Step Sixteen: Create Your Preparedness Plan - How to Make a Preparedness Plan that Works

“I am prepared for the worst but hope for the best”
Benjamin Disraeli
(British Prime Minister & novelist 1804-1881)

Step Sixteen: Create Your Preparedness Plan

Now that all the information you need to develop a viable and workable plan has been collected – it is time to formalize the plan and put it into writing.

I have found the outline format, with each Roman numeral being its own page to be the most effective and easiest to keep up to date without rewriting the plan for each change.

Have a section in your Documentation Book for your plan. In this section you should have:

• Moderated Crisis List
• Per Crisis Needs Lists
• Needs Acquire List
• Your Plan

Your plan should include and or point to:

• What you need to do (process and procedure) for each Need on your Per Crisis Needs Lists, with regards to the Scope and Duration of the crisis
• Retreat Locations, Routes & Rendezvous, Secret Communication Signals
• Goods or supplies, along with Knowledge and Skills that you have and need to Acquire to survive the longest duration event on your Crisis List
• A Budget Plan to procure the goods, knowledge and skills you lack.
• A readily accessible place to organize and store your goods
• A Practice Drill Schedule; including being mobile to get to your retreat, Sheltering in Place and Bug-Out/Evacuation or going to your secondary retreat
• Go-Bags and Important Documentation Book information/references for getting your life back and assisting in the worst case mobility issues.
• How and when to inform family and friends of your situation (communications)

First create your plans (process and procedure) for your Crisis Drill mobility issues – getting to your retreat and having to vacate your retreat.

Next take a good long look at your Per Crisis Needs Lists and its Repeated Items. These will be things like food, water, first aid, safety/defense, cooking¸ sanitation, communications and the like. These Roman numerals will be the process and procedure behind all these needs that repeat themselves on each crisis in your Per Crisis Needs Lists (or just shy of all the lists).

Then group the remaining repeated needs based on how many times they repeat themselves - from most frequent to least frequent. Each of your following Roman numerals will be these process and procedures for each of these needs.

Lastly, out of the remaining needs that are not repeated, look at the crisis they pertain to. Most likely these are crisis specific needs. If this is the case use the crisis priority to determine the sequence of Roman numerals and the process and procedures for each of these items.

As an example let’s say that on your Crisis List (somewhere) you have the following:

• Citywide power outage caused by a severe snow/ice storm that lasts 5 days.
• There is a solar storm (CME) that takes out electricity and fries all digital devices, globally for a long duration.
• There is a drinking water shortage with a power outage, city wide due to a flood for 3 days.
• There is an attack to the U.S. by EMP blasts that takes out electricity and fries all digital devices, nationally to internationally.

All four of these crises have one common factor – no electricity for more than 24 hours. The Needs to address this factor are the same. So your plan would have a Roman numeral for No electricity with a subset for what to do if all digital devices are fried (the less frequent repeats to no electricity).

IV. No Electricity
1. No Electricity Only
a. Generator & fuel for 3 days
b. Rechargeable batteries with solar recharger
c. Hand crank and or battery powered lights, radio and the like.
d. Charcoal or propane for a grill with enough fuel for 5 days.
2. No Electricity CME/EMP particulars
a. Faraday cages for radios and other necessary digital electrical equipment

The following is an example of the Doe Family Preparedness Plan, minus the actual process and procedure behind all the needs.

