Preparedness Quotes

there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!

All things are ready, if our mind be so.

It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.

It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready.

Good luck is opportunity meeting preparedness.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.

Your grandma always was an advocate of thorough preparedness. She would strongly advise staying not only armed to the teeth, but well equipped in the computational department. You've been taught you should really carry no less than 5 computers on you at all times, like a sensible person.

Opportunity doesn't make appointments, you have to be ready when it arrives.

There is no such thing as luck, merely opportunity meeting preparedness. George S. Patton Jr.

I took the swab using the collection kit that I’d borrowed from Dominic who, I realized, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness.

Around Mik, my powers desert me. I lose basic motor function, like my brain focuses all neural activity on my lips and shifts into kiss preparedness mode way too early, to the detriment of things like speech, and walking.

I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us.

Chance favours the prepared mind.

Preparation doesn't assures victory, it assures confidence.

Its a memorial, I said. What have you got in there that you could possible need at a memorial? That sort of thinking is why you, young lady, have a scar on your sternum, and why my priceless copy of of the Apotropaicon has a broken spine. I prefer preparedness to a last minute scramble, thank you.

To perform you need practice, to practice you need passion.

Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is no that of a man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.

Life and death in the critical first hours of a calamity typically hinged on the preparedness, resources, and abilities of those in the affected community with the power to help themselves and others in their vicinity. Those who did better were those who didn’t wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals.

I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.

Connie drove a silver Camry with rosary beads hanging from her rearview mirror and a Smith& Wesson stuck under the seat. No matter whatwent down, Connie was covered.

But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed. --Tengo, IQ84

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

The modern world is full of pundits, poseurs, and mall ninjas. Preparedness is not just about accumulating a pile of stuff. You need practical skills, and those come only with study, training, and practice. Any armchair survivalist with a credit card can buy a set of stylish camouflage fatigues and an "M4gery" carbine encrusted with umpteen accessories. Style points should not be mistaken for genuine skills and practicality.

I feel as though I have leapt off this massive cliff and I am still building my wings… Everyone just assumes I know how to fly, but I am pretty sure I am only falling gracefully and hoping to miss the ground.

You don’t have to remind a flower when its time to bloom is near; it has been preparing for it all of its life.

No one knows the future, but the present offers clues and hints on its direction.

Because you never know when the day before ... Is the day before. Prepare for tomorrow.

Preparedness carries the day.

The degree of surprise or shock you experience from disruption correlates to your level of preparedness, perspectives, and your reliance on assumptions.

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs thus to assemble together, I want the bones to crack open under the pressure of their collective preparedness, and then I want to dismiss them to the ordinary life they love, while all by myself, quite alone, I lap up the marrow. That sounds monstrous, almost as if I wanted to feed on the marrow, not merely of bone, but of the whole canine race itself. But it is only a metaphor. The marrow that I am discussing here is no food; on the contrary, it is a poison.

A sage traveling all day is never far from the supplies in his cart, and however spectacular the views he remains calm and composed.

I'd be a dumbass if I didn't plan for every contingency.

Did you even use anything at all in that bag of yours?" "No, but I might use some of it later." And I almost certainly would, once I got rid of this crybaby and picked up my drag queen.

For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office speaking. We have been informed that there is an eighty per cent chance that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during those hours. If you must go out for reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.

We are not preparing for the world we live in - we are preparing for the world we find ourselves in.

The mystery existing between an open moment and a person's preparedness reveals the truth.

When used as a tool, fear will enhance your preparedness; when used as a guide, it will stop your progress.

Good luck is opportunity and preparedness coming together. Intention will provide you opportunities, but you still need to act when the opportunity is provided. Whenever

People who have fully prepared always save time. Albert Einstein was right to teach that if he is given six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first four sharpening the axes. When you are done with your action plans, work will be easier!

The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. - Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany's war preparedness

The rest of the question-and-answer period was pretty standard stuff, with a few hardballs thrown in just to keep things interesting. Where did the senator stand on the death penalty? Given that most corpses tended to get up and try to eat folks, he didn’t see it as a productive pursuit. What was his opinion on public health care? Failure to keep people healthy enough to stay alive bordered on criminal negligence. Was he prepared to face the ongoing challenges of disaster preparedness? After the mass reanimations following the explosions in San Diego, he couldn’t imagine any presidency surviving without improved disaster planning.

We may not be Erudite, but mental preparedness is one aspect of your Dauntless training. Arguably, it is the most important aspect.” He is right about that. What good is a prepared body if you have a scattered mind?

Why is it that at the very moment I need to appear graceful I stumble and fall like a klutz, as though this scene had never played through my mind differently a million times?

If you have a deep desire to move forward, a way is being prepared for you.

a great reason why a gloomy history may repeat itself is that we may have neglected what history did. When we neglect what history did, history visits us in the same cloth

There is no such thing as weak competition; it grows all the time.

Your responsibility to be ready for the fight, never ends.

What if you spent some alone time every morning? Call it prayer. Call it planning. Call it centering. I call it a powerful way to begin the day.

Death doesn't bother me but murder makes me edgy, and my lack of weaponry suddenly felt like a potentially fatal mistake. If we got back to the hotel alive, I wasn't coming back here again without my knife and the baseball bat. And maybe a tank, if I could find one fast enough.

Don't rush in order to have things done early. Be prepared before you set off. That's the rule. However, this does not mean that you keep delaying the time for beginning. You must begin by all means! Go, get prepared!

October 16, 2009 Avengers Paintball, Inc. 1778 Industrial Blvd. Lakeville, MN 55044 Esteemed Avengers, This letter recommends Mr. Allen Trent for a position at your paintball emporium. Mr. Trent received a C– in my expository writing class last spring, which—given my newly streamlined and increasingly generous grading criteria—is quite the accomplishment. His final project consisted of a ten-page autobiographical essay on the topic of his own rageful impulses and his (often futile) attempts to control them. He cited his dentist and his roommate as primary sources. Consider this missive a testament to Mr. Trent’s preparedness for the work your place of business undoubtedly has in store. Hoping to maintain a distance of at least one hundred yards, Jason T. Fitger Professor of Creative Writing and English Payne University (“Teach ’til It Hurts”)

Everyone deserves the chance to survive. I think of this every time I see another disaster. There are probably people dying who don’t have to.

