Today’s lesson comes from Sam Jenkins.
If you’ve read my books, you already know him.
If you haven’t, here’s what you need to know.
Sam was military.
He had training.
He had experience.
He understood weapons, danger, discipline, and what it meant to function when circumstances became uncomfortable.
That gave him an advantage when his world started changing.
It didn’t give him all the answers.
And that’s where Sam’s story becomes useful to us.
Because preparedness isn’t knowing exactly what’s going to happen.
It’s building enough capability beforehand that when something unexpected happens, you’re starting from somewhere other than zero.
TRAINING CHANGES YOUR STARTING POINT
Imagine two people suddenly facing the same emergency.
One has never thought about it before.
The other has spent years developing useful skills, paying attention to his surroundings, learning to control his reactions, and solving problems with limited resources.
They’re standing in the same place.
They’re facing the same problem.
Their starting points are completely different.
That’s one of the things Sam’s military background gives him.
He doesn’t have a script for everything that’s coming.
He has a foundation.
That’s what I want Prepared to give you.
You don’t need Sam’s military background.
You need your own foundation.
WHAT SAM CARRIES
Some of Sam’s most valuable equipment isn’t equipment.
Experience taught him to observe.
Training taught him to act.
Past hardship gave him perspective.
And when plans begin falling apart, he understands something that anyone who’s operated in unpredictable environments eventually learns:
The plan you made yesterday may have very little to do with the problem you’re facing today.
You adapt.
You use what you have.
You make the best decision available.
Then you reassess.
That’s preparedness.
MEDIC’S MINUTE
Training doesn’t guarantee you’ll know what to do. It gives you more options when you don’t.
I’ve seen that throughout my own military, medical, and disaster work.
Someone gets hurt and suddenly everybody is looking around for the person who knows what to do.
A storm changes direction.
The evacuation route doesn’t work.
Communications go down.
Equipment fails.
Something happens that wasn’t covered in the plan.
The person who has practiced basic skills usually has more options available.
That’s one of the reasons I keep telling you to do things instead of simply reading these emails.
YOUR MISSION
What Skills Are You Carrying?
Forget your gear for a minute.
Imagine someone took away your emergency supplies.
What’s left?
Can you stop serious bleeding?
Can you make questionable water safer to drink?
Can you navigate without your phone?
Can you start a fire?
Can you change a tire?
Can you recognize when a situation is becoming dangerous?
Can you keep functioning while everyone around you is starting to panic?
Give yourself one point for every YES.
Don’t worry about the score.
You’ve just identified some of the things we need to work on together.
DR. DAVE’S FIELD NOTES
There’s a reason I gave Sam a military background.
It’s something I understand.
Military training teaches plenty of specific skills, but there’s another lesson underneath them.
Problems rarely cooperate.
You can have a beautiful plan at 0800 and discover by 0815 that reality has other ideas.
That makes Sam interesting to write.
I can give him experience.
I can give him skills.
I can give him the confidence that comes from having survived difficult things before.
Then I can give him a problem his previous training never anticipated.
Now we find out what he’s made of.
Preparedness works the same way.
I can’t train you for every emergency you’ll encounter.
I can help make sure that when one arrives, you’re carrying a much bigger toolbox.
AFTER ACTION REPORT
There’s something else worth noticing about Sam.
His military experience happened before the story.
That’s important.
Training happens before you need it.
You learn first aid before someone starts bleeding.
You learn your evacuation routes before the wildfire is moving toward your neighborhood.
You learn how your equipment works before the power disappears.
You figure out what belongs in your vehicle before you’re stranded beside the highway.
The emergency is the test.
Today is training day.
FIELD RESOURCE
Start Your Personal Skills Inventory
Open a note on your phone and title it:
MY PREPARED SKILLS
Make two sections:
I CAN DO THIS
and
I NEED TO LEARN THIS
Start adding skills.
Keep that list.
As we continue these briefings, start moving things from the second category into the first.
That’s how capability gets built.
WANT TO MEET SAM?
I occasionally use Sam’s experiences here because fiction gives us a safe place to explore dangerous situations.
We can watch his decisions.
Question them.
Learn from them.
And ask ourselves the most useful question in preparedness:
What would I do?
Sam’s story begins in The Midwife and the Medic.
I’m not going to tell you much more about what happens to him.
I’d rather let Sam introduce himself.
MEET SAM & START THE STORY
Read the book that introduced Sam and see how his training holds up when the rules begin changing.
TRANSMISSION
There are people who collect preparedness gear.
There are people who collect preparedness knowledge.
I want you to collect capabilities.
Sam entered his story carrying years of them.
We’re going to build yours one mission at a time.
Stay Prepared,
Dr. Dave