Prepared: A Manual for Surviving Worst-Case Scenarios
By Mike Glover
256 pages, hardcover, $29; eBook, $7.99
Published by Penguin Random House, June 2023
ISBN 978-0593538142
Reviewed by Gila Hayes
How much good are the latest guns, flashlights and bug out equipment in an emergency? Despite the pleasure of buying good equipment, survival depends less on gear and more on the mental and emotional fortitude to ride out hardship, emergencies and threats, and the skilled use of materials and equipment. I hadn’t read a preparedness book for a while, so when I noticed that a novelist I read wrote the foreword to Prepared, I bought it. It raised a lot of good discussion points so instead of opining on the issues of the day, I’m going to combine the book review with the editorial this month and share more ideas from this book than usual.
“It is not enough to have a fire extinguisher, a trauma kit, and a firearm. We must know how to use them,” novelist Jack Carr writes in the introduction. “Modern life, particularly in the West, is marked by comfort and a detachment from what Jack London called ‘the law of club and fang,’” and we’ve become soft, Carr believes, a theme on which Mike Glover, author of Prepared, has much to say.
Glover writes, “You must remember, preparedness isn’t just about survival in the strictest sense. It isn’t just about not falling victim to a threat or not dying in a dangerous situation. It’s about persisting in the face of catastrophe and being able to thrive in austere environments with your family and within your community.” Armed citizens put much emphasis on preparation for self defense, sometimes to the detriment of emphasizing general good health or knowing how and having the supplies to ride out a catastrophe like a wildfire, flood, or earthquake. Glover defines, the “only difference between combat and catastrophe is that combat is a choice, while catastrophe is something that happens to you or around you.”
The underlying principles of survival involve how we think, our actions and what we bring into an emergency. Glover introduces, “The principles of modern preparedness are divided roughly into two parts: the mental versus the physical, the internal versus the external, the intangible versus the tangible. A resilient mindset, proper planning, situational awareness, and good decision-making compose the first half of these principles...The second half includes principles regarding everyday carry (EDC), mobility, and the homestead. These are tangible tools and assets that you can imagine as a set of concentric circles of physical preparedness. They constitute the things you will need on your person, in your vehicle, and around your home to be confident that you won’t just survive a catastrophe but will thrive in it.”
Preparation is neither denial nor paranoia, but Glover thinks modern conditions have made it harder for people to cope with emergencies. “We have grown accustomed to lives full of low-grade stress that cause us to overreact emotionally. This means we under-respond cognitively and fail to source solutions that lead to improved outcomes. This ultimately leads to disastrous results when we are confronted with compressed timelines and high-grade stress, otherwise known as catastrophe.”
He explains the physiological reactions to high stress, but adds, “Often, there is a disconnect or delay between the instinct and the action, between the unconscious reaction and the conscious response. Building resilience is about bridging that disconnect and shrinking that delay as much as possible so that you will be able to act, when it counts, in time to save your life or the lives of the ones you love.”
Glover tells the story of his immediate reaction to his earliest combat experience in Iraq, and how immediately getting to work saving his fellow soldiers and himself broke through the momentary freeze of a surprise attack. It echoed the words of Paul Howe, in his video lectures on mindset that I’ve studied, when he advises that under attack and when addressing injuries in the aftermath, “Look for work,” keep fighting.
Exposure, experience, and familiarity yields confidence and that greatly reduces the stress of a critical incident, Glover continues. “The greater variety of stressors you have been exposed to, the more often you have been tested by the unfamiliar or the complex, the more likely you are to withstand a traumatic event and respond effectively.” Drawing on his combat experiences, he opines, “It is impossible for a person to fully inoculate themselves against freezing up. What you can do, with experience, is shorten periods of paralysis to mere moments. Repeated exposure to stress can help you bridge the disconnect and cut the delay between the stimulus and your response.” Create varied stressors to force adaptability and “exercise your technical skills while immersed in stress,” he advises.
