GO GO GO are you ready now?

Hmm, tricky one, there's a lot of work already gone into this area by disaster management agencies but from a management rather than personal survival angle.

Disasters are easy enough to break down

• Seriousness: How urgent is it, how fast do you need to get rolling, impending oil shortages not too bad, nuclear war very very urgent.
• Scope: How many people are affected, from one (you) to a small group to the community, to countries, continents and the world.
• Region: Is it confined to one area, can you get clear of it, how wide an area or areas are affected.
• Duration: How long will it last in its current phase, what phases come next until its finally over, each phase might have its own charcteristics.
• Type: Plague, famine, war, floods, meteor strike, etc, or combinations thereof.

Armed with that one could draw up a spreadsheet of the different skills and preparations that would give one advantages, and rate accordingly. For example

• Famine, short to mid -> food stocks *5 points per month stashed
• Famine, long -> foraging and hunting skills *20 (cumulative with food stocks above but not the reverse, ie if the famine ends before your food runs out you won't need the hunting skills)
• Flood -> Mobility *20 points

(note multiplier there as the skills and advantages will themselves be numbers say from 0 to 10).

You'd first need to categorise all of the possible survival advantages such as hunting skills, a vehicle, food and medical supplies, and then break them down further cross referencing the disaster type. Advantages like community connectons are also hard to quantify, but should be included (although they aren't of much use if you need to rabbit, as in a flood).

These caveats and special cases would make it awkward to just draw up a simple spreadsheet, you'd need one for each disaster type at least, and even then, whew. Flood, region local, short term, community becomes valuable. Flood, region national, long term, maybe not so much. Doesn't mean that initially you won't gain advantages with making your ark though. Noah would have had a community score of zero.

So you'd come out with a number at the end of the process, rating your ability to survive in various situations. Surprise events like a plane crash could be simulated by putting your "tools and tech" score to zero or one, even if it might ordinarily be 8 or 9. Similarly "environmental protection - desert" is worth nothing above the arctic circle.

I don't know what the scale would end up looking like, probably anything over 200 and you're golden, but you could potentially assign a percentage chance of survival in each situation as the numbers shake out. 200 points for this disaster type and you get 95% survival chances.

Its doable but there's a bit of work in it! I don't think such a project has ever been attempted before however, so it would be unique and very interesting to survivalists and preppers everywhere, not to mention a useful tool. What you really want at the end of the day is a script where one can input the various advantages one has and choose the type of disaster to get a rating, easy enough to do once the data has been compiled.

We'll call it the BB scale!

bonniebede wrote: »

0 (you're definitely going down)
10 (what! is tesco's shut?)
20 (armchair prepper)
30 (Practising)
40 (have a few bits put by just in case)
50 (There's no such thing as too many knives)
60 (Did a bushcraft weekend)
70 (what do you mean twenty bags of flour seems excessive?)
80 (please don't weed the garden, we need all the food we can get)
90 (regularly practising, many skills)
100 (everybody wants to be your best friend)

I think I'd get a 5 right now!
Decided to take a portion of my salary this month and get a large supply of tinned/dried food this week. That should bring me to 15