Upon entering the world of preparedness, I struggled to explain to myself and those around me how and why to prepare for certain events instead of for others. Certainly it makes sense that prepping for the end of the world is a much larger leap than your car breaking down, but how can we understand preparedness for such low-likelihood, high-impact events relative to much more common, lower impact events? So, we at Preparedness & Policy have developed the Preparedness Pyramid as a high-level prepping framework that anyone can follow to both guide and inform those who want to protect and take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities.
Understanding the Preparedness Pyramid
Purpose
The Preparedness Pyramid is modeled roughly based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is a model of different levels of human needs, and notably where lower-level needs must be met before higher-level needs can be fulfilled. Our perspective is that they are the same principles that should apply to preparedness.
In the same way you need to fulfill your physiological needs before you can fulfill your safety and security needs, to be prepared means taking care of the most common, foundational emergencies so that you don’t prepare and spend your hard earned dollars on emergencies that are less likely to happen.
For example, it makes no sense to spend money on industrial faraday cages to prepare for a nuclear EMP until you’ve saved enough for an emergency fund, taken care of your 401k, paid off your debt, etc. Spending money that you don’t have to prepare for something is out of the question and is contrary to the ethos of preparedness, which is the safety and survival of yourself and your family.
The online preparedness community is full of content that focuses solely on that top-most section of the pyramid, which certainly generates clicks, but does a massive disservice to people who genuinely are concerned about a variety of threats that aren’t catastrophic EMPs and Grid Down scenarios. Preparing for these types of doomsday events has its place, but not at the expense of other more common emergencies. This is functionally the idea behind the Preparedness Pyramid: once you address your needs and preparedness for the most common scenarios, you allow yourself to feel comfortable enough in your preparedness to start reaching into the next tier of events that are less common, but have higher impact.
Impact-Likelihood Matrix
Another way to think about the Preparedness Pyramid is to examine it from the perspective of an Impact vs Likelihood matrix of different emergencies and scenarios. The foundational layer of the pyramid functionally represents high likelihood events, and the events get less and less likely as you move up the pyramid, while they also have a higher impact. For example, a WROL (Without Rule of Law) scenario is significantly less likely than a property crime, but the impact is orders of magnitude greater. It makes perfect sense to address the higher likelihood event first, and only once that’s been addressed do you address the lower likelihood, higher impact event to build upon your preparedness foundation.
The below matrix isn’t comprehensive by any means, maybe the likelihoods are debatable, but it captures the high-level idea of how we might approach varying levels of preparation relative to the pyramid and the likelihoods vs impacts of various emergencies and events.
The foundational aspects of preparedness will roughly capture the high likelihood events, as well as the low impact events. These are the building blocks upon which we will build the rest of our preparations. The following two layers will be a varying mix of moderate impact and moderate/low likelihood events, as well as high impact and moderate likelihood events.
As with the pyramid, preparing for an extended recession is built upon a sound financial preparedness plan. The top level of the pyramid represents the lowest likelihood events, but the highest impact here in this matrix. It makes no sense to prepare for a super-volcano erupting without first preparing for higher likelihood events that are far more likely to impact any of us.
Pyramid Hierarchy
We will publish additional posts going into greater depth on each layer of the Preparedness Pyramid, so that each layer of the prepping framework can be discussed in depth. We’ll cover the following sections of the pyramid to give a comprehensive look at the prepping framework here.
- Everyday Emergencies
- Common, everyday emergencies and short-term disruptions. The basics that everyone should prioritize over everything else. This is the foundation of preparedness. Think low impact, but also high probability, what are we most likely to face that also sets us up for later preparedness success.
- Short Term Emergencies
- Emergencies and disruptions lasting less than a week. These events impact us and may have a higher impact than everyday, common emergencies, but the duration is longer so they require a greater level of preparedness.
- Long Term Emergencies
- Extended disruptions lasting several weeks to a few months. Hurricane Katrina, Covid-19, and extended infrastructure cyber attacks fall into this category.
- SHTF or Collapse
- Prolonged crises, societal collapse, or catastrophic events. These require the most resources, the most time, and the most thought, but are dramatically less likely than lower levels of the pyramid.
Prepping Framework
Of course, this is not a prescriptive path for preparedness, it’s a prepping framework. For some, severe weather is commonplace, like if you live in Florida, or in the Tornado Alley, and for others the worst you’ll see is a blizzard. So, the goal of this prepping framework is to be a high-level guide to help you understand what is foundational to preparedness, not what specifically to prepare for.
The decision to prepare for particular threats is a personal decision and is not something that anyone can decide for you. We do believe that once you start preparing for higher impact, lower likelihood events you must have a foundation first. That’s the responsible way to prep without being irresponsible and crazy. Preparing and looking ahead to higher levels of the pyramid isn’t a bad thing! You can turn skills or activities that prepare you for more high impact events into hobbies and integrate them into your life!
Conclusion
Most of preparedness isn’t sexy, not everything is about the latest and greatest tactical gear. Tactical gear certainly is important depending on what you’re preparing for (and I believe it is), but to skip over so many less sexy topics like insurance, retirement, mental health, etc is a mistake, since the most extreme event we’ll all see in our lifetimes is probably job loss or an unexpected medical event. If you have covered your foundation, preparing for the Life Altering Event (LAE) type scenarios is absolutely worth it, but not at the expense of your foundation.
I hope that this framework inspires you to not think of preparedness as strictly doomsday prepping and preparing for the apocalypse in some smelly bunker somewhere. Preparedness is about taking responsibility for the future of your family or community, whether that’s to treat burns and cuts, or to prepare for an extended grid down scenario. We can all be more prepared for the uncertain, but that means being deliberate and responsible in how we prepare.
Check back for more in depth looks at the various levels of the pyramid!
