There are a lot of positive and negative views related to disaster preparedness. A lot of people feel that it is completely unnecessary and that anyone doing it is a crazy “prepper.” Others see it as putting a little back “for a rainy day.” Between these is a lot of middle ground filled with people wanting to protect and provide for their families both in good and bad times.
While there are people that take it to the extreme, having the right stuff to secure yourself and your family in troubling times is a part of being responsible. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” In the end, you are the one that needs to control your outcome, not the government, Red Cross, or the military. Some people feel like it is their right for these groups to show up and take care of them no matter what.
The problem with people feeling that someone will “come save them” is that the severity of the disaster is inversely related to how quickly help can get to you. Have a power outage in your neighborhood and you will have a power company employee out there fixing it within a few hours. Have a widespread outage due to an ice storm and you can count on it taking much longer. Ramp the disaster up to a full blown society ending event and no one is ever coming to help. While our planning levels say the latter is much less likely, you can still end up somewhere in the middle that strands you helplessly in a sea of refugees.
One example that is burned into everyone’s recent memory in the United States is the issues that resulted from Hurricane Katrina. Estimates state that 400,000 people were displaced by the resulting floods and damage. The relief agencies that sprang to help were, at best, overwhelmed and, at worst, horribly mismanaged. People were stranded without clean water, food, and basic sanitation. Unfortunately most of these people had no plan. That left them at the mercy of this situation.
While your specific reasons for preparing are varied and personal, overall it comes down to taking responsibility for yourself and your family. Some peoples’ idea is that they have the right to be taken care of. History shows that in the worst of times taking care of yourself is the only thing you have control of.