Our Reluctance to "Be Prepared"

Boy Scouts have been familiar with the motto, "Be Prepared" for darn near a century. Americans have been told to be prepared for twice as long. Basic survival necessitates that we be prepared, yet shockingly (but not surprisingly) - most Americans are not.

We spend money on houses we can't afford, more cars than we need, junk food, expensive electronics, pedicures, entertainment, pharmaceuticals, self-help and cable TV pay-per-view movies. So, why can't we spend a few hundred bucks (over time) to set aside basic food supplies and water?

We have been warned, and warned again. There have been massive tsunamis, earthquakes and floods everywhere in the world. Then, last year, we got a serious warning as one of our great cities was utterly destroyed by a hurricane. Yet, we still say, "all is well!" No one thinks it can happen to them.

From a spiritual perspective, we have been warned by a Prophet of God. From a literal perspective, God Himself has warned us in the form of these calamities. If we continue to ignore all of these warnings we have witnessed - we only sow the seeds of our own destruction. PREPARE NOW!!

For a sad commentary on our laziness in being prepared, here are some excerpts from a TIME article that was released today:

Historically, humans get serious about avoiding disasters only after one has just smacked them across the face. Well, then, by that logic, 2006 should have been a breakthrough year for rational behavior. With the memory of 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, still fresh in their minds, Americans watched Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U.S. history, on live TV. Anyone who didn't know it before should have learned that bad things can happen. And they are made much worse by our own lack of ambition--our willful blindness to risk as much as our reluctance to work together before everything goes to hell.

[...]

In the 12 months since Katrina, the rest of the U.S. has not proved to be a quicker study than the Gulf Coast. There is still no federal law requiring state and local officials to plan for the evacuation of the sick, elderly, disabled or poor. But in the past few months, both houses of Congress triumphantly passed bills that require locals to plan for the evacuation of pets.

[...]

But it's not just bureaucrats who are unprepared for calamity. Regular people are even less likely to plan ahead. In this month's TIME poll, about half of those surveyed said they had personally experienced a natural disaster or public emergency. But only 16% said they were "very well prepared" for the next one. Of the rest, about half explained their lack of preparedness by saying they don't live in a high-risk area.

In fact, 91% of Americans live in places at a moderate-to-high risk of earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, high-wind damage or terrorism, according to an estimate calculated for TIME by the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. But Americans have a tendency to be die-hard optimists, literally. It is part of what makes the country great--and vincible. "There are four stages of denial," says Eric Holdeman, director of emergency management for Seattle's King County, which faces a significant earthquake threat. "One is, it won't happen. Two is, if it does happen, it won't happen to me. Three: if it does happen to me, it won't be that bad. And four: if it happens to me and it's bad, there's nothing I can do to stop it anyway."