Risk and hazard assessment for preppers
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
― John A. Shedd
Nature is a tide of kindness and cruelty.
The search for guaranteed shelter, protection and safety usually leads to a cage, a path often taken by those blind to the natural winds of change. Those who desire sovereignty must skilfully navigate the invisible forces of risk, else fall victim to the treacherous herding of the rulers and principalities of darkness.
Managing risk has become a standard competency in the technical realm, but is now a mandatory skill for those wishing to survive the flood of degeneracy, corruption and treason. The world to the naked eye is a masquerade, but that does not make the invisible forces of change any less real.
Thus arises the need for a generalized and simple system for individuals, families and communities to evaluate tangible and intangible hazards.
Fortunately, such system already exists.
An “occupational hazard” is any workplace condition that causes a risk to employee health.
In the above quote, occupational refers to workplace and employee.
The word health traditionally refers to the absence of disease or infirmary, but is modernly described as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.
Today, three types of definition of health seem to be possible and are used. The first is that health is the absence of any disease or impairment. The second is that health is a state that allows the individual to adequately cope with all demands of daily life (implying also the absence of disease and impairment). The third definition states that health is a state of balance, an equilibrium that an individual has established within himself and between himself and his social and physical environment.
— The Meanings of Health and its Promotion, Norman Sartorius (Aug 2006)
The generalized concept of hazard is thus a condition that causes an impairment to an individual’s ability to cope with the daily demands of life.
The above definition of health is influenced by the Constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO), which through its protection, designates itself as the arbiter of a healthy life. Delegating risk and hazard assessment transfers your ability to cope with the demands of life to a faceless multinational entity.
Is this guaranteed shelter the treacherous guise of a monster from the deep?
To better understand invisible hazards that impact our ability to cope with the demands of life, we can examine a field dedicated to qualifying and quantifying imperceptible hazards to human health. Health physics, also called radiation protection, is a branch of biophysics that deals with the safe use of radiation in research, military and commercial applications.1 Health physics provides a unique definition of danger as a modification to the traditional concept of risk.
Traditional risk is defined as:
This definition is used throughout mathematics and engineering, but also makes an appearance in risk management processes (with minor modifications).
For mathematical and engineering applications, the probability is usually modelled as a distributed function that can be multiplied to represent sequential probabilities, or added to represent disjunctive events. In more complex models, these probabilities take the form of Markov chains that model sequences of events.
For risk management applications, the probability is often discretized as low
, medium
or high
, and sorted with a unique identifier to establish management priority. This is typical in complex projects or business operations.
Health physics has a different perspective.
The mathematical and engineering treatment is not appropriate for a management or supervisory tasks, because a detailed model is simply not feasible in an direct execution environment. The risk management method is also lacking, because an additional avoid, transfer, accept or mitigate strategy is still required. Health physics provides a solution to these issues by factoring out a distinct component from the probability, which forms the definition of danger.
The functioning premise behind danger is that it can be managed by monitoring and controlling the level of exposure to a hazard.
Assume a hazard and its probability cannot be directly controlled.
Then the most effective form of safety management is to place multiple barriers between a hazard and its affected targets. Normally the affected target is humans, but also includes equipment and the environment. Barriers in the context of radiation protection are typically safety equipment, physical barriers, processes, procedure, etc.
The concept of multiple overlapping barriers is called defence in depth.
e.g., Fission products in nuclear fuel have the following barriers.
Ceramic pellet fuel design has a high temperature tolerance and fail safe geometry.
(i.e., Prevents material from dislodging into the coolant.)Fuel is protected by a zirconium sheath, a radiologically stable metal.
(i.e., The sheath is structurally sound, even in the event of an accident.)Nuclear material is kept within the heat transport coolant system.
(i.e., Submerged in water within a high pressure steel pipe.)All nuclear processes are housed in a containment building.
(i.e., A building with negative pressure made of thick steel and concrete.)The nuclear site is fenced 1 km (minimum) from the public.
