Winter is definitely approaching. The evenings and mornings are cold, and the days, even the sunny ones, are getting cooler. Which always reminds me of this:
It is getting nigh upon time to break out the Filson.
In addition to getting the wool outta storage, it’s also time to make sure all the Plan B gear is ready to roll… alternate heat sources, generator ready, fuel laid in, etc, etc. We seldom get power failures here in town that last more than a couple hours, but there’s always the chance that a Black Swan Swan Of Color event will come along and throw a curve ball that no one expected. ( / North Carolina has entered the chat ).
Every region has it’s own particular set of threat potential. Prepping for a hurricane in Iowa makes about as much sense as prepping for wildfire in Manhattan or a 7.0 earthquake in Nebraska. Statistically, the odds are close to zero. (But…never actually zero.)
But even then, stuff comes out of nowhere that virtually no one foresaw. No one in Manhattan thought they’d ever have to walk off the island because things were shut down on 9/11. I’m sure the folks in Hawaii never thought there’d be a wildfire that turned parts of Maui into a moonscape. And there’s equally as unprecedented and unexpected stuff still out there. We prepare against the likely but sometimes life throws a curve ball that no one could have reasonably expected.
All of these things do have common denominators, though…various forms of infrastructure failure, transport and mobility problems, supply disruptions, etc. Maybe you can’t prepare for every event, but you can prepare for the consequences that they all have in common.
It’s easy to get complacent when it comes to preparedness. You get comfy…cocky even. And then something happens that shocks you back to the mindset that “maybe I’m not as ready as I think’. I suspect this last batch of hurricanes is doing that for a lot of people.
As I said, winter is coming here in Montana and while I’ve always thought Im more than ready for some blizzard-induced winter drama, I’m starting to think that I need to change my thinking a bit and be open to some of the more unlikely-but-not-impossible scenarios that may arise.
So..back to list-making and inventory-taking.
CZ, it’s the human condition for the Normalcy Bias (it has never happened, so it won’t happen) to control the behavior of most people. Most people share Scarlett O’Hara’s attitude after Rhett Butler walked out the door and told her he “didn’t give a damn,” “I can’t think about this now. I’ll go crazy if I do. I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Here’s some useful info from Wikipedia: “The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on a Latin expression which presumed that black swans did not exist. The expression was used until around 1697 when Dutch mariners saw them in Australia. After this, the term was reinterpreted to mean an unforeseen and consequential event.[1]
Keep up the good work!
How about a leak from the Rocky Mountain laboratories in Hamilton?
You may be upwind but also downstream.
I woke up this morning, looked at my weather station and saw that it was 34 degrees, here in South Carolina. I obviously had not paid any attention to the forecast. But I have full rain barrels and the 34 degrees kind of shook me up because I wasn’t expecting it. Not that water is going to freeze at 34, but it was just closer to freezing than I was expecting in mid-October. It looks like it’s going to warm back up next week and then we might be done with the extremely pleasant fall weather we’re accustomed to having.