We’d be safer with musket in a safe town than with an assault rifle in a “without rule of law” world. That may not be sexy, but it’s the truth.

Daddy always seemed to be preparing for rainy days. Maybe that’s why they never came.

Not IF...But WHEN

I prefer preparedness to a last-moment scramble, thank you.” We

While the study of war is both fascinating and necessary for preparedness, the actual fighting should be avoided where possible.

All the preparedness in the world cannot stop the unexpected from happening

Jeevan’s understanding of disaster preparedness was based entirely on action movies, but on the other hand, he’d seen a lot of action movies.

Jeevan’s understanding of disaster preparedness was based entirely on action movies, but on the other hand, he’d seen a lot of action movies. He

...Teachings are given to different men under different circumstances and in different times... [but] ...the Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever. If a parent commands a little child not to play with matches, and then commands a teenager to light the campfire, is this a contradiction? It's only a question of preparedness - one is ready and one is not.

Prior preparation is Success divided by half. Once you have fully prepared, every hand glove that obstacles wear to pull you away from reaching your destination will become slippery!

Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security.

Some famous person said, "Success is 50 percent luck and 50 percent preparedness for that luck." I think that's a lot of it. It's being ready to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.

Failure exists. Yes! Failure exists. Don’t expect to meet all your expectations in life; however, expect to do everything you must do to realize your expectations and success. These two things success and failure have in common; they both responds to uncertainty and they are triggered by action.

Then he opened the Bible Queen Alexandra had given them and ripped out the flyleaf and the page containing the Twenty-third Psalm. He also tore out the page from the Book of Job with this verse on it: Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone. And the face of the deep is frozen. The he laid the Bible in the snow and walked away. It was a dramatic gesture, but that was the way Shackleton wanted it. From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.

We should distinguish national loyalty from nationalism. National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.

It is unfathomable that black parents would continue to put their children’s future at risk by pledging allegiance to abysmal public schools when the option to drastically improve their educational circumstances sits before them. It is even more unfathomable that liberals would ask them to. Is it not ironic that the same people who claim the American workforce is racist and that black Americans have a harder time securing jobs and moving up the corporate ladder would at the same time do all they can to prevent workplace preparedness by advocating against the best available paths for education? It is too often the case that those with the loudest voices against school choice are the very same Democrats who send their own kids to private schools. Their astounding hypocrisy is evidence of a more sinister intention, I believe. Perhaps Democrats simply understand that uneducated black children transform into uneducated adults, and uneducated adults are far more easily controlled by mass propaganda than those who think critically for themselves.

Automation technologies have proved useful with regard to pandemic preparedness and response, but they can also be useful in building resilience against future shocks. Moving the automation agenda forward will be critical to creating more robust and resilient societies and achieving the sustainable development goals.

Indeed, in the early 1970s, as the first crop of Sesame “graduates” entered the school system, kindergarten and first-grade teachers noticed a palpable difference in how knowledgeable their newest pupils were. Some teachers even complained that their lesson plans had been upset by their students’ unforeseen preparedness.

Part of knowing how to be prepared comes from being self-aware—being able to anticipate what you’ll need (or screw up) and planning accordingly. I know I am rarely, if ever, the smartest person in the room. And that’s totally OK. What’s not OK is (1) not recognizing that and (2) not coming ready to participate in a meaningful way.

Our Duty is to Be Ready.

Better to be afraid and prepared, than happy and dead.

Breakthroughs don't get planned, they are prepared for.

You can’t prepare for the details of every single possible thing that might come your way in the future, because the future is uncertain.

If you wish for peace, prepare for war.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~Viktor Frankl

Sometimes things don't turn out like we would like. So it is wise to prepare for the worst. I know this sounds like an oxymoron, to expect the best, but prepare for the worst, but it isn't.

This is the real work of woman of color feminism: to resist acquiescence to fatality and guilt, to become warriors of conscience and action who resist death in all its myriad manifestations: poverty, cultural assimilation, child abuse, motherless mothering, gentrification, mental illness, welfare cuts, the prison system, racial profiling, immigrant and queer bashing, invasion and imperialism at home and at war. To fight any kind of war, Kahente Horn-Miller writes. "The Biggest single requirement is fighting spirit." I thought much of this as I read Colonize This! since this collection appears in print at a time of escalating world-wide war--In Colombia, Afghanistan, Palestine. But is there ever a time of no-war for women of color? Is there ever a time when our home (our body, our land of origin) is not subject to violent occupation, violent invasion? If I retain any image to hold the heart-intention of this book, it is found in what Horn-Miller calls the necessity of the war dance. This book is one rite of passage, one ceremony of preparedness on the road to consciousness, on the "the war path of greater empowerment.

The little red eyes glared at Prew challenging, almost hoping for some disagreement that would force Old Ike to prove his loyalty to Holmes, Wilson, the Company, and the cause, which might be Better Soldiering; Peacetime Preparedness; or the Perpetuation of An Aristocracy. Nobody could have named the Cause, but then its name was unimportant, as long as the Cause itself remained to levy loyalty.

If you know that God may soon be entrusting you with a particular ministry, then it's important that you look ahead to what may be awaiting you in the future and see how you can prepare yourself for it

As they discussed disaster preparedness that afternoon, Rick Simmons argued that Katrina showed what worked best was a central, top-to-bottom command. He gave the example of the Coast Guard, perhaps not knowing that many in the Guard attributed their Katrina successes, conversely, to the initiative of ground-level crew members who were empowered to solve problems impromptu and worked with great autonomy.

pulling a great substance from a higher height whilst leaning on a slippery ground with the mentality of having the substance whilst standing is a thought of fantasy. You may only result in falling with the substance

As the nation has learned time and again, it is American military preparedness and superiority, in combination with a proactive and prudent foreign policy, that are likely to serve as a deterrent to military conflict and prevent large-scale, long-lasting wars. Should war occur—and at times war is unavoidable—the United States must ensure that its young service personnel are the best trained and equipped on the face of the earth.

One of the greatest lessons life has taught me is that adaptability and preparedness are paradoxically linked. For me, preparedness is part of the armor I wear. I plan, rehearse, and do my homework ahead of anything that feels even remotely like a test. This helps me to operate with more calm under stressful circumstances, knowing I will most often, regardless of what happens, find some pathway through. Being organized and prepared helps keep the floor feeling more solid beneath my feet.

