Survive and Thrive After Disaster
"IT has not happened, does not mean IT will not happen. If the fire department told you your untrimmed weeds were a fire hazard - they were not wrong because your house has not yet burned down." - Allan Wallace
The phoenix bird presents a good example of how we prepare for disaster. We build a comfortable and sweet smelling nest - then wait for the inevitable. If we rise from the ashes, we start again with nothing.
We have expectations based on our knowledge, history, and weak science. Our projections of the future are usually a predictably straight line comfortably reinforced by bell shaped curves.
Life is not reasonable.
Unforeseen catastrophes have happened before, they will happen again. If you are prepared, you can both survive and thrive when they occur.
Books about change that will change your world.
It is not what you are looking at that deserves worry - it probably won't happen. It will be the uninvited intruder that will disrupt normal events.
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The unthinkable extremes happen far more often than expected. Read Taleb's interesting books to gain understanding.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $17.79 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $26.95
Wonder Beasts: Tales and Lore of the Phoenix, the Griffin, the Unicorn, and the Dragon
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $28.80 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $32.00
The Journey: Living by Faith in an Uncertain World
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $24.99 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $24.99
Pompeii: The Day a City Died
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $10.36 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $12.95
When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $19.95
Understanding Change
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
The future is not obligated to be reasonable. Even as we see huge change everywhere around us we expect to keep living much as we have been living.There is only one thing we know for sure - what we now know will someday change dramatically; and then some later day it will happen again.
The phoenix bird of mythology anticipated and prepared for change. Knowing his life span had been expended he created a nest of Cinnamon sticks and spices, settled down, and lit it on fire - fanning the flames higher with his wings. When all was consumed a new phoenix was born from the ashes - transformational change from disaster.
We can also anticipate change even if we do not know its exact nature. When that change occurs we can be prepared to create a new reality starting from the ashes of the lost.
Worry is not a solution. Projections and educated guesses about vicious cycles of calamity or virtuous cycles of unending progress are equally suspect. If the past is any guide, all of the guesses and intelligent prognostications will be hugely wrong. In essence, virtually everyone is always looking in the wrong direction.
The big changes that are coming will arrive unexpected by everyone but a few with a lucky guess. No one will have paid much attention to those few until after an event - then they will be afforded far too much attention.
It will not be just one event and then everything will return to normal, there will be other major disruptions, equally unforeseen.
Bastiat Free University
BFU is causing and embracing major change in education.
Bastiat Free University offers internationally accessible, affordable, and actionable student-directed learning to visionaries and entrepreneurs.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.
Shakespeare
Join us in the adventure -- bring your most audacious dreams.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byGet at least as prepared for disaster as you would for a vacation.
Think of what you might need it trapped by a natural disaster for several weeks.
Here are a few items for your home; and to add to that emergency backpack in your home, office, and cars. Click on these pictures and you will find links to other, similar products at varying prices.
Coleman Survival Kit
Amazon Price: $17.89 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $39.99
medibag 4petz First Aid Kit
Amazon Price: $17.57 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $19.99
55 Gallon Water Barrel
Amazon Price: $89.95 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price:
Mainstay Water Packets. Case of 60. 4.224 Ounces (125 ml)
Amazon Price: $25.29 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price:
Sure-Pak 12 Military Ready To Eat Complete Meals
Amazon Price: $100.00 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price:
Be Prepared
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. " - Helen Keller
Take normal precautions, they may be appropriate.But the greatest precaution is personal - learn to adapt to the unexpected. Make yourself a generalist, not a specialist. Discover new ideas, explore new territories, experience different lifestyles. Do not over expose or over commit yourself to one scenario.
The direction of the future is subject to guesses, but is intrinsically unknowable. At best we can master what is available while remaining adaptable to sudden change.
Suppose you have just discovered hang gliding, and you love it. You read books and magazines, you bookmark good hang gliding blogs, and you hang out with experienced hang gliders; listening intently and asking questions. This is natural learning.
The types of books you read may quickly expand as your knowledge of the field expands. You study engineering, aeronautics, fabric types and dyes, geography, and emergency medical procedures. You are quickly becoming a renaissance person, your ever expanding knowledge keeps pulling you into new fields of endeavor and contemplation.
You specific passion guides you to explore diverse knowledge, and because learning is driven by your own desire, you retain this knowledge.
Of even greater significance is the probability your passion of the moment will lead you to your life's passion as you explore new areas of knowledge. In our example you might discover you love emergency medicine, particularly relating to sports.
You have discovered self-directed, interest-based learning; the most efficient learning is always student initiated.
From what you now understand of yourself you can consider becoming a sports trainer, an EMT, and perhaps an emergency room nurse or doctor. As you read and talk to those in the field you will find other options.
Options you would probably never find sitting in a class room. Now you can add specific classes if they will help define your new sports medicine goals or move you toward goal completion.
