Last week I talked about the TikTok trend of women asking their men “when was the last time you thought about the Roman Empire?” and how the deeper question is actually “when was the last time you thought about major events and trends in history, and how they might be playing out today?”
So to follow on from that, let’s talk emergencies. Disasters. Basically, shit going wrong in the world. Maybe it affects you, maybe it doesn’t. But with the world seeming to be in a constant state of instability since Covid hit all of us, and things actually getting worse recently, it’s past time that we talked about how you handle these things.
When it comes to emergencies, severe hardships, and disasters - whether they be economic, natural, or political, I believe there are three kinds of people in the world…
Type 1, which makes up what I believe to be the majority, are those who will breathe a sigh of relief, utter “I’m glad that’s over” and then go about their business again as though nothing happened. Oh sure, the memory will always be there, but they won’t have learned anything from it or do anything differently in the future.
Type 2 is the natural preparer. They’ll have the initiative to take stock of what’s happened and realise they can expect more emergencies in their lifetime. They’ll look at where they were left wanting and start making preparations for the next emergency, just in case. They won’t go overboard like a doomsday prepper, but they’ll do that little bit extra to ensure their comfort and safety the next time around.
Type 3 are those who have been severely affected by the emergency. They’ve lost jobs, lost businesses, lost family members, perhaps even lost their mental health to depression and anxiety as a result. When they finally do come out of it, they’ll have the mindset of “I never want to go through that again.” Even if they’d normally be a type 1, they’ll turn into a type 2 out of sheer psychological necessity, because the thought of repeating everything that happened is too painful.
The question for you is— whether you’re just a regular person with a job, a business owner, or a startup, which type are you? Now that I’ve laid them all out, maybe you’ve realised you’re type 1 and you’re pretty unhappy about that. How you dealt with Covid - because we all had to deal with it, is probably a good indicator of which camp you’re in.
The squirrel and the grasshopper
Preparing for the next emergency is a relatively simple concept — so simple that there’s an Aesop fairy tale about it called the squirrel and the grasshopper:
The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long,
building and improving his house and laying up supplies for the
winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and
plays the summer away. Come winter, the squirrel is warm and well fed.
The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in
the cold.
As I’ve written before, unfortunately our society and especially advertising encourages us to be the grasshopper, buying things we don’t need to impress other people, to make us feel more comfortable or even worse, to treat yo’self. There is little, if any encouragement for people to prepare for the next storm over the horizon, which is actually the smart thing to do and what humans had to do for most of our history on this planet.
We don’t really have droughts, famines or many other natural disasters in the developed world anymore, but if you look at the last 70 years, there has been at least one storm of some kind every decade that has affected large parts of the world:
2023: Attack on Israel (waiting to see how this plays out)
2022: Russia invades Ukraine
2020: COVID19
2008: GFC
2004: Boxing Day Tsunami
2003: SARS outbreak in SE Asia
1998: Dot com bubble burst
1991: Yugoslavia Civil War
1990: Rwandan Genocide
1987: Black Monday
1973: Oil crisis
1960s: Vietnam War
1950: Korean War
Now some of those may have affected you, some of them maybe not. There are probably a dozen or more other crises that I’ve missed that were specific to a certain country or region, such as the civil war in Somalia or Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Look at that list though: many of them caused trouble throughout a portion of the world or resulted in a huge number of localised casualties.
And it’s at least one every decade.
Keep your eyes on the horizon
If you’re decently educated and intelligent, when the next storm comes around in 5–10 years, you can’t say that you couldn’t see it coming. Our existence on this planet is one of struggle and hardship and the government isn’t always going to be able to help you out of it.
That’s not to say if you’re a victim that it’s necessarily your fault. Some things you just can’t foresee, and when something like a genocide happens so much of your survival will depend purely on the luck of being in the right place at the right time.
That said, you can often see the makings of a crisis before it actually starts, like the distant rumble of thunder well before a storm arrives. I was at university with sisters from the former Yugoslavia back in 2000, and they told me about how they fled the country early because their parents realised what was going to happen and took decisive action.
You hear the same stories in every similar crisis, such as a former girlfriend of mine whose parents walked - yes, walked from Vietnam through Laos and finally to Thailand so they could be safe and start a new life. Jews who packed up and fled at the first signs of Nazi trouble. That’s not to blame the victims in these circumstances for their plight, but often times a healthy dose of paranoia and preparedness can be the difference between life and death
So the question is, what will you do today and every day going forward to be on good footing when the next crisis hits?
Will you increase the margins in your business so you have more security?
Will you stock up your cupboard at home with some more essential items?
Will you build a startup that is crisis-proof, in that it doesn’t depend on everything going well all the time to thrive?
Will you diversify your portfolio to better weather a financial storm?
Just as important as building in security for the next crisis is working out how you’re going to act. Making the right decisions day to day is hard enough for most people, making them in a crisis is a whole different ball game because you’re now trying to do it in an environment of stress and fear.
How long do you sit tight and wait it out?
At what point do you take decisive action?
Do you need to take decisive action?
What information do you need to make the right decisions?
These are all questions you need to be able to answer rapidly if you’re going to handle a crisis appropriately for yourself, your business or your family. And I don’t have all the answers for you. Part of being a man is being able to think these things through and make the right decisions for yourself and your family.
It’s very hard to do that if you aren’t paying attention though. Life comes at you fast sometimes, and if your head is in the clouds, you’re going to get caught out when shit gets real.
So start thinking ahead. Start opening your eyes. Because no one is going to look after you except you.