A lesson we must imbibe from preppers

The term "prepper" is not yet listed in my dictionary, maybe because this is not a new edition that I have. So, there is no accurate definition for it.  But, the word exists. In fact, when I view programs of the Discovery and the National Geographic channels, every now and then, I do come across shows that depict the lives of "preppers."

In essence, "preppers" are people who prepare for disasters in the future. Maybe that is how the word evolved. These persons are preparers. From the tv reality shows that I have seen, many "preppers" are wealthy individuals.  There are also successful professionals holding positions high in the totem pole of corporate structures.

All of them fear that at some time in the future disasters happen. The forms and causes of the cataclysms are as varied as imaginations can concoct. Some appear to be weird though, if you examine them closely, they too are plausible. A meltdown of a local nuclear power plant, if not an explosion of nuclear bomb detonated by a terrorist, head the list. When such a catastrophe happens, God forbid, the first chaotic imagery that surfaces is the mad dash of people to any form of safe haven.

Did you know that "preppers" also consider that a serious economic crisis can also result into a terrible breakdown of peace and order? In their prognostication, when credit cards begin not to be honored, and hard cash is not on hand, people, staring at the horror of stark hunger, will just break thru the doors of meat shops and groceries and help themselves to whatever food is on the shelves. Preppers likewise prepare for the kind of natural disaster that nature unleashes. Even just few hours after super typhoon Yolanda ravaged Tacloban City, television cameras caught hordes of men, (and yes there were women too), who upon seeing that there were no policemen around the corner and that the security guards were nowhere to be seen, tore down the steel grills of a large shopping mall and took away almost everything edible in sight. The scene was abominable as it was uncivilized.

In other words, preppers have a point and truth to tell, they convince me. They may be extreme in their imagination, but there is indeed a distinct possibility that a kind of tsunami that destroyed Sumatra and many far-flung parts of the Pacific about a decade ago could recur. That was precisely why we had a drill last week. It was the intention of government planners to prepare us for such a disaster.

My question is: Suppose a terrible calamity hits us, pulverizes our homes, and thanks to our emergency drills, we survive it, where will most of our people go? And where do we get our food in the next succeeding days or weeks without killing one another?

Government leaders need to think and act like preppers. In the minds of the preppers, a sanctuary is first to be built. The structure must be the home to the survivors for an appreciable period of time. It must necessarily be of the quality as to withstand the tremor that hit Japan about four years ago. The drills that government asked us to take would be useless if after the calamity we are just exposed to the further horror that follows.

I may not be thinking of the underground silo that some American cities built in the early years of the Cold War. But certainly government must adopt a program and perhaps a concept that the wealthy among our brothers, who can afford to execute such measures on their own, can presently implement. It is in the exercise of police power that such programs will allow a regulated number of their poor neighbors to come to safety.

For the greater mass of our underprivileged sector, who are unable to provide a refuge on their own, I imagine that government must now conceptualize the building of a huge structure or two capable of housing thousands of them.

The program, whether for the execution of the rich or paid by our tax money, has to anticipate the consumption needs for an extended period of time. If this idea is not entirely difficult to accept, it is because the lessons of Yolanda are still fresh in our memory, whether we are preppers or not.