What If.....We Starting Practising Now?

 

When a natural disaster strikes we are too busy thinking about immediate survival needs to learn new ways of doing things, the brain is simply too overwhelmed. So part of increasing our social adaptive capacity to natural disasters should be to practise doing things when we are non stressed and relaxed. 

The difference between this relatively calm La Nina summer ( with added global pandemic) and last summer is an opportunity to improve our resilience to natural disasters like Black Summer.  

Every year in late Spring we see the "Have You Got a Fire Plan?" ads from the RFS and most of us ignore them or think "yes". Although as we saw in Craig Reucassal's Big Weather series, thinking you have a Fire Plan and actually carrying it out are two different things. 

But it is not just bushfires we need to think about. Last year in some Australians got cut off for several weeks from road transport and shops, lost all communications, had no power for several weeks, almost or did run out of water in their towns and found shortages in the shops of essential items. 

My suggestion is that we practise for these (and more scenarios) by playing fun "What If Challenges" either by ourselves or with our families and friends. The idea is to choose a What If?

What If:

We had ten minutes to evacuate?

We couldn't go shopping for a week?

We had to live on only 50L of water a day?

We had no electricity for a day/week?

We had to eat only things we had grown/foraged for a day/week/month?

We couldn't buy anything in plastic?

We couldn't use the internet?

We couldn't buy new clothes?

We had to live without our stove/oven?

We had to live on Jobseeker (only "fun" if not really trying to do this)?

We had no car?

We ran out of toilet paper/toothpaste/choose your essential?

 Use recent natural disasters or future ones to create your What If. Then choose a length of time that does challenge you. It may be ten minutes, a day, a week, a month, a year. But make it short term because this is meant to be fun and a learning experience. Why not let each member of the household choose a What If to try?

Then try it.

You may not succeed but that does not really matter as long as you really tried to be creative in managing the challenge. The things that gave you trouble are the learning points, the bits of the problem that you can then go and fix so you are more resilient if it does happen.

If running out of milk was a major problem .....buy dried milk powder

If staying under 50 L of water was a problem, what caused this and how can you fix it?

What electrical devices not working were the main problem and what could you do about it?

What things do you need to plant to have enough food at all times?

What alternatives to toilet paper/ toothpaste/essential item did you try? 

What recipes do you need to learn?

What skills do you need to learn?

The human mind loves challenges and being creative so if you are not currently suffering from a lack of basic needs (some people in Australia are lacking shelter, water, food so this is NOT for them) then challenge yourself, your family and friends. 

I regularly do Buy Nothing New Month, Plastic Free July and the Ration Challenge, not because I always succeed but because of the things I learn about myself and the skills I learn.