Whether they are at an airline or at a command center, experts will err on the side of excluding the public, as we have seen. If they can avoid enrolling regular people in their emergency plans, they will. Life is easier that way, until something goes wrong.

My father is the most genial Midwestern guy imaginable, but for him, disaster lurks around every corner—financial ruin, squandered health, pyramid schemes, airbags failing to deploy—so he tends to use fear as a parenting tool to try to goad his daughters into being more prepared.When he retired, he reached new levels of preparedness, so his car contained bottled water, hand wipes, a roadside emergency kit with flares, books on tape, a coin dispenser, and two hand towels to use as makeshift bibs so he and my mother could drive and eat without making a mess.

The moment you think you can get in the ring with the heavyweight champion of the world and bluff your way through the fight is about the same time you see your bloody teeth on the canvas and wonder how they got there. Remember the five P's - 'Prior preparation prevents poor performance!

The women of the Malesian Tales were however modelled after the lovely women of Singapore, the most urbane of the Malesian cities & the winners of the War of the Sexes.These lovely women,who belonged to a unique sub-species known as the "Singapore Girl", were spawn when the little City State imposed draconian measures in order to ensure its survival- measures covering population control, civic-consciousness, national hygiene & military preparedness- just as Sparta did during Milesian times. And thus, the Singapore girls,just as the girls of Sparta, were constantly in a state of military preparedness when it came to men.[INTRO]

Intended to sound the alarm and raise England’s level of naval preparedness, the story was entertaining, and frightening, but was widely deemed too far-fetched to be believable, for Captain Sirius’s behavior would have breached a fundamental maritime code, the cruiser rules, or prize law, established in the nineteenth century to govern warfare against civilian shipping. Obeyed ever since by all seagoing powers, the rules held that a warship could stop a merchant vessel and search it but had to keep its crew safe and bring the ship to a nearby port, where a “prize court” would determine its fate. The rules forbade attacks against passenger vessels. In

And what about this. When we’re thrust into it, we anxious folk can often deal with the present really rather well. It’s worth remembering this. As real, present-moment disasters occur, we invariably cope, and often better than others. The day after no sleep, I get on with things. At funerals, or when I’ve fallen off my bike, or the time I had to attend to my grandmother when she stopped breathing, or whenever a major work disaster plays out leaving my team in a panic, I’m a picture of calm. Dad used to call me “the tower of strength” in such moments. I also don’t tend to have a lot of bog-standard fear (as opposed to anxiety). In fact, I relish real, present-moment fear and actively seek it out.

I invite the reader to consider the possibility that we are now entering a period of hospice for ourselves and with one another. Never before in human history or in our own personal history has our full embodiment, the healing of the mind-body split, been as urgent as it is in this moment. Never before have we so desperately needed to reflect upon our lives and find meaning in them as we do now.

Principles As believers, we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Pet. 2:9). As God’s priests, we are to intercede for others so they will return to God and be coworkers in His purposes. Ten steps of preparedness for entering God’s presence in prayer are: Appropriate God’s Grace: Acknowledge God’s holiness, turn away from your sins, and be cleansed through the blood of Christ. Put on Righteousness: Appropriate the righteousness of Christ through faith. Live in that righteousness, doing what is right by keeping in step with the Spirit. Put On Truth and Honesty: Be transparent and clean before the Lord, desiring truth in the innermost parts and living with integrity. Cleanse Yourself with the Word: Before you come before God, make sure that you’ve read the Word, that the Word is in you, and that you are obeying the Word. Worship and Praise God: Honor and worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24–24), acknowledging Him as your All in All. Separate Yourself: Remove yourself from your normal environment, activities, and distractions. Find the place in God where He meets you by coming to Him with the right heart, attitude, and motives. Believe: Have faith in God’s power to do what He has promised and in the effectiveness of Christ’s sacrifice. Give God the Glory: Confess that God is the One who accomplished your atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation with Him, and is worthy to be praised. Give to others out of the abundance God has given you. Wash in the Word: Ask God to fulfill His purposes based on His will and the promises in His Word. Remain in the Anointing: Remain in a state of preparedness for prayer. Honor the Lord by reflecting His nature and character in your life.

9. HUMAN RIGHTS [70:9.1] Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society's prime gift to man is security. [70:9.2] Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are Assurance of food supply. Military defense—security through preparedness. Internal peace preservation—prevention of personal violence and social disorder. Sex control—marriage, the family institution. Property—the right to own. Fostering of individual and group competition. Provision for educating and training youth. Promotion of trade and commerce—industrial development. Improvement of labor conditions and rewards. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.

Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.

In March, at HHS’s request, several large pharmaceutical companies—Novartis, Bayer, Sanofi, and others—donated their inventory, a total of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and 2 million of chloroquine, to the Strategic National Stockpile, managed by BARDA, an agency under the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.56 BARDA’s Director, Dr. Rick Bright, later claimed the chloroquine drugs were deadly, and he needed to protect the American public from them.57 Bright colluded with FDA to restrict use of the donated pills to hospitalized patients. FDA publicized the authorization using language that led most physicians to believe that prescribing the drug for any purpose was off-limits. But at the beginning of June, based on clinical trials that intentionally gave unreasonably high doses to hospitalized patients and failed to start the drug until too late, FDA took the unprecedented step of revoking HCQ’s emergency authorization,58 rendering that enormous stockpile of valuable pills off limits to Americans while conveniently indemnifying the pharmaceutical companies for their inventory losses by allowing them a tax break for the donations. After widespread use of the drug for 65 years, without warning, FDA somehow felt the need to send out an alert on June 15, 2020 that HCQ is dangerous, and that it required a level of monitoring only available at hospitals.59 In a bit of twisted logic, Federal officials continued to encourage doctors to use the suddenly-dangerous drug without restriction for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme and malaria. Just not for COVID. With the encouragement of Dr. Fauci and other HHS officials, many states simultaneously imposed restrictions on HCQ’s use.

