Hello my friend and welcome back to another post. I recently took a course on preparedness to improve my ability to stay prepared at all times. What I learned was so important that I decided to share it with you in today’s post, so grab a cup of coffee and have a seat while we visit.
I was required to take a few ICS classes at work because the University is actually a part of the state and must meet certain requirements on training the staff receives. Because I have volunteered to help with the Emergency Operations Center for local emergencies, I needed to take the course. As it turns out it was very educational in that it not only help me understand how FEMA and the DHS would operate in a National Emergency but also what their chain of command was. Like I said, it was very educational as well. IF you are interested in taking any of the free courses on-line, I will put the information for the ones I took at the bottom of this post for you. (Yes, these are from FEMA, but the more you know about them, the better prepared you can be!)
I really like their preparedness methodology and think it would help any Prepper or prepping group to follow their example. Let’s go over what they believe is the best way to prepare for an emergency:
The first step is to plan for an Emergency by creating several scenarios that could happen and based on their likelihood of occurring, plan out just what you would need and how you should react to each. Once you have a plan of action, you will need to start staging the supplies that you will need to carry out your plan. The next step is to train for what you will need to do to succeed. Learn the skills it will require and practice them over and over.
The next step is to do exercises where you work as a group and perform as one unit. This is where you will see that things that you thought you understood do not always work the way that you thought you did. Trust me on this, actually getting out and working as a team will make a world of difference in your performance when the time comes. Once you have done this, you will need to sit down and evaluate everyone’s performances in an honest and disciplined way. Don’t get upset if you or anyone else screwed up or something didn’t work the way you thought it should. The key here is to learn and figure out how to correct it in upcoming exercises. You see, you can’t fix what you don’t know is broken and that is the whole point of doing the exercises, to figure out what is broken. Evaluate and improve should be your constant objective. Plan, Practice, Train, Exercise, and Improve should be your constant goal when preparing to survive SHTF. When you have a plan to improve how you perform, start planning all over again and look for other ways to do things better. It’s a never-ending cycle and one all good Preppers live by. It will be the difference between the Preppers that will survive and those that won’t. It is just that important. Here is a graphic for you to show what I am talking about:
Never stop preparing and training, whether you are part of a group or just a single individual. Well I guess that is it for today and I hope you have enjoyed this post. Until next time, stay safe, stay strong and stay prepared!
-The Sargent-
LINKS to independent study:
IS-100.b; Introduction to Incident Command System
https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-100.b
IS-200.b; ICS for Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents
http://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-200.b
You study the FREE courses, take the Final Exam. The exam can be taken as many times as it takes to pass. You can print your certificate!
