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Part 1 of a four-part series on identifying, evaluating, and reducing preparedness risks.

As “preppers,” we also need to understand threats and risks—how to evaluate them with a valid and reliable system, and then how to reduce those risks before they hurt our family or group. That’s what this four-part series is all about.

Now, a warning…

If you like fluffy prepper articles, this series probably isn’t for you. It will require some thinking. It will require some learning. It will require a little effort.

If preparedness is simply a hobby, you may want to move on to another article. But if you’re willing to invest the time, I think you’ll learn a practical system that can help you make better preparedness decisions. It may even help save your life—or the life of someone you care about.

Moving on…

Most people think the greatest danger firefighters face is charging into burning buildings with flames at our heels and roofs ready to collapse. That’s what television and the movies would have you believe.

The reality is much different.

The greatest risks firefighters face are vehicle accidents and poor physical health. During my years in wildland firefighting, the risk of being caught in a burnover was certainly present, but traffic accidents and health issues still remained among our top concerns.

So what does that have to do with preparedness? Everything!

The biggest risks facing your family during an emergency or grid-down event may not be the ones you spend the most time worrying about.

Think about some of the ways people could become seriously injured or die during a disaster, emergency, or prolonged grid-down situation.

• Violence
• Lack of medicine or medical care
• Poor communications
• No organization or plan
• Dehydration
• Exposure
• Starvation

That’s a good starting point. Now let’s narrow it down:

• What specific events could cause those things to happen?
• More importantly, how do we reduce the chances they’ll happen to us?

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while now, you know I like proven and reliable systems. Systems reduce mistakes, bias, and emotional decision-making. When they’re used correctly, they consistently produce better results.

I’ve already introduced one of those systems—the L.I.P.S. method for setting preparedness priorities. This series introduces another.

When people talk about disasters, emergencies, or “grid-down,” they’re usually talking about broad categories of events. Now I want to get much more specific.

Every event that has the potential to harm you, your family, or your community represents a risk and potential threat. Once we identify those risks, we can decide which ones deserve our attention first and which preparedness projects will provide the greatest benefit.

That’s where we’re headed.

When most people talk about disasters, emergencies, or “grid-down,” they’re talking about broad categories of events.

Those descriptions are useful, but they don’t tell us where to focus our preparedness efforts.

Instead, we need to identify the individual risks created by those events. Once we do that, we can begin making informed decisions about where our time, effort, and money will do the most good.

There are two parts to every risk that concern us:

Probability and Severity.

Probability simply means, How likely is the event to occur?

For preparedness purposes, I expand that definition just a little.

How likely is the event to occur, and how soon?

Some events may eventually happen, but not for many years. Others could happen tomorrow morning. That matters when you’re deciding what deserves your attention today.

The second part is Severity.

Severity asks a simple question:

If the event does occur, how bad will the outcome be?

Will it be a minor inconvenience? Will it temporarily disrupt your family? Or could it result in serious injury or death?

Put those two questions together and you have a practical definition of risk:

How likely is the event to occur, how soon might it occur, and how severe will the outcome be if it does occur?

Yes, there’s a fair amount of judgment involved in answering those questions. Don’t worry about that for now. In the next article I’ll show you a practical way to make those judgments more consistent and reliable.

Now that we’ve identified the two parts of risk, we can talk about reducing it.

Fortunately, that’s the easy part.

There are only two basic ways to reduce risk.

1. Reduce the probability that the event will occur.
2. Reduce the severity of the event if it does occur.

That process is called risk mitigation.

The concept is actually very simple.

Back in the early 1960s, safety experts became concerned about the growing number of vehicle accidents, injuries, and fatalities. Their approach wasn’t to solve just one problem. They attacked it from two directions.

First, they looked for ways to reduce the probability of accidents.

They improved driver training, road design, traffic controls, mirrors, warning systems, and eventually technologies like lane-departure warnings and automatic braking.