The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action. The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap. Integrating the world of thought and reflection with the world of primitive action is *not* a necessary skill for making great rock 'n' roll. Many of the music's most glorious moments feel as though they were birthed in an explosion of raw talent and creative instinct (some of them even were!). But ... if you want to burn bright, hard *and* long, you will need to depend on more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you *farther* when things get dicey. That's what'll help you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically. The failure of so many of rock's artists to outlive their expiration date of a few years, make more than a few great albums and avoid treading water, or worse, I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. These were strong, addictive personalities, fired by compulsion, narcissism, license, passion and an inbred entitlement, all slammed over a world of fear, hunger and insecurity. That's a Molotov cocktail of confusion that can leave you unable to make, or resistant to making, the lead of consciousness a life in the field demands. After first contact knocks you on your ass, you'd better have a plan, for some preparedness and personal development will be required if you expect to hang around any longer than your fifteen minutes. Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there *is* something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and *here*. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando—they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. Plus, to those you've received so much from, so much joy, knowledge and inspiration, you wish life, happiness and peace. These aren't easy to come by.

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

Furthermore, things began to go wrong in a way that suggested that positive thinking might not guarantee success after all, that it might in fact dim our ability to fend off real threats. In her remarkable book, Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst, sociologist Karen Cerulo recounts a number of ways that the habit of positive thinking, or what she calls optimistic bias, undermined preparedness and invited disaster. She quotes Newsweek reporters Michael Hirsch and Michael Isikoff, for example, in their conclusion that “a whole summer of missed clues, taken together, seemed to presage the terrible September of 2001.

It’s not about “letting it go.” It’s about letting it in. It’s about letting it deep. It’s about letting it through. It’s about being true to your feelings. It’s about giving your experiences the attention they deserve. And that may take a moment, or it may take years. The trick is not to shame your need to hold on to what has yet to be resolved. “Let it go” is the mantra of the self-avoidant, feigning resolution because they lack the courage or the preparedness to face their feelings. Let’s not play that game. Let’s let things in and through, until they are fully and truly ready to shift. Let’s let it grow into the transformation at its heart. We write our story by fully living it. Not by “letting it go” before its time. You are the sign you have been waiting for.

It was hard not to wonder, as Whitney put the Tesla in park, whether this could possibly be true. The nature of disaster preparedness was so weird, as no one actually knew which disaster to be scared of. Steel doors, for example, weren’t going to help with anthrax. Fifty years of gourmet freeze-dried foodstuffs, which a nearby project promised, weren’t going to fix a bad marriage.

Security is all a state of mind. At any moment it can be shattered by someone who knows how to breach it.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Always check your six. Or CYA, whichever you prefer.

All things rest and are governed by what you are prepared to do to get the outcome along with the intrinsic value required.

*2 The strategy of speaking to individuals is not only vital to the delivery of any message, it’s a useful antidote to fear of public speaking. No one wants to be stared at by hundreds of unfriendly, judgmental eyes. However, almost everybody can talk to just one attentive person. So, if you have to deliver a speech (another terrible phrase) then do that. Talk to the individuals in the audience—and don’t hide: not behind the podium, not with downcast eyes, not by speaking too quietly or mumbling, not by apologizing for your lack of brilliance or preparedness, not behind ideas that are not yours, and not behind clichés.

Federal Preparedness Agency,

preparedness to fight the aggressor generally prevents violence; and that even if the violence cannot be avoided, it is at least better to defend yourself than to surrender to aggression.

As part of our national preparedness, it will be important to stockpile countermeasures to some of the known risks, but it’s equally important to support the development of novel technology platforms that have broad applicability over a range of potential threats. We can’t always see the future. We can’t focus solely on the dangers that we can see today. And we can’t guess which approaches to developing drugs and vaccines will yield the most effective solutions.

You think I'm hot?" She gave him a slow, sensual smile. His hand dropped to her hip and he tugged her skirt up. "So hot, I think I need to do you over the sink." When he looked at her that way, with heat and desire in his eyes, she couldn't deny him anything. "Did you lock the door?" "Of course." "Condoms?" Liam sniffed. "I knew you were going to be at the conference. Did you think I'd come unprepared to service your needs?" "We'll have eleven minutes for the good stuff. Three to clean up. Two to fix our clothes. Ten to get to our respective conference rooms. Does that work for you?" Liam spun her around and yanked up her skirt. "I love it when you schedule our sexy times. It turns me on." "That's good because I planned for this in advance and left the Avengers at home.

Luck is nothing more than opportunity and preparedness being in the same place at the same time. You make your own luck.

It would have been easy for Donald to be a hero. People who have hated and criticized him would have forgiven or overlooked his endless stream of appalling actions if he’d simply had somebody take the pandemic preparedness manual down from the shelf where it was put after the Obama administration gave it to him. If he’d alerted the appropriate agencies and state governments at the first evidence the virus was highly contagious, had extremely high mortality rates, and was not being contained. If he’d invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to begin production of PPE, ventilators, and other necessary equipment to prepare the country to deal with the worst-case scenario. If he’d allowed medical and scientific experts to give daily press conferences during which facts were presented clearly and honestly. If he’d ensured that there was a systematic, top-down approach and coordination among all of the necessary agencies. Most of those tasks would have required almost no effort on his part. All he would have had to do was make a couple of phone calls, give a speech or two, then delegate everything else. He might have been accused of being too cautious, but most of us would have been safe and many more of us would have survived. Instead, states are forced to buy vital supplies from private contractors; the federal government commandeers those supplies, and then FEMA distributes them back to private contractors, who then resell them. While thousands of Americans die alone, Donald touts stock market gains. As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.

America’s dismal experience with COVID leaves us little choice but to expand the tools we use to inform us of new risks. In bolstering our pandemic preparedness, our purpose shouldn’t be merely to blunt the impact of the next pathogen that emerges, but to make sure that a calamity on the scale of COVID can never happen again, and the US can never be threatened in this way again.

The point here isn’t that the federal health officials were wrong. The point is that they were working with faulty tools, and from faulty data sets. Because health officials couldn’t test widely for the presence of the virus, they overrelied on information that they had access to, which was based on a model for flu. This is the central failing that needs to be fixed for our future preparedness.

My mother wanted to be needed, but she never wanted to need anyone else. She would be the one baking cherry pies. She would be the one cleaning gutters and painting ceilings and pulling ivy out of the backyard. This is so often the paradox of truly, astoundingly capable people. They’re never quite capable of sitting back and allowing the people around them to be the capable ones.