The Doe Family Preparedness Plan

I. Crisis Drills (at least twice a year)
a. Mobility to retreat
b. Mobility from retreat (evacuation)
II. Mobility (go bags come into play here):
a. To Retreat
b. From Retreat (evacuation)
III. Shelter In Place
a. Personal
i. Food & Water
1. Cooking & Cleaning
2. Gardening
3. Food Preservation/Storage
ii. Defense/Security
1. Preventative
a. Outer Perimeter
i. Non-lethal
ii. Lethal
b. Inner Perimeter
i. Non-lethal
ii. Lethal
2. Defensive
a. Non-lethal
b. Lethal
3. Offensive
a. Non-lethal
b. Lethal
iii. Communications
iv. Medical/Dental
v. Bedding
vi. Heat/Cooling
1. For Shelter
2. Personal (clothing)
vii. Sanitation
b. Block/Group
i. Food & Water
1. Cooking & Cleaning
2. Gardening
3. Food Preservation/Storage
ii. Defense/Security
1. Preventative
a. Outer Perimeter
i. Non-lethal
ii. Lethal
b. Inner Perimeter
i. Non-lethal
ii. Lethal
2. Defensive
a. Non-lethal
b. Lethal
3. Offensive
a. Non-lethal
b. Lethal
iii. Communications
iv. Medical/Dental
v. Bedding
vi. Heat/Cooling
1. For Shelter
2. Personal (clothing)
vii. Sanitation
IV. Personal Crisis
a. House Fire
i. Home
ii. Not home
b. Crime
i. At house when home
ii. At house when not home
iii. When out and about
c. Illness or Injury
i. to me
ii. Illness/Injury or Death in family
d. Personal economic
i. Loss of income
ii. Law suit
V. Loss of water
a. Drought
b. Utility
VI. Severe weather
VII. Space weather
a. CME
b. Asteroid or Comet
VIII. Loss of electricity (utility)
a. 1 day or less
b. More than 1 day
c. Long term
IX. Hyperinflation
a. National
b. Global
X. Civilization collapse
a. State
b. National
c. International
XI. Public Health Hazard
a. Local
i. Natural
ii. Man-Made
b. State
i. Natural
ii. Man-Made
c. National
i. Natural
ii. Man-Made
d. International
i. Natural
ii. Man-Made
XII. Terrorist Attack
a. Domestic
b. Foreign
XIII. War
a. Domestic
b. Foreign
c. Multi-National

Resources to assist with building your Plans: (Note: These workbooks will contain worksheets for collecting the information presented in this seminar; use whichever format you desire.) Check out http://nmurbanhomesteader.blogspot.com/ & http://www.scribd.com/TNTCrazyLady for links to the other Homesteading, Preparedness & Survival web sites, magazines and downloads.

The two most detailed, yet general “build your plan” documents I have found are: Home Emergency Preparedness Workbook by Pandion-LLC. Although I can’t seem to find the original web site I have uploaded the PDF to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/27403530/Home-Emergency-Preparedness-Workbook-Pandion-LLC-15798502 and the 26 Weeks to Emergency Preparedness Workbook by Cowichan Valley of British Columbia, Canada found at: http://www.cvrd.bc.ca/documents/Public%20Safety%20Services/Emergency%20Preparedness/CVEPWorkbook.PDF
A great “all purpose” get started sample plan that includes your pets (just substitute your pet for equine) can be downloaded from: http://www.thehorse.com/pdf/emergency/emergency.pdf
A great guidebook called: How to Prepare for Any Disaster Your Easy Step-by-Step Preparedness Guide can be downloaded for free by supplying your email address @ http://www.areyouprepared.com/Download-Disaster-Guidebook-s/158.htm
For a “Down’n’Dirty” Quickie Checklist for a Making a Plan and accumulating needed information: PDF Format: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/fsme/docs/emergencyplanpdf.pdf or http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/getting-started/ then select the Excel version.
How to Become a Prepper http://www.scribd.com/doc/26563894/How-to-Become-a-Prepper
Prepping for Animals, Pets & Livestock http://www.scribd.com/doc/31791013/Prepping-for-Animals-Pets-and-Livestock
Ready, Set, Go! - 24 Weeks of Crisis Supply Procurement http://www.scribd.com/doc/33609714/Ready-Set-Go-24-Weeks-of-Crisis-Supply-Procurement
Another good starter is the Emergency Preparedness Checklist at: http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/babystep-checklists/ or http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/babystep-checklists/ for BabyStep Checklist Email Program – Biweekly emails sent to you with detailed checklists to walk you through our BabySteps in a one year FREE program. You will need to sign up for the free email checklists.

Next we will discuss the “and not go broke“ part …

Keep On Preppin'

TNT

PS - Sorry about missing last week