In today's fast-paced world, it is crucial to be prepared for disasters. Whether it be a natural disaster, civil unrest, or a major event, being prepared can mean the difference between life and death. The first step in preparing for disasters is understanding the different types of disasters and the potential threats they pose.

My thinking has always been, prepare today for disasters that WILL happen, and prepare tomorrow for disasters that MAY happen.

Primary Threats

What will happen depends upon where you are located.

I used to live in Northern Ontario. There were a few emergencies that would hit each year. During the winter, ice storms and blizzards were the biggest hazard, and during the summer forest fires and wind storms (including the occasional tornado). These events would inevitably lead to power outages, and delays in deliveries to stores. When these went on for several days there could be shortages of food and gasoline in the local area.

While we were never affected by forest fires, we lived on a road named "Little Brule Road". Brule is French for "burn" and it got it's name from a former forest fire that swept through many years before. So it was definitely a possibility. And Northern Ontario had multiple forest fires each summer, that was a guarantee. It was just a question of would there be one in your area.

Scavenging is something that comes up a lot in discussions about what people will need to do to survive.

I want to start off by addressing something that I know is going to come up regarding scavenging. More than one person reading this article is going to want to lecture me and everyone else on how stealing is wrong. I agree with them 100% on this. At the same time during a collapse, there is a high likelihood that you will have to do a lot of hard things if you don’t want to suffer a lot, die, or watch your loved ones suffer and succumb as well.

Ultimately it is up to you what path you let your morality lead you down during a collapse. I will say that those that are willing to accept the new reality and do some things that they normally would not, will have a much higher chance of surviving during a long event. There are some people out there that would rather die than do some things or they will give until it hurts.

To each their own.

During war and/or collapse, things get abandoned and there is also the simple fact that at some point, there is no way that you not scavenging is going to be helpful to anyone except others that are going to come along and scavenge.

Some of the items that I am going to suggest that you look for are not what the typical looter you see on TV after a natural disaster is going for but a lot of them are far different.

This article has been superseded by ELI5 Steps to Prepping (Explain Like I'm 5).

Guest article by E.M.

Self-sufficiency - noun: the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective independence.

Survival - noun: the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances.

In our day-to-day world, there are varied degrees of survival required of us. This is true simply because there are wide-ranging degrees of threat that we face.

And in today’s economic death spiral of Keynesian Economics, politically corrupt leadership, and a war torn world, many are already beginning to experience the peripheral edge of a “deep survival” state because of those same threats. There are more at that edge than I think we care to admit. Government figures of non-participation in the labor force and welfare rolls alone support this. We can look at the high percentage of millennials still at home and the lack of savings they have. Let’s not forget the fact that one out of five families does not have anyone working in them.