My Disaster Scenario: 63% Probability

At the beginning of the somewhat embarrassing television program Doomsday Preppers, our hapless guests tell us their paranoid delusions of how the world will end as they know it. We're talking economic collapse, biological apocalypse, mega volcanoes, and the like. No zombies yet, but the show is still fairly new.

In most personal disaster cases, a "bug out" involves abandoning the house for a local hotel, where a credit card pretty much compromises my survival toolbox.  This is true for people in tornado regions and similar, localized disasters. Bigger disasters are different. I have my Doomsday Prepper scenario and it involves the Big One, an earthquake.

I live in Northern California, the SF Bay Area, a place that hasn't seen a really serious earthquake in nearly 100 years. It's due. In such a scenario, there is likely to be a good amount of panic and carnage. I would assume bridges are either damaged or jammed with cars, meaning evacuation routes get creative and circuitous. It didn't take much of a tumbler to take out a bridge the last time there was a major quake. I'm also assuming hotels are booked for a couple hundred miles, especially since I'm likely to shelter in place for as long as possible.

Included in this earthquake scenarios is damage to the local water table, along with destruction of the aqueducts that bring water to Southern California. It could be weeks or months before this is repaired or the water table rises again. This puts water as a very high priority for me in my "shelter in place" scenario, along with eliminating Southern California as an evacuation location.

The likelihood of a major earthquake in the SF Bay Area in the next 30 years, according to the USGS, is 63%. We're not talking nutty Doomsday Preppers scenarios, we're talking a 2 in 3 chance.

Finally, if I sound defensive, well yes, it's what happens when friends and acquaintances learn of what you're doing. There is a level of criticism and ridicule, which is why most people make it a rule not to talk about their preparations. Beyond that, as I've mentioned, it's a slippery slope, a line between preparation and paranoia that I find myself trying to carefully define.

You start watching the news and seeing the bad side of people and life, rather than enjoying it. The gold at the end of the rainbow of prepping is supposed to be confidence that you're prepared, but if you're never done, something you define, when will that confidence come? So I walk the line.