Then they looked for ways to reduce the severity of accidents that still occurred.

Seat belts, shoulder belts, stronger door frames, crumple zones, air bags, and side-impact protection all came from that effort.

Every improvement reduced either the probability of an accident or the severity of its consequences. The result has been millions of lives saved.

Preparedness works exactly the same way.

Let’s test that statement with a simple example.

Almost every emergency, disaster, or grid-down event has the potential to disrupt your water supply.

So let’s identify the risk…water supply.

Now ask yourself two questions.

How probable is it that your normal source of drinking water could be disrupted?

If we’re talking about a prolonged grid-down event, most municipal water systems will stop functioning fairly quickly. Even during a localized emergency, bottled water often disappears from store shelves within hours.

For most situations, I’d say the probability is pretty high.

Now let’s look at the second question.

If your water supply is interrupted, how severe are the consequences?

The answer is obvious…without safe drinking water, dehydration becomes a serious problem. Left unchecked, dehydration leads to incapacitation and, eventually, death.

So how do we reduce that risk? Remember, we have two choices.

We can reduce the probability that we’ll run out of water, or we can reduce the severity if it happens.

Some ways to reduce the probability might include:

• Store an adequate supply of water.
• Have a dependable means of filtering or purifying water.
• Identify nearby water sources such as streams, ponds, lakes, or rivers.
• Drill a well or install larger water storage if your situation allows.

Notice what we’re doing.

We’re identifying a problem and then developing practical ways to reduce the chances that problem will affect our family. That’s risk mitigation.

Once you’ve identified both the probability and the severity of a risk, you’re in a much better position to decide where your preparedness time, effort, and budget should be spent.

For most families, water would rank very high on that list.

Now let’s take the next step. I’d like you to do a simple exercise.

Below is a Threat Matrix.

Don’t worry about assigning perfect numbers. There aren’t any.

Using the list of threats we discussed earlier, rate each one from 1 to 10 for both Probability and Severity as they apply to your own family today.

This isn’t a test.

It’s simply a way to begin thinking about your preparedness priorities in a more organized and systematic way.

Here’s how I currently rate those same threats for my own situation.

When those ratings are plotted on the Threat Matrix, the priorities become much easier to see.

Looking at the completed matrix, it becomes obvious where I should spend my preparedness time and money first.

For me, those priorities would be:

• Violence
• Lack of medicine or medical care
• Water supply
• Food supply
• Exposure

Now that I’ve identified my priorities, the next step is to reduce those risks.

For me, mitigating the risk of violence would probably be my first priority.

How might I do that?

• Improve my Situational Awareness (SA).
• Identify the specific threats around my home and community.
• Develop ways to reduce or avoid those threats.
• Make sure every responsible member of the family is properly trained with whatever means of self-defense we choose.
• Keep a low profile and avoid drawing unnecessary attention to our home or family.
• Avoid discussing our preparedness capabilities with other people.
• Leave the area if conditions make staying too dangerous.

Your list may look completely different.

That’s perfectly OK.

The purpose isn’t to copy someone else’s preparedness plan. The purpose is to develop one that’s appropriate for your family, your circumstances, and the risks you face.

I hope this system makes sense.

My goal isn’t to tell you what your priorities should be.

My goal is to give you a practical and repeatable way to identify the threats facing your family, evaluate the risks they present, and then develop a plan to reduce those risks.

When you approach preparedness this way, your decisions become more objective. You spend less time guessing and more time working on the things that will have the greatest impact.

In the next article we’ll take the next step.

We’ll develop practical definitions for Probability and Severity so your Threat Matrix becomes more valid, more consistent, and more useful.

Then we’ll apply the same process to larger-scale events. Once you understand that, you’ll be able to identify the specific risks created by almost any emergency or disaster—and you’ll have a much clearer picture of where your preparedness efforts should begin.

Click here to go to Part #2 →