Emergency planning is essential, but Glover explains that survival also relies on practicing the skill of being able to abandon a plan that isn’t working and adapt to current circumstances. “The best course of action for becoming adaptable is to have a plan for a series of predetermined contingencies in your back pocket” he writes, noting that contingency planning is not planning to fail; it is acknowledging that things can, and very well may, go wrong.
Account first, for disasters common to your region, he advises, and share the planning with family members and people in your community. Discuss primary, alternative, contingency, and emergency plans, not only fully fleshed out but practiced, too. Truthfully assess strength and stamina, potential adversaries, be that a single assailant, multiple attackers, a mob, or fire, freezing, floods or weather disasters. Understand the tools needed. The biggest problem in most emergencies won’t be lack of information, the biggest challenge is willful ignorance and arrogantly thinking you’re immune from trouble, he warns.
In an echo of one of my favorite books, Left of Bang, Glover discusses recognizing potential trouble by knowing what’s normal. If the baseline is interrupted, that “spike” should draw your attention. It may not be obvious hostilities, it might be as simple, he illustrates, as the demeanor of fellow air travelers on a Monday morning compared to a weekend flight of partiers headed for Las Vegas. “Acknowledge the spike when you see it and keep it in the back of your mind as you engage with the people around you and navigate through your environment, because if there is a threat it’s going to come from one of those two sources—the people or the environment—often in combination,” he teaches.
What to look for? “People not in places they normally would be. People doing things that no one else is doing. People not doing things that everyone else is doing. These are universal threat indicators.” Glover outlines physiological indicators of potential assailants, and comments that we arrogantly think we’re better at assessing our environments than we are. “It’s incredibly difficult for the human eye to take in a lot of textured visual information all at once and process it thoroughly,” so we fill in the blanks and sharpen the details, through the filter of what’s familiar and expected. Learn to actively observe, he urges, describing systematically scanning a grid from one’s immediate surroundings to farther out. The farther away you detect an anomaly, the more time you have to react.
Glover acknowledges the tremendous amount of detail to process, so he suggests starting by identifying exits, picking up on general conditions. Is the area clean, does it appear run down, is it crowded or empty? What are others in the venue doing? I was reminded how the lessons of Left of Bang left me wishing for more discussion of applying the principles to everyday life at home in the U.S. I enjoy that focus in Glover’s book Prepared.
Few will argue that denying danger only helps the predator, but Glover goes deeper, observing that the first tremors of an earthquake, for example, often are ignored with “some ridiculous explanation for it that dismisses any possibility of true danger.” He observes that footage from school shootings show teachers pausing, unable to accept that the gun shots are someone shooting inside the school. The big question, he posits, is “What are you going to do?” Emergencies happen very rapidly. Survival requires acting just as quickly – leaving, moving, hiding, shooting or acting on other options.
People struggle with decision-making, Glover continues, citing the “discouragingly large number of people out there who aren’t comfortable with making important decisions. They try to avoid having to make them, or they defer to others, constantly concerned about making the wrong choice.” Without practice and without having developed confidence in decision-making, it is no wonder people freeze in the face of danger.
Glover recommends a two-part solution: “recognize that you’re already good at decision-making and focus on making your decisions under stress as simple as possible.” He continues, “Survival in a catastrophe is all about making as many correct decisions in a row as possible, as quickly as possible, while being able to move seamlessly to the next best option when our first choice doesn’t work.” Lest readers are intimidated by the words, “correct decisions in a row,” Glover points out that daily life is little more than a series of decisions, some made out of habit, like our morning routines.
You “navigate and survive the chaos of modern life” without actively thinking about decisions you make that keep you alive,” he stresses. “Being properly prepared is just making the conscious decision, ahead of time, to be … better connected to those instincts, because they need to be right there at your fingertips to drive quick decision-making when it matters most…That work needs to be done and trained for as part of your planning so that you can shut out the noise.”
Simple decisions start with action – move away from the danger. Movement orients the brain to the situation, Glover writes, and helps prevent freezing in terror, starting with the simple decision and action to move. Alternatively, emotion is a common, almost default response, but it is a poor one. “Our decision whether to get off the X at the first sign of danger and our decision whether to shoot in self-defense as a last resort – these are the decisions we have to be prepared to make at a moment’s notice. We cannot be scared to make them.”