Teen age is the period for young folks to be tender and be thought or be trivial and embrace temptation. It is a season for them to be empowered or endangered, encouraged or embattled dependent on their choices. It is a stage for them to either be natured or be naughty dependent on their readiness and preparedness. It is an era where they are to adore God or admire evil with their all in all. A moment of grace and glory or guilt and gory for their families and society as a result of impacts they received; and timeless celebration of Eternal God or enduring shame for generations on based on their clear choices. Whichever path a teenage choices have its blessings and rewards or its dangers and subsequent sufferings. Through our teens we aged either into foolish folks or wise and responsible adults.

Tomorrow’s unknown crisis is not something to avoid in fear. It requires our attention and deliberation. We just need to have the courage to face the truth of our future’s uncertainty. We just need to be prepared.

What stops people from thinking ahead and getting ready for the possibility of crisis? The majority of people surely understand the importance of preparation…

The flags on their mics say they’re from different companies, but the plastic preparedness of their appearances makes them look like they came from the same machine.

Trust in God but tie your camels first. Des O'Leary, Under the Radar

Your response to any major event will only be as good as you have planned

This state of alertness — your preparedness in the present, in the field of uncertainty — meets with your goal and your intention and allows you to seize the opportunity. What’s the opportunity? It’s contained within every problem that you have in your life. Every single problem that you have in your life is the seed of an opportunity for some greater benefit. Once you have that perception, you open up to a whole range of possibilities — and this keeps the mystery, the wonder, the excitement, the adventure alive.

A community divided, whose ideas of preparedness involve procuring guns or fortified bunkers, is at risk. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you treat your neighbor as a potential enemy, you make him one, and in so doing contribute to your society’s collapse.

It is important to use the CV crisis as a timely opportunity to reflect on the lessons cybersecurity community can draw and improve our preparedness for a potential “Cyber-Pandemic.

Preparedness is not always about getting it super perfect. Its about getting into a positive habit and building discipline

Parliamentarism, of course, is “politically obsolete” for the Communists in Germany; but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete for us as being obsolete for the class, as being obsolete for the masses. Here again we find that the “Lefts” do not know how to reason, do not know how to act as the party of the class, as the party of the masses. You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You must call their bourgeois democratic and parliamentary prejudices prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of class consciousness and preparedness of the whole class (not only of its Communist vanguard), of all the toiling masses (not only of their advanced elements).

There must be a thoughtful, careful knowledge of what his will is and a preparedness of heart to do that will, whatever it is.

But maybe, I thought, the price of climbing Everest is now being calculated in a different way. More and more people, it seems, are willing to pay a cash price for the opportunity, but not a physical price for preparedness: the gradual development of body and spirit as you climb lower-level peaks, moving from the simple to the complex and finally to the 8,000ers. Isn’t there accomplishment to be felt in such a process, I wondered, or has high-altitude climbing forever been changed by the use of oxygen, advances in technologies, and the proliferation of services that allow the marginally prepared to climb higher and higher?

For years, international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), institutions like the World Economic Forum and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI – launched at the Annual Meeting 2017 in Davos), and individuals like Bill Gates have been warning us about the next pandemic risk, even specifying that it: 1) would emerge in a highly populated place where economic development forces people and wildlife together; 2) would spread quickly and silently by exploiting networks of human travel and trade; and 3) would reach multiple countries by thwarting containment. As we will see in the following chapters, properly characterizing the pandemic and understanding its characteristics are vital because they were what underpinned the differences in terms of preparedness.

Make sure that, when opportunity present it’s self, you are not standing on the wrong platform.

Luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity, and opportunity is there all the time.

Everyone in the city remembers the day the floodwater drained out, differently. Some were relieved, some were still in shock, some continued to look for loved ones, while others came home to devastation. But for almost all of us it was heartbreak. The city wore its defeat for days and nights on end. For a week after the floods, on the footpaths outside most homes were stinking piles of mattresses, pillows, quilts, cushions, straw mats, bedsheets and swollen rotting wood and food grains, and cars left open, even as the sun came down hard on us, making a mockery of it all.

By the way,” Christie added, “if it does, you get all the freaking credit anyway. Who cares? But if you go further out there, extend yourself in terms of your level of concern, your level of preparedness for what the worst-case scenario is, you can always bring it back. If you go short of the mark in the beginning, you can’t ever extend it.” Trump told Christie he would rather “tell them it’s going to go away. Chris, when the weather gets warm, it’s going to go away.” “Mr. President, if that happens, you’ll get credit for it,” Christie said. “You don’t need to keep saying it. Talk about it as if it’s serious, and if it gets better, you win anyway. Play worst-case on this.” Christie encouraged Trump to reframe his presidency around the pandemic as a way to inspire all Americans, not just Republicans, to rally behind him.

We fight to protect our rights. But I suspect that some of the most trying tests of our preparedness to give up our rights occur when we are thrust into multicultural circumstances for a while. Little things can prove very irritating. When I have chaired seminars that include Christian thinkers from around the world, not a little of my energy has been devoted to trying to read the different cultural signals. From the moment participants first enter the room, the cultural differences are apparent. Our Italian colleague arrives, and there are kisses all around. A German shows up, and he has to shake everyone’s hand. Some people are comfortable standing about eighteen inches from you when you converse together; others, like the British scholar, prefer something closer to a yard. The close-talkers appear pushy and rude; the scholar, who is constantly backing up, looks like he’s distant and unfriendly. The Japanese attendees enter and bow. An American member saunters in and remarks loudly, “Hi, everybody. Sorry I’m late!” He is late—by about ten minutes. But he will not understand what “late” really looks like until our colleague from Nigeria arrives.

The success of a venture requires early planning and preparedness

Imperialism is a constant state of war, and the main force of aggression and war today is US imperialism. As the leader said, we do not want war, nor are we afraid of it, nor do we beg peace from the imperialists. The best way to preserve national independence and peace and win the revolutionary cause is to counter the imperialist war of aggression with the war of liberation, answer the counter-revolutionary violence of reaction with revolutionary violence, and always meet the imperialist moves of aggression and war in full preparedness.

Though ‘planning for the unexpected’ seemed to run counter to logic, I was beginning to grasp how it might be accomplished.

Preparedness beats all other odds

Every action in the present prepare us for the future.

