Preparedness in 2025 - It Looks Different

I’ve written at length over the past few months about the political and economic crises that looms over the world, the jaxapositioning of nations to find their place in the new world order and the likely impacts on populations. This polycrisis is longitudinal, will continue until 2032 and has many more hands to play, which makes it that much more difficult to predict the next moves or to adjust your personal strategy. While there are unknown disruptions around the corner and some will be novel, some will be repetitious, the foundational truth remains, we are in control of very little and that is perfect. Cue the role of preparedness.

The public sector resident facing communications often are limited to natural disasters, the floods, fires, storms, earthquakes and tornadoes which the public correlate to acts of nature. The reality is that these are influential on human civilization as a result of the decisions our ancestors made, building cities on flood plains, earthquake faults and other dangerous places. The reality is that resources are found in precarious locations - everywhere on this globe. There is no world where we construct human civilization in a location where significant hazards are not present. They must exist in our cities and towns, where we draw our water, sustenance and earn our incomes. Hence, prevention is impossible, but mitigation is possible and within our reach. Cue the role of preparedness.

The events of the past thirty years have informed us that preparedness extends far beyond natural disasters, but inclusive of political, economic, cultural and ideological events that influence how individuals, families and communities choose to live their lives. Preparedness represents our risk identification, mitigation and strategy to be ready to navigate that which we cannot control, but impacts our existence and influences our lives. So if we need to think beyond the nominal ideas of kit, plan and be informed, then we need to understand the threat profile to which we’re exposed. Cue the role of preparedness.

All strategy begins with first understanding the problem set. In science, if we craft a research question that doesn’t address the problem set, we may find a brilliant set of answers that are quite useless. Comprehending the breadth and depth of hazards at any unit of measure - individual, family, community, region, state, national and international requires a frame. Throwing darts often is representative of some government ideas, but to understand the environment in which we choose to live, we need a frame for analysis. Researchers in sociology, psychology and economics have a series of categorization for human society, many iterations to serve different theoretical analysis, but if we generalize their contributions, we can assert that reasonably so, humanity has a political, economic, cultural, natural and familial partition. Collectively, they represent the areas of life - or spheres of influence, in which the modern society operates. While imperfect as all scientific ideas are, this allows a frame through which one at any unit of measure may consider the threats. Cue the role of preparedness.

Knowing that 2025 is but a milestone in the world’s expected systemic reorganization, we can view our lives through these frames and assess whether the world as it is unfolding represents something that could be a barrier or obstacle to pursuing our dreams. Simply put, the events unfolding globally are outside our control, we can choose to be angry, disappointed, stressed or fearful, but the events will occur with or without our influence. Hence, logic informs that we need to view these events through a lens of how they will affect us, what impacts they will have and whether it represents a low, manageable or high / unacceptable level of risk to whatever unit of measure we are considering. Categorizing the threats through these frames and subsequently assessing the level of risk represents an orderly, methodological process for everyone to determine the scope of personal risk. The next step is to aggregate the unacceptable risks and use those to create a strategy. Again, simply put, there are things beyond my control that will unacceptably influence my life and therefore I am required to create a mitigation plan. Cue the role of preparedness.

That plan, created for any unit of measure, is the secret weapon for 2025. We need to, without question, understand that each of us are exposed to some common influences but that at the smaller units of measure, the discrepancies increase. Few family risk profiles will look the same, necessitating a different strategy, but all existing in the same world. This is the role of community, to foster these discussions, to support everyone on their journey to finding a roadmap to success. We’re all on different lanes of the same highway, together we can win the day, periodically supporting those who need assistance. Each unit of measure needs a strategy, to navigate the current and future series of exogenous shocks from all five of the spheres of influence - political, economic, cultural, natural and familial.

The exercise is one of time and effort, consideration and thinking. It is free, requires no commitment of financial resources, but the time to consider risks, codifying severity, assessing those that need amelioration and in doing so, create that roadmap to adopting preparedness, to be ready for come what may.

This is the preparedness message for 2025, to accept the environment you’re in, to understand it and the influence it has upon your family and write a strategy to navigate disruptions that are beyond your control, as a community, together.

Ask yourself, can you identify the unacceptable risks to which your family is exposed to? If the response is yes, can you articulate the strategy your family is using to mitigate?

If you cannot, you’re not ready for 2025, and it’s already here.