Three Little Words That Can Be So Dangerous

Readers of this blog know that we examine various things that people can do to either avoid or deal with all kinds of threats to their well-being: violent crime, dangerous weather conditions, terrorism. etc.

Over the years I've had conversations with lots of people about various scenarios concerned with these types of incident. When I talk with people who are just beginning to realize that they need to take responsibility for their own safety and come up with simple but effective plans before anything bad happens, I often hear them blithely state some one-line plan that may at best address just one small slice of the problem. In other words, a lot of people don't really think through the entire scope of the problem before coming up with their plan.

For example, problem: violent mugging; solution: shoot everybody.
Problem: natural disaster--hurricane, earthquake, volcano; solution: leave town.

There is never any mention of a plan, never any mention of determining the exact criteria to enact the plan, never any thought about the possible outcomes.

When forced to think about how they would deal with a life-threatening disaster, many otherwise rational people seem to treat it like the script to a Hollywood disaster movie where common sense and adherence to the law go out the window and are replaced with a superhuman capability to "wing it."

It used to take me a while to detect some people's ability to dive head first into Hollywood Reality at the first mention of a disaster scenario, and their preference for relying on horsepower and cool equipment instead of planning and logic.

But I finally figured it out.

Any conversation about disaster preparedness that includes the phrase, "Well, I'll just ... " is a waste of everybody's time.

"Well, I'll just shoot the bad guys."; "Well, I'll just fire up the 4x4 and head for the hills."; "Well, I'll just dial 911." (You and everybody else in town.)

"Well, I'll just ..." One of the three great examples of not thinking things through, along with "Officer, I've only had two beers." and "Honey, I don't know how that lipstick got there."