I’m going to assume you are a prepper. If so, what are you preparing for? The end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI)? A war? A financial collapse? Some extreme weather emergency? Or simply a few days without power?
How did you decide what to prepare for? Was it reading the news? Living through a disaster and wanting to avoid that in the future? Seeing a hurricane, flood, or blizzard happen somewhere else and deciding to prepare in case it hits you?
Did you decide for logical reasons or emotional ones? Is fear driving you or science? Or a combination of the two?
Fear as a Motivator
I am a big fan of fear if it motivates you to prep more. Worry is right up there behind fear. If you are worrying about something, you might find preparing for it is a way to resolve the worry. That is why I started to prep.
Emotional reasons for prepping are certainly valid. Let’s say, for example, that you decide to prep because you fear an asteroid will strike the earth, leading to the death of humans, much like an asteroid strike likely lead to the death of dinosaurs approximately 66 million years ago. So far, so good.
The next step is deciding how to prep. This is where you need to look at logic and reason. Emotion can motivate you to prep. It should not determine how you prep.
Logic and Reason
Continuing with our asteroid example, water covers 71 percent of the earth. Logically, that means an asteroid is more than twice as likely to hit water as it is to strike land. You decide you must live in a location where a tidal wave caused by an ocean strike will not hit you, ruling out the coastal areas of the U.S. Since tsunamis can also be caused by earthquakes and, potentially, nuclear devices, this appears to be a sound strategy.
Yet if you research this topic, scientific studies and simulations say that only 1 percent of an asteroid’s power will be transmitted into a tsunami, and strikes on land are far more dangerous than strikes on water. So, should you prepare to survive an asteroid that hits the land or one that hits the ocean? Logic might lead you to conclude you should prepare for both.
Like a nuclear weapon landing on your block, your chances of surviving a direct asteroid hit are low. While you can move to a location where you are unlikely to be targeted by nukes, you can’t determine where an asteroid will strike until it’s too late to do anything about it. Thankfully, the world is a big place and the odds of an asteroid striking within 60 miles of your chosen location are extremely low. So while you may fear an asteroid crushing in your sleep, it shouldn’t keep you up at night.
The Biggest Threat
Statistically, the biggest threat of an asteroid strike is not the impact but the aftermath. Why? Because the impact will cause a crater of a discreet size and the odds are very much in your favor that you will live outside it. But the opposite is true for the after effects, They will cause problems for the entire world. Chances they will affect you may as well be 100 percent.
Large amounts of dust being thrown into the air could cause severe global cooling, not unlike nuclear winter, and multiple years without summers. Then there is the potential of increased volcanism because of the strike, or other down-stream effects. These are going to disrupt life as we know it, destroy or at least damage the supply chain, and create a lack of food which could lead to societal unrest and even war.
This analysis may convince you the best way to survive is to have a secure shelter at a high elevation, not near the coast, stocked with several years’ worth of food, with access to water, and a way to protect yourself from the societal unrest.
Hmm. That sounds an awful lot like what you would need to survive the aftermath of almost any disaster, be it an asteroid impact, an EMP attack, nuclear war, or an economic collapse. So if fear drives you to prep to survive an asteroid impact, the good news is that those preps will prepare you for many other potential disasters.
The Moral of this Story
I didn’t write this for people who fear an asteroid strike. I wrote it to reassure you that nothing is wrong with prepping because you fear something. Let fear drive you to prep, but let reason, research, and thoughtful planning drive how you prep.
Sometimes I get carried away and let the fear mongering get to me, and I reflected it in these pages. But at its crux, we are here to encourage you to prepare and share with you how to do so. So try to avoid the fear trap and focus on your preps.
