The 80/20 Rule of Survival

I intended to use this blog mostly for writing stuff, but I do write about zombies and definitely believe in disaster preparedness. Apparently some of that will be appearing here as well...

The 80/20 Rule, also known as Pareto's Principle, has been applied over the years to many fields. The basic concept is that 80% of your benefit stems from 20% of your effort. We all have a limited amount of resources to put into prepping, so you should spend that time and money as efficiently as possible. The key is identifying the 20% that contains your 80% reward.

It would be great to have an impenetrable bunker complex stocked with limitless supplies and be a professional mechanic/farmer/doctor/dentist/ninja/carpenter. Those of you who aren't Batman will need to focus your efforts a little more. Here is my list of things that are low cost (in time and money) that anyone can do to greatly increase their chance of survival in case of any kind of world changing disaster. In no certain order:

1) Learn to shoot - you can go to a range and take a basic gun safety class in one evening for about $100. One local range even has Ladies Night where women get free range time and gun rentals! There is no excuse not to know how to handle a firearm. I am not lending you one of mine if you are more likely to shoot one of us than one of the zombies or looters. That makes it less likely for both of us to survive. If you can afford the extra money - buy a gun! Any other time or money you put into survival supplies is wasted if you don't have a gun to protect it.

2) Learn to drive (motorcycles/manual transmission/trucks) - the more vehicles you can safely operate the better. Mobility can mean life or death and the more options for transportation you have the better. Buses and trains won't be running after TSHTF. This should be something you can do in a weekend and possibly for free if you know a friend that can teach you.

3) Learn to hunt/fish/grow food - with stores closed (and looted) food is going to be scarce. Even if you live in an urban area now, anyone who plans to survive long-term will wind up living in a rural area. Knowing how to shoot and how to hunt are totally different things. If someone stood a deer in front of me and I was hungry I could shoot it. Could I clean it? Cook it properly? Preserve the extra meat? Find the next one on my own? No, no, no, and no.  This has the highest cost in time and money of anything on my list, but I feel it is still part of the 80/20 because food is a necessity.

4) Get in shape - once there are no more public services or home delivery, life is going to be a lot of hard work. You don't need to be an Olympian, but if you cannot walk for 20 minutes without a break you won't make it very far when TSHTF. Another important aspect of this is medication. Pharmacies will be looted as quickly as grocery stores so the time to ween yourself off of pills is now. If you are borderline on cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc... improved fitness could reduce or remove your need for medicine.  

This isn't one of the items you can knock out in an evening or a weekend, but you can start working on it right now and without a lot of dedicated time or money - taking stairs not elevators, walking a little extra, eating a little better, etc. I am neither a doctor nor a fitness guru and won't pretend to be. You can seek out that expertise somewhere else... I'm just telling you that it is a waste of time and money to prep for disaster when you can't live without medicines you won't be able to get the day after the stores close.


Whatever your prep activities I would recommend balance. Do not put all your effort into long-term survival and ignore what you will need to survive the first month, or be focused to 'guarantee' you survive a few weeks only to starve to death from lack of long-term preparation.

What other items do you think belong on this list?

A Blog!

After many moons of deliberation I have decided to start blogging. I plan to use this space as a place to post snippets of writing and other stray thoughts on 'life, the universe, and everything'.