Humanitarian Logistics is about mobilization and movement of resources for disaster preparedness, disaster response and disaster recovery

If, through the event, Da-sein as the open center of the selfhood that grounds truth is first thrown to itself and becomes a self, then Dasein again, as the concealed possibility of the grounding essential occurrence of beyng, must belong to the event. And in the turning: The event must require Dasein and, in needing it, must place it in the call and thereby bring it before the passing by of the last god. The turning essentially occurs in between the call (to the one that belongs) and the belonging (of the one that is called): the turning is a counter-turning. The call to the leap into the appropriation is the great stillness of the most concealed self-knowledge. Every language of Da-sein originates here and is thus in essence silence (cf. restraint, event, truth, and language). As counter-turning, the event “is” therefore the highest reign over the advent and absconding of the past gods. The most extreme god needs beyng. The call is intrusion and remaining absent in the mystery of the appropriation. Playing out in the turning are the intimations of the last god as the intrusion and remaining absent of the advent and absconding of the gods and of their abode of sovereignty. In these intimations the law of the last god is intimated, the law of the great individuation in Da-sein, of the solitude of the sacrifice, and of the uniqueness of the choice regarding the shortest and steepest path. In the essence of the intimation lies the mystery of the unity of the innermost nearing in the most extreme distance, the traversal of the broadest temporal-spatial playing field of beyng. This extremity of the essential occurrence of beyng requires what is most intrinsic in the plight of the abandonment by being. This plight must belong and listen to the call of the reigning of that intimation. What resonates and spreads out in such listening is first able to prepare for the strife of earth and world, i.e., for the truth of the “there” and, through the “there,” for the site of the moment of the decision and so for the playing out of the strife and thus for the sheltering in beings. Whether this call of the extreme intimation, this most concealed appropriation, still happens openly, or whether the plight becomes mute instead and all reigning is withheld, and whether the call is still taken up, provided it does happen at all, and whether the leap into Da-sein and thus, out of the truth of the latter, the turning still become history—therein is decided the future of humans. They may for centuries still ravish and devastate the planet with their machinations, and the monstrousness of this drive may “develop” to an inconceivable extent, assume the form of an apparent strictness, and become the measuring regulation of the devastated as such; the greatness of beyng will remain closed off, since decisions about truth and untruth and their essence no longer arise. All that matters is the calculation of the success and failure of the machinations. This calculation extends into a presumed “eternity,” which is not such but is only the endless “and so on” of what is most desolate and most fleeting. Where the truth of being is not willed, not incorporated into a willing of knowledge and experience, into a questioning, there all timespace is withdrawn from the moment, i.e., from the flashing up of beyng out of the enduring of the simple and always incalculable event. Or else the moment still belongs only to the most solitary solitudes, although these are denied a grounding comprehension of the instituting of a history. Yet these moments, and they alone, can become the preparations in which the turning of the event unfolds into truth and joins truth. Indeed, only pure persistence in the simple and essential, which are uncompellable, is mature enough for the preparation of such preparedness; the fleetingness of the frenetically self-surpassing machinations is never so mature.

Those few single ones who, on the essential paths of grounding Dasein (poetry—thinking—deed—sacrifice), ground in advance the sites and moments for the realms of beings. In this way they create the essentially occurring possibility for the various shelterings of truth in which Da-sein becomes historical. Those numerous affiliated ones to whom it is given, in virtue of their understanding of the knowing will and of the groundings of the single ones, to surmise and to make visible, by carrying them out, the laws of the re-creation of beings as well as the laws of the preservation of the earth and of the projection of the world in the strife between earth and world. Those many who are referred to one another according to their common historical (earthly-worldly) origin, through whom and for whom the re-creation of beings and thereby the grounding of the truth of the event acquire constancy. The single ones, the few, and the many (not taken in terms of their numbers, but with respect to their distinctiveness) still partially stand in the old, common, and planned orders, which are either only a shell-like safeguard of the precarious continuance of the single ones, the few, and the many or the guiding power of their will.     The agreement among these single, few, and many ones is hidden, is not fabricated, and grows suddenly and for itself.     This agreement is pervaded by the essential occurrence (different in each case) of the event, wherein an original gathering is prepared. In this gathering and as this gathering, that which may be called a people becomes historical. In its origin and destiny this people is unique, in accord with the uniqueness of beyng itself, whose truth this people must ground once and for all in a unique site and a unique moment. How can this decision be prepared? Do knowledge and will have a space at their disposal, or would that amount merely to a blind intrusion into hidden necessities? Yet necessities shine forth only in a plight. The preparing of a preparedness for the decision certainly stands in the plight of merely hastening, in the end, the snowballing lack of history and of hardening its conditions, whereas this preparing indeed wants the opposite. Whoever does not know about this plight cannot surmise a shadow of the impending decisions. The decision takes place in stillness. In that way, however, the destruction of the possibility of decision results afortiori, through the impending inexorability of the uprooting. The decision and its necessity and even its preparation remain all the more difficult to perceive, the more the incidents of “world-historical” revolutions require clamor and the more exclusively all hearing and listening respond only to the gigantic and loud and allow everything in the opposite condition, even the great stillness, to sink into nullity.

The best place to be when trouble breaks out... is somewhere else.

There are emergency preparedness plans in place for earthquakes and hurricanes, heat waves and ice storms. There are plans for power outages of a few days, affecting as many as several million people. But if a highly populated area was without electricity for a period of months or even weeks, there is no master plan for the civilian population.

Luck is preparedness that eventually creates opportunity!

Some really do want to prepare themselves, and in these cases, the preparedness is primarily emotional. They want to love that baby as much as possible, come hell or high water, and to make every possible preparation they can so that the baby can live in comfort, and receive the care it needs. Beginning to care for an autistic person even before he or she is born is one way of giving that child every chance in life once it is born, and to people with this philosophy, I say: “More power to you!” Can

I’m sorry, but your friend is gone. Now, you need to get your shit together or we all gonna be gone, too.

For our purposes, the term homesteading simply refers to a lifestyle that promotes greater self-sufficiency and resilience while providing insurance against “the system” by simplifying the complexities of our modern society and our lives down to focus on addressing our basic needs. Think

Spiritual preparedness is achieved with evolved consciousness.

followers of Tao meld the way of the warrior and the sage. They want the courage and preparedness of the fighter, the luminous perception of the wise.

