Robert Richardson - The Ultimate Situational Survival Guide: Self-Reliance Strategies for a Dangerous World

Living Ready BOOKS
IOLA, WISCONSIN
www.LivingReadyOnline.com

	PART ONE: Situational Awareness: Prepare to Survive
	PART TWO: Surviving Natural Disasters
	PART THREE: Surviving Crime and Violent Situations
	PART FOUR: Surviving Man-Made Disasters, Threats, and Terrorism
	PART FIVE: Surviving Financial and Economic Threats

It may sound harsh, but the reality of most crisis situations is that youre going to have to be your own first responder. When disaster hits, or when confronted with an unexpected threat, theres a very good chance youre going to have to survive on your own with only the knowledge and training you possess. With that in mind, how prepared are you to survive a real-life crisis situation, or deal with the chaos that will ensue during the aftermath of a catastrophe?

• Do you have a detailed plan in place to deal with disasters or crisis situations?
• How long could you last without essential services like water, power and sanitation?
• Do you know what the most likely threats are to your safety based on your geographic location or lifestyle?

The main purpose of this book is to motivate you to take action. To motivate you to put the right plans in place to see you through a crisis and ensure your ability to protect yourself and your family from a wide range of very real threats and disasters. By implementing the plans and strategies in this book, you will be able to survive everything from short-term natural disasters to long-term economic problems, breakdowns in society and social unrest, and infrastructure failures or disasters.

This is not another Wilderness Survival Manual; this book is your guide to surviving real-life 21st century threats. These are the threats you are likely to facethe kind of threats you need to start preparing for if you want to survive.

Hopefully you are willing to do whatever it takes. That being said, you need to have a plan of action. This book will lay the groundwork for that plan and will help you build a rock solid preparedness foundation. Im not going to lie to youit will take some work on your part. But I believe you owe it to yourself and those you love to take a serious look at the concepts detailed in this book.

Despite what you may have seen on so-called Reality TV survival shows, preparedness is more than just guns, gear, and bunkers full of food. Survival has nothing to do with some guy running through the wilderness performing a bunch of stupid stunts. Living through actual disasters, dealing with real-life threats, and protecting yourself from the dangers that are out there requires you to adopt a survival mindset and to develop your situational awareness.

In this section I will help you

• identify what threats are out there, and help you spot them before they can do you harm.
• manage your exposure to threats, access your vulnerability, and help you do everything possible to completely avoid a catastrophe.
• lay out a detailed step-by-step plan for surviving crisis situations, including actions to take for surving during the aftermath.

Do you know what youre preparing for? It may sound like an odd question, but most people really dont have a clue.

To begin with, you need to understand the exact types of disasters and threats youre going to face. This may sound a little simplistic, but not all disasters are created equal. What works in one situation, or in one area of the world, may not work when you factor in specific location-based threats.

While some of the supplies, techniques, and skills you need to survive may overlap, to be truly prepared for any situation you need to know exactly what type of disasters youre preparing for and what problems youll most likely encounter as a result of that specific disaster.

In later chapters I will discuss how to identify and prepare for disaster-specific problems. But to get the most out of this book, and to be prepared for the specific threats that will most likely affect you, youre going to have to do a little work.

That work starts with identifying the most likely threats youll face based on your geographical location, your lifestyle, and a number of other factors that will be unique to your specific situation. The following section will help you get started with your preparedness planning.

A threat assessment helps you visualize what threats youll face, scrutinize known risks related to the threat, strategically evaluate your response, and helps you start to identify the specific steps you need to take to stay safe. Its going to help you protect the people you love from harm.

There are three primary objectives when performing a threat assessment:

1. Identify the threat.
2. Assess what needs to be protected.
3. Manage your exposure to the threat.

When performing your threat assessment, keep the following things in mind:

• Who/what needs to be protected when disaster strikes?
• Who/what are the most likely threats you will face based on historical data?
• What can be done to minimize your exposure to each of the threats?
• What are your vulnerabilities and how can you manage or get rid of them?

The first step in analyzing your overall preparedness is to identify the most likely threats youll face based on where you live, your lifestyle, and historical trends.

Make a realistic list of what the most likely threats are and how the threats will affect you should you face them. This should be a location-specific list; if you live in the Mojave Desert, hurricanes probably shouldnt be on the list. That being said, when traveling to a new area on vacation, I always do a mini threat assessment before leaving.

Under each threat, make a list of your vulnerabilities based on that specific threat. What problems do you foresee happening when the threat strikes? Think about disaster-specific threats as well as threats that may come from how people react to the disaster.

Do you or anyone in your family have any personal considerations that could be exacerbated due to each of the identified threats? These can include medical conditions, age-related limitations, mobility issues,or specific dietary needs that might be hard to meet during a disaster.