The Anatomy of a Disruption. When the SHTF - Paint-by-Numbers

Introduction

What does it mean when people into preparedness say the "Shit's hit the fan?" or SHTF? In short it means a disruptive event has occurred that has an explicit impact on an affected populace (usually including themselves). For the purposes of this blog post we'll focus on the attributes and characteristics of what a disruptive event means and focus only on said-event. I'll talk immediate and long term effects in subsequent blog posts.

Characteristics

We start at a state of normalcy; going about our daily lives as all is well. We get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, kiss our spouse, head to bed and wake up the next morning to do the same thing. Taxes get paid, groceries get bought, vacations are taken. There's birth, death, and everything in between as life rolls on for us human beings. 

And then something happens to disrupt this flow. It can be a small event affecting an individual, such as a cancer diagnosis or loss of employment, or a global event which affects everybody on the planet, such as a meteor strike or a pandemic. Such a disruptive event can be broken down into variables, parameters, or characteristics. By doing so we can, in turn, be better prepared for such an event by defining the disruption and detailing what to expect. We'll set the stage by laying out the following characteristics of an event;

1. Scope; this defines the number of humans affected by the event, from individual to global and everything in between.
2. Area of effect; based on geographical information, what area does the event effect? A tornado, for instance, will not affect an area nearly as broad as a hurricane.
3. Length of Time Occurring; A car wreck occurs within seconds, an earthquake can last for minutes, a volcano can erupt for days, and a pandemic can last for years. This characteristic defines how long the disruptive event actually lasts.
4. Human Casualty Impact; defines the level of adversity at a human casualty level, from minor bumps and bruises to fatalities. A car wreck may only cause those affected some whiplash and bruising, where-as a dirty-bomb explosion would result in many deaths and injuries including radiological and explosive.
5. Environmental Impact; measures the affects of the disruption on the natural environment, including plant and animal life, rivers, streams, etc. This can include wide-spread flooding, the death of game animals in a wide-spread area, or pollution of ground water.

Examples

We can use some examples to put all these characteristics into clearer definition. Let's take a typical family of four; Husband, wife, teenage daughter and school age son and use them as a base-line. Our family lives in a typical suburb on the outskirts of a major city. Things are going well until...

Unemployment

The scope of the event will affect all four members of the family, with the greatest impact, at least psychologically, being the husband or wife who lost the job. The area of effect will, again, be the family, and the length of time occurring (the time it takes for the family member to find a new job with comparable salary and benefits) will be dependent on a host of factors such as marketability and the job market itself. The human casualty impact would be minimal and, likely, limited to a psychological level There's rarely physical injury during job loss. The fear and unknowing of a job loss has a serious rippling affect. Lastly, environmental impact may be nil, here.

Tornado Outbreak

A major tornado outbreak rolls through the region affecting the scope of our little family as well as all of their friends and other family members within a 10 mile radius of them (area of effect). The county is hit by 3 tornados ranging in level from EF1 to EF2 with the last touchdown occurring 15 minutes prior to the first touch-down. In all, the tornados were on the ground for just under 30 minutes. The human casualty impact is a total of 5 deaths (none including our sample family) and 123 injuries (the son was injured crawling over debris trying to find the family cat). Due to the number of localized injuries, the near-by hospital is quickly overwhelmed with emergency room submissions. The immediate environmental impact includes a total of 12 roads blocked or made impassible from debris, localized flash flooding which ends up polluting local water supplies, and damage to a local chemical processing plant that leads to a potential environmental hazard. 

Electromagnetic Pulse Caused by Nuclear Detonation

An enemy of our country has done it; they've detonated a nuclear weapon in the stratosphere which rippled an electromagnetic pulse across the heart of America, effecting our sample family directly. Millions are directly affected by the EMP. Although smaller electronics still function, larger grid-structures are shorted by the pulse, including millions of transformers and cellular communication towers across the U.S. heartland, so many of those smaller electronics have no network to connect to. The EMP occurred at the speed of light as soon as the high-altitude device was detonated. The human casualty impact was minimal with car crashes of late-model vehicles having extreme dependencies on electronic devices being the largest immediate source of casualties. The second largest cause of casualties came within three hours after the detonation as civilians start to realize what has occurred with looting and some panic events occurring at that time. The environmental and safety controls at the local chemical processing plant are also all affected by the pulse and immediately shut down. Within another two hours some of the cooling-reliant storage facilities fail and start slowly leaking toxic fumes and vapor into the local environment, becoming airborne with the heavier vapors coating the soil, coalescing, and seeping into the ground water from there. Evacuation from the city is near-impossible as vehicles that are not as dependent on electronics get stuck behind or around those that are, causing massive traffic jams throughout the local roadways, though refugees likely have no where else to go anyway.

Putting it All Together

Each one of these examples is possible in varying degrees of likelihood, and each example would require it's own level of preparedness to mitigate. Unemployment can be offset by a solid savings account with 6-months or more of funding. A good storm-shelter stocked with medical supplies and a fore-thought escape route are excellent and base-line preparations against tornados. An older vehicle (or motorcycle or bicycle) and a bug out location (again with a well-thought out escape route), along with 6-months of food, water, and medical supplies would be invaluable preparations against an EMP. Of course these lists of preparations are only beginning points and examples, but they highlight the need to define characteristics of disasters in order to prepare for them. 

Regardless of what you're preparing for I invite you to sit down and sketch some of these characteristics out. What would the characteristics of (another?) pandemic look like?  How would they differ from the characteristics of a financial recession or depression should one hit our country? Laying out these characteristics can help define or refine your preparedness plan and level set the degrees of preparedness you will want to shoot for.

Peace.