Find a passion and drill into it with reading and inter-personal research. You may just find your life's passion - the one that will provide meaning to your life. You can live your own life;
or you could just survive formal school and take the first reasonable job offered
Enough Dire Predictions Already
Where is the silver lining to this cloud of reality?
Get prepared to move.
Keep your head down during the conflagration.
Get up quickly and see where to start something new and better.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and Confusión de Confusiones (A Marketplace Book)
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $24.95
The Encyclopedia of Country Living: An Old Fashioned Recipe Book (Encyclopedia of Country Living)
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $29.95
The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $25.00
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $13.57 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $19.95
develop bold, creative, even audacious dreams
Join Us In The Adventure - Bring Your Dreams
Goals are nice, for many the setting of goals and achieving them is an important part of their success. But goals are safe. We set them with an eye firmly fixed on the sequentially achievable, and then initiate a well developed path to their completion.Dreams are different, and they are not achieved by sequential and controlled implementation. Dreams are discovered when we extend our passions beyond current reality and imagine the best possible outcome. We may not be able to achieve our dream alone, but planning the achievement is not the immediate concern of a dream - altering reality is.
Life is not linear or reasonable.
Our lives and our goals seem to flow from step to step, but it is the huge leaps to the side that surprise and define our future. These massive dislocations of normal activity can be perceived as vicious or as virtuous - but it is dreamers that will discover a new path starting at a disruptions door.
Those who only have goals will likely find their plans destroyed by these occasional new realities, life itself may be destroyed. But those that dream and survive will quickly discover opportunities that others might not see for decades. Be prepared.
There will be thousands of "unforeseen circumstances" that will effect our lives over the next year. Those that base their plans on projections of the future will have plenty of excuses why their plans did not work. To the dreamer, each unforeseen circumstance is an opportunity amplified by the learning they have accumulated around their passions.
* Discover your passions.
* Discover the deep pleasures of researching every aspect of your passions.
* Dream of the best possible, or impossible, implementation of passions.
Work, set goals, achieve - and be prepared for the unexpected to provide the opportunity you need to move confidently in the direction of your outrageous dreams.
Adaptability is required, change is upon you, how are you preparing?
Large stately trees can destroyed in any fierce storm.
I don't know what it will be, but it will be major and it will effect you. I could be like an economist "If you can't guess right - guess often." Then I could point back to one one right guess and say "I told you so."
Instead of guessing - what are you doing to become pliable like the willow for the coming winds of adversity?
|
carrieokier
Very good points. Thanks for the info! 5* Posted May 05, 2008 |
Preparation for Sudden Change
Like the Boy Scouts say; be prepared.
Occasionally the unexpected happens.
Sometimes it is severe.
For yourself; - have a plan and an emergency kit wherever you spend a lot of time. In your car, at the office or store, at your second home if you have one.
For your family; - practice or at least talk about home emergencies. Plan for them and have a survival kit. Have an out of state or out of country contact everyone in the effected area can call with a code-4 report.
For your business; - have a plan if nothing in the home office will be available, ever. Plan for the employees and have supplies available. Have dispersed back up systems to pick up the load if computers and shipping are not available, or if data has been destroyed. Look at your insurance.
Economists exist in a fairy tale world where things change in a smooth linear fashion.
Life is not linear.
Be prepared when life suddenly goes parabolic. Sudden and wonderful or sudden and catastrophic events occur far more frequently then our minds and econometric models predict.
Analyze all the ways of escape and survival if things go horribly wrong. Take a guess at what could happen and prepare for it. The events themselves will probably be different than expected.
Expect it.
Opportunity from Chaos
How can you establish new ways of thinking that will allow you not only to survive, but to thrive.
These lenses can help you get your mind in order.-
How To Build Wealth - creating and preserving wealth
-
1) Most investors follow similar investment advice. 2) Most advisers live well from the advise and management they provide. 3) Most investors will be greatly disappointed even before they reach retirement. There is a better way to plan for your fu...
-
Going PT, A Permanent Tourist Lifestyle
-
As a permanent tourist you can usually live and travel in better style and for less money than it costs to remain where you are. You can also chose to enjoy places that encourage the life style you have always wanted to live. As a PT, a Perpetua...
-
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - revealing randomness
-
Nassim Nicholas Taleb exposes the myths of certainty that lurk in the darkness of finance, living, and economics. And most important - he does it without dragging you through math based models. Most professors handle uncertainty by pretending to be...
-
Comparison of College Style
-
A change is coming in higher education. About time! We will first look at the marketed purpose for a college education, and contrast that with the apparent real agenda of the education industry. Second we will allow you to examine a couple of upsta...
-
Anticipating Change
-
Imagine standing at a crossroads, and guessing at what new adventures lie ahead. The world is at a crossroads, you are in charge, what you do now can influence the future of the world. It does not matter that you are but one person, individuals have...
