Tag: emergency preparedness

Preparedness Lessons from the Ukraine War

This Offgrid article is dated back to the beginning of the invasion, but still has some useful things to think about when making your own plans. This article focuses on military threats. You can find many articles and videos that talk about why the USA is nearly invulnerable to invasion, but that just means that someday someone is going to say, “Hey, they’ll never expect it, so they won’t be ready.” Other more general preparedness related articles on the war follow below the excerpt.

Preparedness Lessons from the Invasion of Ukraine

Humans have a natural tendency to assume events we have experienced in the past are a good reflection of events we will experience in the future — psychologists call this normalcy bias. Unfortunately, this leads us to believe that events we haven’t experienced (yet) are unlikely to occur. It’s the driving force behind all the disaster survivors who look back and say, “I never thought it would happen to me!” Don’t let that be you.

Don’t assume the enemy is bluffing.

If warning signs begin to crop up prior to a potential disaster, your preparedness should ramp up proportionally. Hope for the best and plan for the worst.

[T]he highest-value targets should have been predictable to anyone with an adversarial mindset…However, some high-value targets are less obvious… What should this mean to you? If you live in a major city that is likely to be a significant target, your threat awareness should be elevated. You should prepare escape routes with waypoints and discuss them with your family — failure to do so could leave you stuck in gridlock, as many Ukrainians were. This is especially true if your city borders directly with a hostile nation or its allies (e.g. Belarus), or lies on a coastline that is readily-accessible. If your escape plan includes air travel, keep in mind that airports are typically a top priority in warfare, and you won’t want to be there when bombs start to fall.

Cyberattacks will be a significant factor

…We’re not suggesting you abandon technology and everyday conveniences, but you should certainly establish contingency plans in case cyberattacks affect the electrical grid, internet service providers, cell phone towers, or banking/point-of-sale systems. Consider learning how to use ham radio for emergency communications, set aside cash, buy a generator, stockpile important medications, and purchase paper maps of the surrounding area. If we’re ever set back to a world without reliable technology, you’ll be more prepared to cope with it.

Training

Ask yourself: how would you respond if you faced an invasion and had to join the fight, whether by mandatory draft or moral obligation? Would you be able to fall back on a solid foundation of training, not just in shooting skills but also small unit tactics, concealment, communication, navigation, medical, and sustainment skills? Would your spouse and children be prepared to contribute to the fight, or to escape to safety without you?

This brief post at The Prepared just talks about bugging out, and there are some decent posts in the comments as well.

What can we learn from the war in Ukraine?

One of the main lessons I’ve seen so far is the need to reassess my bug out plan. There was a 6 mile (10km) long traffic jam of refugees fleeing to Poland.

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At what point do you abandon your vehicle and trek it on foot? Is going on foot any better?

Another thought I had was having enough water, food, and fuel on hand. You don’t want to run out of food during the middle of an invasion and try to go through a war zone to buy groceries. 

My heart goes out to all those affected. Even to the Russian soldiers who may not like what they are doing but have to.

Let’s learn from what is going on and prepare for the future.

A comment on the post from sewknot:

Things I’ve learned from the news reports & interviews

1 have your documents ready – passport/visa/birth certificates

2 cash – have cash on hand so you don’t have to queue at the atm when you could be on the road

3 have your bag packed! Reports of people waking up at 3 am to missile strikes and deciding to pack THEN

4 your journey will take longer than you expect – make sure you have everything you need to make it to your destination and leave as soon as you can

5 mental fortitude – plan for the worst hope for the best

Some of the above lessons are summarized in an article at Survival Kompass titled 10 Things You Can Learn as a Prepper from the Ukraine Invasion.

  1. 1. Keep a stockpile of water and food for evacuation
  2. 2. Always have access to cash
  3. 3. Prepare for your medical care
  4. 4. Always have a full tank
  5. 5. Check the infrastructure around you
  6. 6. Do not stay longer than necessary
  7. 7. Prepare your family
  8. 8. Have your bug out bag ready
  9. 9. Learn survival skills
  10. 10. Always have a plan B and stay flexible
  11. Conclusion: Early preparation and flexible execution of plans give you an advantage and significantly increase your chances of survival!

Government Technology: NIST Issues Disaster Recovery Playbook for Community Resilience

This article from Government Technology talks about a recent NIST paper which helps communities prepare for disasters. The paper is a short one but has some useful information and questions to ask when figuring out how your community should/will respond to disasters.

Link to the NIST paper.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a guide to help emergency managers and community stakeholders ask the right questions to maintain and restore vital services after a disaster.

A burned out car.
BERRY CREEK, CA – SEPTEMBER 11: A burned vehicle sits in front of a home on Oro Quincy Hwy. destroyed in the North Complex fire on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020 in Berry Creek, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) TNS

Recovering from a disaster takes planning and foresight by the affected community and takes a vision for how to build back better after the fact.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) earlier this year published its 50-page NIST Playbook, a guide to community resilience that aims to help communities improve their ability to withstand and bounce back from natural and man-made disasters.

The guide helps emergency managers to ask the right questions to bring vital services back online in a timely way, while also preparing them to think about what it means to build back better for their respective communities, according to Chris Clavin, an environmental engineer who led the development of the NIST document.

“Through that process, not only is it articulated at a detailed level of what recovery is, but, hopefully, also how to make the community more attractive to residents and businesses on blue-sky days,” Clavin said. “A challenge we hope the playbook can respond to and help emergency managers with is going about the process well before an actual hazard takes place, or if they are unfortunately in a recovery, they can get ahead of the next event.”

NIST defines community resilience as the ability to prepare for anticipated hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from destruction. The Playbook is based partly on the National Preparedness Doctrine for prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery that NIST published in 2010.

“We went through all the key steps to community resilience, and, as a result of that, our perspective is that community resilience goes beyond just mitigating the risk posed by natural hazards and preparing to respond to events,” Clavin said. He said many emergency managers and communities are recognizing that developing resilience plans beforehand leads to a better recovery and outcomes.

The Playbook says that this type of community approach can yield the following outcomes:

  • Result in less physical, economic, environmental and social damage and impact;
  • Support a fuller, more robust recovery;
  • Preserve and enhance community functions, such as health and education;
  • Require less time and money to be spent on relief efforts and repairs;
  • Promote “co-benefits,” such as a livable, walkable community connected to the natural environment.

The guide aims to be “flexible” in that it can be tailored to different communities — large and small, rural and urban — facing different types of potential disaster scenarios.

But the common thread is the emphasis of interdependencies across different environments, including buildings and infrastructure systems providing transportation, energy, communications, water and wastewater services.

“One of the core elements throughout all the steps in the guide is the community’s value to drive the community’s vision for recovery,” Clavin said. “What do they want, God forbid, should something happen to the community and they are faced with a hazard event? What does building back better look like?”