How To Assess Threats – Rogue’s 31 Days To Readiness [Day 5]

Have you seen day 1, day 2, day 3 and day 4?

How do you assess local, national and global threats so that you’re as prepared as possible?

Assessing potential threats will help you to determine what you might want to most be prepared for. It’ll help shape your plans and will keep you from getting caught off guard. Of course, we can’t predict everything, but we can have a steady stream of information being presented to us so we stay informed and prepared.

How to assess local threats:

1. Walk around your neighborhood on a fairly regular basis (once a week?) to get a sense for the people, houses and any other activity.
2. Look at local crime rate in your area. Places like SpotCrime and MyLocalCrime are great places to find local stats of crime in your area.
3. Download a ‘neighborhood’ app which will alert you to any activity in your area. This information is usually sourced by people who live in the area.
4. Look up natural disaster stats and the most likely disasters to happen in your area. Best way to do this is to head to your favorite search engine and enter something like ‘san antonio (whatever city you live in) natural disasters’.
5. Listen to police scanner apps or ham radio frequencies for peer-to-peer information that you can gather on a regular basis.

How to assess national and global threats:

National and global threats would be things like cyber terrorism, general terrorism, economic crisis, organized crime, riots, etc.

Here are a few great ways to realize the potential threats that are out there are:

1. Do an internet search for ‘global risk assessment’ or ‘assessing national threats’. There are many public reports that will lay out threats. Many of these threat assessments will be something that’s already happened, but they’ll give you a good idea of the things that have happened on a national and global level to help you be prepared for them. Many of the threats could still be happening, while some may be dormant, it really depends.
2. Do an internet search for natural disasters and any other big events, such as the Great Depression, that have happened on a national or global scale. Why would these concern you? You can learn from them.
3. Constantly be gathering intel. One of the best ways to do this is through setting up a Google Alert or something other type of internet alert that will send you news
4. Social media isn’t all bad, in fact, if you follow the right people, they’ll be a constant stream of information. Social media spreads information (both false and true) very quickly. You’ll want to verify the information as best as you can, but overall, you’ll be getting a constant stream of information to decipher.
5. Again, ham radio is a great way to gather intel both locally and nationally/globally. You get a variety of information from a variety of sources. Peer-to-peer information is powerful, but just like with social media, should be double checked and confirmed before jumping to assumptions.
6. Stay aware everyday through situational awareness. Gathering intel isn’t just about reading the news, it’s about everyday life and understanding the cues that are happening around us at all times. Listening to our intuition and being aware of any strange signs, including strange weather signs.

Now that you’ve gathered, and continue to gather, all these assessments and intel; what’s the next step?

Next, take all of this information and constantly be adapting it to your emergency disaster plans, everyday plans and general preparedness.

If your area experiences quite a bit of power outages, then you’d want to be prepared for that.

If you live in an area that experiences higher crime rate, you’ll be prepared with higher security. Or move.

And so on. By gathering intel and assessing threats, you’ll be well informed to make proper decisions to move forward and be at ease. There’s no reason we need to go through life blind; gather and assess.

See in day 6!