wait for a Red Cross van or a FEMA center to open before I can get something to eat. I’ll just open my storage closet and decide what I’ll have to eat.

Lesson #3 – Never Depend on the Government for your Security or Groceries!

Remember when I said above about the people having to rely on the Government of Japan for food and shelter now? It only took about a day for government officials to come out and state that they were overwhelmed. You know what happens to a government gets overwhelmed? NOTHING! Nothing happens fast! You’ll go hungry.

Just another reason to have stored food and basic necessities and preferably stored on at least two different spots. People often look at me funny when I mention this, but what if you had a house fire or were flooded and all your food is stored in your house? You think your Insurance Man is gonna wave his magic wand and make all your food reappear? Good luck on that one!

Lesson #4 – Never Live Near A Nuclear Plant if You’re In A Earthquake Prone Area

You’d think this one would be a no brainer, but apparently it’s not. You preppers around 3 Mile Island may want to take note of this one too. Nuclear plants are constructed better than most other buildings that you can think of. Probably even better than Fort Knox. But an earthquake is one of those events that will really test even the best engineers can think of. It certainly did in the case of Japan and her Nuclear power plants.

I’m all for Nuclear power. I think it’s great. You can even put it in my back yard as long as the rates are cheap. Just pay me a reasonable market rate for my property and I’ll move away. You can have it. No way will I live remotely close to a Nuclear power plant! Radiation is a nasty little problem and one I don’t want to have to deal with, especially after a major disaster.

If you live near one now, you’ve been warned!

Lesson #5 – Prepare For The Worse and Hope For The Best

We already know this lesson, but how many actually practice it? Let’s look at what a typical Japanese family might had done if they’d lived on the Coast.

First off, they would have food stored at their homes for an emergency. At least two weeks worth, ideally longer.

Second, they should have a backup plan in place and a backup plan to the backup plan in case things get really bad. We know these as Plans A, B and C. You should have predetermined evacuation routes mapped out and each member of the family knows these routes. This family would have simple asked a few basic questions. “If a earthquake strikes us, where will we go?” “If a tsunami warning sounds, where we escape to?” “Which escape routes are furthest from the coast?”

If they owned a car or two, each one should have had an Earthquake kit in them and two or more in their home. The extras would be in bug out bags, which one should be in their cars as well and at work if they could swing it.

Probably the most important item next to transportation would be a second or even third location to bug out too in case of an emergency. The family would also have a way to contact each other and decide where to reassemble after an emergency. This should also be covered in their bug out plans in case the lines of communication were down. Have predetermined places to assemble after an emergency or natural disaster.

These bug out locations would also have some food and water stored. These could be your friends home in the Mountains or a cache hidden in the hills near a remote campground. You just need someplace to reassemble and regroup if you’ve been separated. You can then make further plans from there.

By the way, you people on the Left coast can use this theoretical situation to develop your own bug out plans in case of a natural disaster or other emergency.

I’m sure there are other lessons to be learned from this disaster. I’ve often heard it said that wise people learn from others bad experiences. I hope many of us can learn and better prepare for any emergency that might come upon us! The worse thing any of us could do is pretend it won’t happen to us or to not even start prepping because it seems like a daunting task.

You might also take a moment and take a look at what there was a run on after this disaster and what they quickly ran out of. Food, water, fuel, medicine, protective mask and clothing along with iodine tablets. How many of these do you have stored up for an emergency?

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The most logical explanation (backed up with scientific data) though is that nature itself is taking care of the oil that didn’t wash up on the beaches or the marshes. The stuff that stayed out in the Gulf is believed by many biologist to have been devoured my microbes and fungi. They also predict about 40 percent has evaporated.

Those of us who’ve worked in the oil industry have long been told that there are microbes and fungi that feed on crude oil. Which kinda makes sense when you stop to think that oil is nothing more than rotted organic matter. The Gulf has always leaked oil from the ocean bed and these little microbes were more and happy to gobble it up. They even multiply at a fast rate in the warm ocean water. This could be on explanation why so much has disappeared at a faster rate than it did in Alaska after the Valdez oil spill. (and hey, did you ever hear the rumor that the oil in that tanker was really BP oil and not Exxon oil?)

If this is truly what’s happening, it should come as a surprise to anyone. But unfortunately many of us don’t tend to think well when we see oil covered birds and mammals being taken in to be cleaned up, or the dead ones discarded.We start thinking with our hearts instead of our heads. I know I was pretty PO’ed at BP every time I watched TV.

Now I’m not saying that we should forget what happened here. It’s my belief that this will affect the Gulf for many years. But I don’t think it’s going to be near as bad as some environmentalist want us to think it will be. Nature has a way of taking care of herself. It may not be pretty, but there are few natural things that nature makes that it can’t fix. We tend to forget that crude oil is a product that is created naturally.

I also do not think that BP acted properly. I think they were negligent in many ways and I think they should pay. But let’s not write off the Gulf Coast just yet. The best estimates is that the clean up crews and skimmers out in the Gulf have only grabbed about 1 to 2 percent of the oil. While most people who follow these things know this is pretty much peeing into a hard wind, I tend to think that it makes us all feel a little warm and fuzzy seeing people scooping up tar balls on beaches.

Deep down we know it’s doing very little, if any, good at all. But we want to know there’s an effort somewhere.We want to see those guys standing around in White suits, blue gloves and Yellow hardhats holding trash bags!

Nature has a big ole history of righting wrongs. Look at Mount St. Helens. When she blew her top, there were scientist predicting that it would be the end of times. Heck, a lot of them had humanity’s grave dug and casket nailed shut. But an odd thing happened on the way to humanity’s funeral. Nothing! Sure, there was some ash on some farm ground and some fell into lakes and rivers, but a majority of it went into the air streams and was dispersed around the world.

Kinda like the same thing that has happened over in Iceland and that little ash puffing pimple-on-the-earth they have. Other than PO’ing some flyers, it’s really not done much to the environment.

Not to mention previous oil spills that fizzled out after awhile leaving people to wonder what happened to the oil.

No, I think we should be concerned about the Gulf Coast, but I think our attention should be on the Politics of the whole matter. You have Hussein Obama trying to put a moretorium on drilling and telling us that deep water drilling is bad, all the while funneling 2 billion to a Brazilian oil company so they can drill where…in deep water. Water much deep than the Horizon was in.

I’m way more fearful of man made disasters than anything mother nature can throw at me. We can deal with tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes pretty well, it’s those darn economic collapses and over extended Government powers that I truly worry about.

While nature may be able to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf, it can’t touch some of these man made disasters. We have to clean up that crap ourselves!

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