Steve was certainly lucky that things went this way for him at Pixar, a sideline outfit that he bought on something of a whim, that succeeded in a business he didn’t intend for it to pursue, and that made him far wealthier than the company that was his life’s true work. Ed Catmull has thought a lot about the role luck plays at a great company, and how businesspeople manage that luck. It’s all in the preparedness, he says, and in creating a culture that can adapt to the unexpected. “These things are always going to happen. What separates you is your response,” he says. Steve responded well, and that’s in part because of his greatest piece of luck: getting to work with Lasseter and Catmull. In many ways, his response to the principles he gleaned from them would be a catalyst for his later success at Apple.

Your goal as a stock speculator is preparedness, to trade with few surprises. To do so, you need to develop a dependable way to handle virtually every situation that may occur.

Are we never to educate ourselves to foresee such dangers and to prevent them before they happen? All the evidence of history shows that laws unknown and unsuspected are being discovered day by day: as this knowledge accumulates for the use of man, is it not certain that the ability to see and destroy beforehand the threat of danger will be one of the privileges the whole world will utilise?

Why is it that those of us that choose to prepare for potential hard times are so maligned and stigmatized in the media?

Not only did Russian planners have no notion of quantities needed to wage modern war, they were also unready for innovation in modes of warfare. In June 1915, the Germans introduced poison gas on a large scale. The Russians had some gas masks but they were in storage, not in the hands of troops. Newspapers reported reassuringly that soldiers nonetheless had time to take "the necessary measures." These measures turned out to be "urinating on handkerchiefs and tying them around the face." More than a thousand men then died of gas poisoning.

Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.

Chance favors the prepared mind.” This can be converted into a simple equation: Opportunity + Preparedness = Good Luck.

Command is not about gold bars on sleeves, nor is it defined by the size or role of an aircraft. Command is a frame of mind that really begins its journey after that first flight. It is more than the acceptance of responsibility; it is a genuine understanding and preparedness to be proactive.

What you are prepared to do in order to achieve what you want is the only cost involved in achieving that goal.

The differences between these two types of adaptation are profoundly important for applied physical performance in a non-sport-specific situation. For example, a deployed soldier in a battlefield scenario must often depend on his physical preparedness to stay alive. Strength has been universally reported to be a more valuable capacity than the ability to run 5 miles in 30 minutes, because at the time of this writing our combat troops are mechanized. They don’t have to walk or run into combat, since we have machines for that now. If a limited endurance capacity is necessary – and some could successfully argue that it is – that capacity can be readily developed in a few weeks prior to deployment, while a much more valuable strength adaptation takes many months or years to acquire, is more important to combat readiness than endurance, and is a much more persistent adaptation in the face of forced detraining than the ability to run, which you’re not going to use on the battlefield anyway. The stubborn insistence on an endurance-based preparation for combat readiness is an unfortunate anachronism that should be reevaluated soon.

you can’t control the luck itself, which is bound to come your way for better and for worse, what matters is your state of preparedness to deal with it.

What matters in the story of our human relationships is not whether they lead to happily ever after but who and what they make of us. All relationships are our teachers, and this is especially so in a time of societal unraveling.

We are part of the natural world and evolved within its embrace. This understanding is perhaps as ancient as humanity itself. Giving children the gift of knowing nature as their home, of feeling themselves as part of the web of life is an invaluable life resource for exploring their inner self and for developing their ability to act in this world and on its behalf. It is perhaps our culture’s break with nature, the viewing of our planet as nothing more than a collection of things to be exploited and discarded, that has brought us to this time of crisis. And perhaps more than anything else, this time of turmoil and transformation calls for a rediscovery of humanity’s place within the earth community. This revisioning of our relationship with life on earth, rooted in indigenous wisdom and shaped for contemporary times, is perhaps the cornerstone of the human initiation and evolution being called for today. For children to discover their place within the natural world, to grow their connection with it, has everything to do with their ability to remain grounded in turbulent times, everything to do with their being able to grow their vision and play their part in this upcoming transition.

Quality parenting in a Last Emergency world requires our letting go of control and trusting what we have instilled in our offspring. A part of them already knows or senses what lies ahead; whether they wish to consciously acknowledge it or not or discuss it openly with us or not, our emotional availability and love surpass all else we may be able to provide.

What, then, is the soul of community? It is a desire to be connected with something greater than the egos of other people and the projects in which we might engage with them. Fundamentally, a successful human community is the unfolding of a spiritual dynamic. It cannot be contrived or made to happen. Rather, it erupts from our desire for the depths, and that desire is certain to constellate the shadow in ourselves and the other.

Industrial civilization has held us in a subhuman state all our lives, and we now have the opportunity to discover the powers of the universe coursing through us and our environment. Likewise, we have the extraordinary privilege as consciously self-aware humans of intentionally participating with those powers in an intimate, passionate, caring relationship with the universe.

Interpersonal tensions can provide opportunities that transform an early childhood curriculum from pre-primary preparedness to sites of political practice.

Any relationship, no matter how fulfilling and restorative it may be, can always be enlivened and enriched. Regardless of how elated or deflated you feel about your work, what can you do to breathe new life into it—to make it more rewarding than it has ever been? Do you need to leave your current work and answer another calling? What is your spiritual employment, dear reader, carrier of so many gifts?

A post-petroleum world will necessitate walking long distances and exerting much more physical energy to accomplish even routine tasks than we are now accustomed to. Most of our bodies in current time are not up to the task. Yet preparing the body for living in a collapsing world is one of the most fundamental of preparations. Although we may not be able to store vast quantities of food or water, may not have our homes or property equipped as much as we would prefer in preparation for collapse, and may not have learned all the skills we would like to master, becoming present in our bodies and keeping them healthy and fit are factors over which we have control.

The extraction of deep wisdom can be done at any age, and if we are to love the time of our life, it must be. Imbedded within us is the deeper story we came to live, and the core issue at every age for any awakened human being is the extent to which we are living that story in the present moment.

During the past thirteen billion years humanity has become an enormous presence on earth, as if it were an envelope surrounding the planet. All other species are now influenced by humanity, and humanity is literally determining the genome of the earth community. We affect how the rest of the planet survives—or not. The one notion that not only envelops but suffocates the planet is that of industrial growth, which inherently fosters the perspective of the earth as a resource rather than as a relationship we must cultivate. Humanity is now being challenged to replace the resource concept with a deeply emotional experience of the earth as a being with which we are related.

