Begin right where you are.  Some interpret the famous quote “The Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” by Lao Tzu as “The Journey of a thousand miles begins beneath your feet” or”…right where you stand”.  Before taking the first step you should choose a direction.  Before choosing a direction you should arm yourself with a compass – some information that will help guide you in making your decisions.  Below you will find the thing that I am using as my compass.  I took this from “The Survival Podcast” website (with permission of course) and it really is spot on.

Threat Probability Matrix

The rules of the matrix are quite simple, the less people effected by an event the more likely it is to occur to an individual. That statement may seem counterintuitive but it really isn’t, just consider the following line

Individual – Localized – Small Region – Large Region – National – Global

Now think of one disaster for each of these and ask yourself how likely you are to actually experience this event in the next year or next ten years. You can think of any disaster and then just assign it to one of the six categories and you will quickly see that in most instances the larger the effected area, the lower the probability that it will actually happen. Here are some examples…

• Individual – Job Loss
• Localized – Damage From Strong Storms
• Small Region – City Riots Spreading To The Suburbs
• Large Region – Large Scale Hurricane Damage To A Coastal Region
• National – A Well Organized Terrorist Attack on 25 Major U.S. Cities
• Global – A Rapid Climate Shift Brings On An Ice Age

–          Jack Spirko, TSP –  http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/articles-by-jack/tenet-six

A survivalist may have 10,000 rounds of ammo for each of their guns but hasn’t updated their resume in 6 years.  What good is that ammo if the disaster that strikes isn’t global economic meltdown but the loss of a job?  That would be a personal economic meltdown and the resume would be a far better tool for dealing with it than the guns and ammo.  Now sure, the resume doesn’t mean squat if the economy collapses but which of those two scenarios has a greater likelihood of occurring?