Rehearsing Disaster?

Here is a conundrum. The boyscout motto is "Be prepared." To most of us that means to anticipate results that may happen and have a plan of action. In Los Angeles we are always told to be prepared for the "big one". To anyone who's mind is not in the gutter that means a big earthquake. Geologists insist that we live on borrowed time from the San Andreas fault daily. I have been in LA for 32 years and have experienced only one major earthquake. It was enough to let me know tectonic playfulness is not a fun ride, and although not an experience I would want to repeat.. for us it was not a biblical disaster.

But here is the conundrum "being prepared" conjures for me. It amounts to rehearsing a disaster before it happens. Time is taken out of the good times to rehearse some really bad times. Aren't we then just experiencing the bad times twice instead of once? You really can't rehearse something that doesn't happen on cue, so at best it becomes an imaginative romp.

Disaster training can give you a sense of what might happen but it is only a semi educated guess. On some level the more thought you put into something the more likely it is to become a belief which often becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

I remember the generally accepted plan in case of an earthquake was to get under a doorway . I spent time coaching the kids to run to the nearest doorway and ride it out. After examination of real earthquakes and the "survival zones" scientists have found that a doorway is maybe the worst place to be. Now we are encouraged to lay beside a bed or large table. The falling debris will angle up on the big object and form a triangulated area of protection space between the object and the floor. So... preparing for a disaster by running to a doorway, is actually very wrong. Some wasted prep time there.

I was also told to have flashlights around for the quake, because the electricity would go out and we would need them. I kept flashlights in every possible place, in the night stand, the kitchen drawer, under the bed... I had lots of flashlights. During the Northridge quake the reality of the event did not go as planned. You see the nightstand turned over and we couldn't get to the drawer, the kitchen was buried in about three feet of broken glass, and the flashlight under the bed ended up rolling to a corner of the bedroom we couldn't see until the lights came back on.

So here is the deal. Enjoy the NOW. Don't be stupid and play with matches while filling up your gas tank, but don't make your happy times miserable by planning on disaster. If you find you are in a situation that is suddenly dangerous, be in the now and figure out the situation that is happening. It most probably will not be, in any way, how you planned it. Our ancestors survived by dealing with a bad situation as it happened, using their wits and the intelligence they had at the moment. Human instincts are pretty good and probably will kick in naturally. That way if you do have to go through some bad times, you only have to experience it once.

As you were,
Jay