(i.e. The site exclusion zone.)These are the five barriers that protect the public from radioactive material, but this is just one of many systems. The benefit of this layering technique is that if one barrier fails, then the others still mitigate exposure to the hazard.
The IAEA provides an abstract formulation in relation to organization, behaviour, planning and design. However, this is again relative to nuclear safety.
Prevent deviations from normal operation.
Detect and control deviations.
Incorporate safety features, safety systems and procedures to prevent core damage.
Mitigate the consequences of accidents.
Mitigate radiological consequences.
— Defence in depth in nuclear safety, Nuclear Engineering International (Jan 2013)
The most common visualization?
The Swiss Cheese visualization illustrates how holes in one barrier are covered by other overlapping barriers. Barriers are designed with high tolerances to avoid failure, but in such event, the barrier fails safe due to redundancy, separation and independence. These barriers may not be physical, and are often used in quality assurance programs to manage defects. Barriers in this case are verification processes that redundantly overlap in the event a defect is missed in one process.
This methodology is not restricted to nuclear processes.
Take for example the cold hazard in northern climates.
The cold hazard can be managed using overlapping barriers such as:
Shelter.
(i.e., Eliminates wind, rain and snow, and adds R value.)Insulation.
(i.e, Increases R value.)Furnace.
(i.e., Increases temperature in a shelter to health, safety and comfort levels.)Backup heat.
(i.e., An alternative heat source to support 3. in extremes or if 3. fails.)Clothing.
(i.e., Increase R value against the body.)
In Canada, this is a typical strategy, because of our 7th level of Hell cold winters. A compromised barrier allows for mitigation through the overlapping of another, but no single barrier can sufficiently manage the hazard on its own.
Any system using a single barrier has a single point of failure.
The health physics philosophy is very powerful. Within it, your clothing and even your skin are considered barriers that protect you against hazards. Of course, there is a critical corollary that must be considered in light of recent events.
Anything that breaks the skin or can be ingested has the highest danger level.
This includes food and needles.
Wink.. WINK.
For the production and public sale of these items, the barriers in place are standards, quality assurance programs, regulatory oversight, publicity and a well-informed responsible consumer.
With respects to food and medicine, how well are these barriers holding up?
Not everything impacting our ability to cope with the demands of life is physical.
Some hazards are mental, which is interestingly the case for censorship. However, censorship blocks critical information needed for consensual decision making. Thus, a balance is required that allows us to disregard and filter toxic information, while having access to a wide variety of perspectives.
That decision cannot be made by a centralized authority.
The most dangerous hazard is the one not identified, which is why consideration of “not possible” or “not necessary” scenarios is a critical component of any assessment. The thought terminating clichés that label ideas as misinformation or disinformation consequently skips thorough semantic analyses.
When it comes to public health and safety, this approach is simply unacceptable.
What can we do as individuals?
Based on the above description, there is an area we can closely manage, which includes hazards from the state, corporations and economic / financial disruptions. If we entertain the heuristic that the best medicine is food, then our focus is to develop a defence in depth strategy for our food and energy supply.
This is often a topic I write about, because it really is that important.
But never forget, good health also requires good hygiene.
What about water?
Is there a hazard on the half of every transaction?
A hazard so pervasive it affects each individual human life?
Is it possible to avoid this hazard?
Mitigate it?
Transfer?
Or can it only be accepted?
Can we reduce our exposure to it?
Understanding the financial system and managing its single point of failure should be top on everyone’s priority list. Based on the functional definition of money, consider using the HVT method in your preparations, as described in the article below.
Think about how you can develop your defence in depth plan for hazards emerging in this new world. Learn to identify hazards by entertaining alternative sources of information and perspectives.
Consider the techniques described in my previous articles.
Please share any information you find valuable.
We are in uncharted waters.
The resiliency of our human family depends on the resiliency of each individual.
Do your part by protecting yourself and your loved ones.
Learn to protect yourself from monsters in the dark waters ahead.
They’re hiding, just beneath the surface.
Baes, F. (2016). What is the difference between health physics and medical physics? Health Physics Society. https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/definitionofhealthmedicalphysics.html