Prepared: A Manual for Surviving Worst Case Scenarios

This week’s book is…a new release. Yep….I broke my no book buying rule. As penance, I am moving my book deadline to July of 2024 for new books. Not feeling really confident on that, but that’s a problem for future Katrina. On to this week’s book of the week, which is Prepared: A Manual for Surviving Worst Case Scenarios by Mike Glover. The accompanying cocktail is the Doomsday Cocktail and is 2 oz of Rum, ¾ oz Lime Juice, 1 oz simple syrup, ½ oz Fernet and 6-7 fresh mint leaves. So let’s do this.

Now…this book is not actually about doomsday prepping. I picked the cocktail because a google search for prepper cocktail talks about stocking up on water, which is covered in the book and is of course important. And prepared cocktails return bottled pre-made cocktails. Plus, as is addressed in the book, the prepper lifestyle has been sort of mocked in the media as “doomsday preppers” and Glover is working on flipping that script to a more nuanced practical approach to being prepared.

So, first off, author Mike Glover comes at the topic as someone who has been prepared since his time in Special Forces with the US Army. And the book is peppered with stories from his time in the military. And the first several chapters of this book have to do with mental preparedness vs physical preparedness. Because being prepared starts with the mind.

Like chapter 1 is literally called The Resilient Mindset. And Glover calls out something that Gen X has been saying about millennials through gen Z: They are weirdly spongy and soft when it comes to resilience. And Glover breaks down what happens physiologically when the body is under stress. And then goes into detail how training and practice can help one overcome that autonomic stress response. It was particularly interesting because he includes the almost never talked about but far more common survival response of freeze. Everyone talks about Fight or Flight. But in order of most likely, Flight is first…then freeze…then fight. Although the freeze response is not widely studied in humans, it should be. The difficulty there is, humans are so rarely in a situation where they are faced with the life altering decision of flight, freeze, or fight.

Exposure to stress will help you overcome that automatic shutdown that stress induces. Now…while most of Gen X has probably read this chapter and nodded along like “yes…I have worked in retail customer service; I do understand how stressful other humans can be…unlike Gen Z who has lived a pampered sheltered life” Glover is using genuinely stressful situations to explain what’s going on and why one might freeze. Situations like…the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. Real easy to say you’d choose to fight when you haven’t actually had bullets coming down range at you. And the fact is, until you are genuinely in that do or die, life or death situation, you don’t know how you’ll react. And being yelled at by an angry customer might give you a small adrenaline jolt, but it’s not quite the same thing.

So, short of entering the armed forces and seeking out combat situations, what can you do to help yourself become accustomed to the kind of adrenaline dump that means “Oh shit…this is really real!” Now is where the angry Karen in customer service DOES help a bit. Because if you become used to the adrenaline dump, to the exposure to stress and discomfort, then you become used to making a decision. And it’s making a decision that keeps you moving into flight or fight and out of freeze mode. But not just stress. Glover specifies you need discomfort too. And recommends if you already train with firearms, switch it up. Practice moving and shooting. While he doesn’t specify three-gun competitions, I can only imagine that is some really good training for non-combatants to both get you used to firearms, and raise your adrenaline, get you used to moving with firearms. Because a three-gun competition will provide you with variables that are outside your control, while giving you the heavy dose of adrenaline that only pre-competition nerves can provide. And as is repeated a couple of times in the book…you will never rise to the occasion. But you will always fall to the level of your training.

If you hate the cold, start doing cold plunges. If you hate the heat, spend time in a sauna. Or in my case…I can just step outside in that hot NV summer…. god I wish I could have moved to New Hampshire.

Anyway, when the stress of your environment…whether it’s the cold plunge or the dry sucking sauna heat…starts to weigh on you, conscious breathing and positive self-talk. And then once you’re comfortable with it, you have to know how to pull yourself out of it. Training resiliency is step one. And most of us…just aren’t. We have spent too long embracing victim culture, and if you identify as a victim, there is nothing resilient about you. You have to flip that internal script from “I’m a victim.” To “I survived X.” Whatever X may be.

But, just as an aside here, this is not addressed in the book. You have to stop lying to yourself. If you’ve never actually BEEN a victim, then saying you survived is not going to prepare you for shit, because whatever you might say happened to you on social media, your parasympathetic nervous system knows the truth, and knows if you’re a fraud. Just…just throwing that out there.

Glover covers the importance of planning, and building in redundancies of planning, using something most people can absolutely relate to, the fear of a house fire wiping out everything. But what’s more important? Saving the family photo albums? Or saving the family?

He covers situational awareness, what it is, and how you can develop it. This, like resilience, is something most people think they have, and most are dead wrong about. You have to look for what doesn’t fit the pattern. He includes hypothetical situations and stories from his time in the military, but it made me think of my own moment of extreme situational awareness, about 15 years ago when I was taking a language class at night at the University. Class got out at like 8pm and I would call my then boyfriend now husband and we’d talk on the phone while I walked to my car. And I always parked in the same off campus lot, which was a quarter mile away, but free parking. And one night I’m walking to the car and the boyfriend/husband is talking and some part of my brain catches a noise behind me, and I half turn and there’s a guy behind me, that had not been there a few minutes ago. And the only place he could have come from was this culvert I had just crossed over. I told my boyfriend to stop talking, told him there was someone behind me, gave him the street I was on, where my car was parked, and how far I was from the car. Then we both got real quiet and I sped up my walking, until I was safely in my car.

Now, I am well aware that there is a 99.99% chance that it was just another student, who had come from a different class and happened to park in the same lot I did and cut through the culvert because it was a shortcut to the parking lot and their risk assessment of the culvert was different from mine. Like, statistically, that’s exactly what it was. But what about that .01% chance that it was someone who had seen me park there the last few weeks, knew I was always on the phone walking back, and thought I might be a bit distracted on the phone and hence an easy target? I am very relieved I will never know. I started parking on campus in paid parking, and literally never thought about it again…until I read this book.

Glover covers how to make the decision to act and how to build the mental resilience to recognize the moment to act. And the importance of acting the second you see the need. Get off the X he calls it. Just move your ass before the possibility of freeze sets in. Even just moving, even if you’re not doing anything BUT moving, can keep you from freezing at a critical moment. And flight is infinitely better than freeze or fight. Fighting should really be the last possible resort. And this is coming from Army Special Forces.

He covers the importance of everyday carry, EDC, which is not JUST having a legal CCW if required, but the things you should carry with you to be medically prepared. At a bare minimum, nitrile gloves, bandages, and a tourniquet. Because you are far more likely to need those things then to need a firearm, taser, or pepper spray, all of which are covered in this chapter.

And while this book is NOT about doomsday prepping, the last two chapters do cover the need to bug out, like for example in case of natural disaster or civil unrest, like in the case of Hurricanes or rioting, and how to best prepare for bugging out. And how to homestead for your best chance at thriving in case of natural disaster or civil unrest. I told my husband that while he should read the whole book, he must read the last chapter, at least. Because honestly, unless you have the mental preparation for a sustained live-off-the-land situation or somewhere to bug out to, homesteading is your best chance at surviving a doomsday scenario. And Glover includes how you can thrive in a doomsday scenario. Because as he points out, man kind is a social species. We truly don’t do well in a vacuum. So, it’s not just about “finding your tribe.” It’s about making a tribe of those who are around you already.

I especially like this idea, given how wildly divided America has become over the last decade. He talks about getting to know your neighbors NOW, before mutual survival becomes a do or die situation. Because under the stress of the end of the world is not the best time to build neighborly fences.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on July 9, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.