He warns that many confuse legal justification to kill in self defense with the ethical and moral components of deciding to use deadly force in self defense. “Decision-making is an essential skill for preparedness. This includes making decisions quickly, making them correctly, making adjustments when they are wrong, making sure you know what you will do before you ever need to do it, and making peace with yourself when you have to make the most difficult decision of them all. These are not easy. They won’t be painless. You won’t leave an encounter with a life-threatening catastrophe totally unscathed. But you can survive it.”
Glover’s book Prepared has a lot to unpack – including chapters discussing and listing defense tools carried daily, kept ready in automobiles, and stockpiled along with materials and supplies for long-term disruptions that are better survived at home.
Armed citizens tend to focus on one element of survival – fighting a violent assailant. Glover rightly recognizes that there are a lot of dangers more likely to cause harm. He focuses his instruction surviving for three days – 72 hours exposed to the elements, whether as the result of being stranded after a car problem, or losing your home to a hurricane or flood. He discusses basic equipment, including lists of the following:
- Medical–both immediate and continuing care for injuries
- Shelter and fire
- Water and food
- Illumination/light
- Signaling
- A bag with a strap to carry the basics out with you
- Wearing reasonably protective clothing and shoes that let you “run, climb or scramble”
- Fuel and a capable vehicle.
Be aware that some of Prepared is a sales pitch for trauma kits Glover designed and promotes in his classes, but the rationale and functionality is amply described so readers can adapt their own stockpiles to take advantage of his ideas. “You don’t have to do it my way. You can, and should, adapt your setup to what your vehicle allows and for how you move. What matters is that you have ready access to your equipment so that your capability matches your capacity to render aid to those in need,” he writes. In his closing chapter, he comments that he would love to train his readers in his Fieldcraft Survival class, but “I don’t really care where you train, just that you train.”
Glover is big on mobility and escaping to safety. Planning for bugging out must address how many people need to go, how much money you can sink into preparation, and how long you can stay outside civilization, as required by health concerns, for example. He switches to the homestead in the next chapter, observing that developing a home that is “a robustly secure yet comfortable (and comforting) physical environment with security, medical, and fuel resources” prepared to thrive for long periods without power and other services is “conscientious” not paranoid.
The jokes about preppers suggest we’re afraid of hoards of zombies, nuclear bombs, and other hostilities, when in reality, wildfires, freezing weather in normally temperate regions, hurricanes and other disasters “overwhelm the infrastructure” and leave large communities without basic services are bigger concerns.
How much is enough? Glover writes that, “The goal of a prepared homestead is not to survive the end of days; it’s to thrive every day without having to rely on infrastructure systems you don’t control to deliver all or any of the services that sustain life. That this will aid you in surviving the end of days, if they come, is just the upside. This will ensure your survival and resilience every other day—good, bad, or worse. In a nutshell, your homestead should be self-sustaining for an indefinite period of time or, if you have financial and resource limitations, for as long as you can keep it going.” He details security, with lists of equipment, but acknowledges that budget and location affect how much you can do, and he urges readers to do as much to protect the perimeter as you can – even if it is just a Ring doorbell system. The same applies to back up power provisions for when the electricity goes down for an extended period of time.
Preparations for longer periods of disruption increase demands on first aid and medical provisions, food, vitamin supplements, allergy treatment, injury treatments and other needs. Glover addresses these, listing supplies and their uses, and recommends rotating supplies so things that lose potency or are subject to spoilage remain useful.
Glover closes with advice about cooperating with neighbors to “work toward a common understanding around preparedness and security.” From an extra set of eyes to watch for disruptions in the baseline of normal to fellow-survivors with whom you can barter extra provisions for things you’re missing, there is no substitute for community, he stresses. “Community is everything. Remember that and you won’t just survive catastrophe, you’ll thrive despite it.”