For those of us who have come to believe that unless we are thinking we are wasting time, it may be challenging to simply linger with a beautiful sunset, an exquisite painting, or an arresting piece of music. The intellect often reacts to the seductions of beauty by attempting to recapture us.

I believe that the Last Emergency has not arrived without reason, nor are we now moving into the throes of it by accident. As the bearers of conscious self-awareness on this planet, we have failed miserably thus far in recognizing our inextricable oneness with the universe. Whether we can refine this innate capacity in time to prevent the annihilation of the Earth—a travesty in which we have consciously and unconsciously colluded, is unknown. Nevertheless, in the remaining days of our presence here, we can love the Earth and we can love all its sentient beings.

Wait awhile, and everything will change." ~'Griblich

A DISPOSITION TO UNDERSTAND McCune and Entwistle’s (2011) concept of a disposition to understand builds on the work of Barnett (2007; 2011). Barnett has articulated the importance of specific dispositions in order to cope with complex twenty-first-century learning contexts. These dispositions include   • a will to learn • a will to encounter strangeness • a will to engage • a preparedness to listen • a willingness to be changed as a result of one’s learning • a determination to keep going.

A man should look at what is and not for what  he thinks should be-  Albert Einstein

Cowards die many times before their deaths- William Shakespeare

The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.  Proverbs 27:12

If a person accepts that she will stumble, fall, and even be struck down every now and then, then that is a constructive view because the person will be prepared. Preparedness is not the same as fatalism.

Ed Catmull has thought a lot about the role luck plays at a great company, and how businesspeople manage that luck. It’s all in the preparedness, he says, and in creating a culture that can adapt to the unexpected. “These things are always going to happen. What separates you is your response,

To know in order not to be disoriented, To be able to seize the sense of the event, To avoid a mental anarchy, and to act effectively. - On Being Prepared

The hospital was a microcosm of these larger failures, with comprised physical infrastructure, compromised operating systems, and compromised individuals. And also instances of heroism. The scenario was familiar to students of mass disasters around the world. Systems always failed. The official response was always unconscionably slow. Coordination and communication were particularly bad. These were truths Americans had come to accept about other people's disasters. It was shocking to see the scenario play out at home.

In a collapse, there will likely be a lot more diarrheal disease than gunfights at the O.K. corral. History teaches us that, in the Civil War, there were more deaths from dysentery than there were from bullet wounds.

It’s hard to sell alertness, or general preparedness, or anything people can’t touch.

I want to sue the Burns kid. I want to sue his parents for leaving their guns so easily accessible to this punk. I want to sue the school and the school system for their lax security and shit preparedness. God knows there have been enough shootings for someone to figure out how to protect our kids in these situations. I want to sue the gun manufacturers, the gun lobby, and the fucking NRA for usurping and bastardizing the Second Amendment, turning it into something it was never intended to be. They carried and shot muskets in 1776, for crying out loud! What does the Second Amendment have to do with assault rifles? Why does any citizen need an AR15 or an AK47?

It would have been easy for Donald to be a hero. People who have hated and criticized him would have forgiven or overlooked his endless stream of appalling actions if he’d simply had somebody take the pandemic preparedness manual down from the shelf where it was put after the Obama administration gave it to him.

dramatically exposing the lack of preparedness of the international community to confront a potentially global health emergency; by awakening primordial Western fears of the jungle and untamed nature; and by feeding on racial anxieties about “darkest” Africa

Vic gave herself a mental pat on the back. She believed in preventive maintenance and maintained her equipment regularly. Without routine lubrication, the knife could have been much more difficult to open. She kept all her blades keen enough for a man to shave or to split a hair. If she didn’t, the cut would have taken much longer if it worked at all. Take care of your gear ‘cause you never know!

The goal, in other words, is not to reach specialists in the relevant fields, but rather to encourage discussion among general readers and students with an interest in the history of epidemic diseases and a concern about our preparedness as a society to meet new microbial challenges.

The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared-for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrant's greatest enemies.

Meanwhile, weeks of occupation undermined French military preparedness. The most obvious factor was the impact of epidemic disease, which was favored by warm weather and the unsanitary conditions of the crowded French encampments and burned-out houses that the troops commandeered. But a new factor—plunder itself—played a prominent part.

The worst part of being very well-prepared for a disaster is this: Now you start wanting that disaster to happen!

Like his partner, Lock believed that the more prepared you were, the less likely you'd be called upon to use a weapon. It wasn't so much the deterrent factor as some glitch in the cosmos that seemed to dictate that the one time you weren't carrying was the one time you'd need your gun.

We have been able to explain some of them, such as the fear of being alone or in the dark or with strangers, as reactions to the danger of losing the object. Others, like the fear of small animals, thunderstorms, etc., might perhaps be accounted for as vestigial traces of the congenital preparedness to meet real dangers which is so strongly developed in other animals. In man, only that part of this archaic heritage is appropriate which has reference to the loss of the object. If childhood phobias become fixated and grow stronger and persist into later years, analysis shows that their content has become associated with instinctual demands and has come to stand for internal dangers as well.

The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: 'Too late.' Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends.” General Douglas MacArthur, 1940

A writer spinning out the manuscript of a book is like a banker generating debts he knows can never be repaid. From one perspective it’s a waste of time, ‘the deliberate pouring of water through a sieve’, in Dostoyevsky’s phrase. The effort will not be repaid. From another, however, it’s an incredibly important process in which cultural charisma – intellectual glamour – is generated via a mechanism of guilt. A bookshelf is a glamorous row of reproaches. We know that there are books we ought to read, and ought to have read, because they are said to be wonderful and capable of making us better people. They sit there on the shelf, seeming to watch us, waiting for our best moment of spiritual preparedness. Yet we fail to read them. As a result we feel guilty. The books seem to say to us: – You are trivial and lazy. Your life could be so much richer and more creative, yet you fritter away your attention on television and Facebook, or idle gossip, or sports, or Olafur Eliasson installations. This guilt is much more wonderful than the contents of the books themselves could ever be, and spiritually much more uplifting. The unreadness of books outstrips their readness in beauty and in utility. It’s tremendously important to believe that there are heights which we’ve failed to attain, mountains we can glimpse in the distance but not climb. It’s almost like believing in heaven. To quote Kafka once more: Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.