# 2600
Every once in awhile you read some sad story about someone playing the ultimate game of chance, Russian Roulette, with a loaded revolver.
The idea is simple. Put one bullet in one chamber of a revolver, give it a spin, and then test your nerve (and luck) by putting it to your head and pulling the trigger.
With six chambers, the odds are 1 in 6, or about 16.66%, of the `game' ending badly with each spin.
Most people would agree that playing Russian Roulette is crazy. The risks are enormous, and eventually, your luck will run out. It is hard to think of any reward that would make taking such a risk worth it.
Yet millions of business owners, individuals, and families are playing their own version of Russian Roulette every year.
Rather than prepare for a disaster, they literally bet the farm that nothing `really bad' will happen. And like with Russian Roulette, sometimes their luck holds.
For a while.
We're told that the risks of seeing a pandemic are increasing with each year. Quantifying that risk is difficult, of course. No one really knows how likely it is that a pandemic will occur in the short term.
But long term? Say, over the next 10 years?
The odds are pretty good that a pandemic will happen. Probably a lot better than 1 in 6.
Add in the odds that something other than a pandemic, like an earthquake, or a tornado, or a hurricane will strike, and the odds that you your business, or your family will face a disaster sometime in the next 10 years go even higher.
Instead of just one bullet occupying one chamber, there may be two bullets, or even three in this `gun'.
With those odds, you'd have to be crazy not to prepare, wouldn't you?
We've managed to get through 2008 without a global disaster. But we saw many regional crises. FEMA has declared 75 Major Disasters in the United States this year alone. Wildfires, flash floods, hurricanes, blizzards . . .
Literally millions of people were affected by these disasters. And hundreds of thousands of businesses.
Of course, most people were lucky this year. Their lives weren't touched by a serious crisis.
Maybe their luck will hold out in 2009. Maybe not.
The Federal government wants you, your family, and your business to be prepared. They know that that bad things happen all the time, and that being prepared is the best insurance policy of all.
They urge you to GET A KIT, MAKE A PLAN, and to BE INFORMED.
The government wouldn't be spending the kind of resources they do each year touting preparedness if they didn't think it was worth doing.
Every family, and every business, needs a COOP - or Continuity Of Operations Plan. Governments do it, Fortune 500 businesses do it, and so should you.
There are many degrees of preparedness, of course. At the very least, every family should have 3 days worth of food and water on hand, along with flashlights, a first aid kit, and a battery operated radio.
But that is just the start of what needs to become a culture of preparedness in our country, and around the world.
Once you have the basic 72 hour kit in place, it is time to start working on a 2-week kit. And once you've reached 2-weeks, it is time to look beyond that.
Given the uncertainties that the future holds, it only makes sense to make 2009 the year that you, your family, and your business becomes better prepared to face an emergency.
A few good places to get started are:
FEMA http://www.fema.gov/index.shtm
READY.GOV http://www.ready.gov/
AMERICAN RED CROSS http://www.redcross.org/
For Pandemic Preparedness Information: HHS Individual Planning Page
For more in-depth emergency preparedness information I can think of no better resource than GetPandemicReady.Org.
Admittedly, as a minor contributor to that site, I'm a little biased.
But whether you are preparing for a hurricane, an earthquake, a pandemic, or a terrorist attack - the important thing is not to delay.
Ready or not, the next disaster will likely come with very little warning.
