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" For the past few years, researchers at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania have been running a computer simulation to study how people choose to prepare for potential natural disasters. The simulation, called Quake, is a multiplayer game. All participants start out with a hypothetical $20,000 in cash and a house, and as the game progresses, they must make decisions about how to use their money. A player can leave that money in the bank, earning a Madoff-like guaranteed annual return of 10 percent, or pay for structural improvements to help the house withstand an earthquake. The winner is the player with the highest net worth\u2014cash plus the value of the house\u2014at the end of the game, usually 10 virtual years. Nearly everyone chooses to keep the money in the bank. The strange thing about this result is that the researchers, Howard Kunreuther and Robert Meyer, warn the players that quakes are highly likely\u2014the game, after all, is called Quake. But players cling doggedly to that promised 10 percent rate of return. On occasion, the lab team has even told one of the players that the only way to win was to put the money into the house. Even then, he would typically delay for a couple of years, hoping to cash in before doing the home improvements. Then, predictably, an earthquake would come and wipe everyone out. Before Trouble Strikes The Quake study falls into the field of behavioral economics, in which over the past 30 years it has been determined that people often fail to make rational economic decisions. In general, it seems, people are too eager to lock in financial gains and too willing to gamble that losses will never materialize. If this is unfortunate when it comes to retirement savings, it is positively dangerous in a world riven by natural and man-made disasters. &amp;quot;People might be aware that there are going to be hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes,&amp;quot; Meyer says, &amp;quot;but they think the actual damage is something that happens to other people.&amp;quot; After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a devastating midwest tornado season in 2008 and deadly flooding in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky this past May, public awareness of disasters is surely at a high point. A 2009 Red Cross study found that more than half of all Americans had personally experienced an emergency in which they&amp;#039;d either lost power for three days, had to evacuate or had to provide serious first aid to others. Yet the same survey found that only 12 percent of Americans had taken adequate disaster-preparedness steps.  However, as the 12 percent who do plan ahead can attest, most disaster prep is pretty straightforward stuff. Jeff Swiney, a towboat pilot from Lafayette, La., has seen three major hurricanes hit his home in the past 10 years. His strategy for weathering storms is easy to execute because everything has been fully planned out in advance. &amp;quot;Nothing&amp;#039;s basic when a hurricane is blowing down your house,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;By then it&amp;#039;s too late, and that&amp;#039;s when you see people fighting for the last bag of Doritos at the grocery store.&amp;quot;  Once a person decides to take disaster preparation seriously, the first step is to assess the spectrum of threats. How would each type of disaster affect everything, from the structure of your home to the contents of your fridge?  From there, planning breaks down into two broad areas: general measures that apply to any situation, and targeted tasks to protect against specific threats such as wildfires or hurricanes.  On the general side of the ledger, survival experts suggest that families plot escape routes and make sure that they know how to contact one another in a crisis. It makes sense to list all of the critical systems that support your daily life and home (hot-water heater, boiler, water pump, phone, electricity, Internet) and learn how they work. Then you can create a backup plan in case they fail.  Once an immediate threat has passed, the survivors of any natural disaster need to focus on securing warmth, water and food\u2014and it doesn&amp;#039;t have to be difficult.  The Next Day Heat and electricity sound like two different challenges, but both needs can be satisfied by a generator and fuel. During almost any natural disaster, the power may go out and stay out for a while. In such a situation, generators can seem like miracles. In warm climates, a backup generator keeps food cool and your lights and a/c running. In cold weather, generators can power either electric space heaters or fuel pumps to keep oil burners running. But you can&amp;#039;t just buy any generator, stick it in the garage and expect to reap the benefits when the lights go dark. Selecting and using this machine is an exercise in load management. Before you shop, figure out which household appliances you want to keep running, the electrical load (in watts) that each one draws and how many hours per day they need to operate. Many retailers feature generator calculators to help you pick the right model.  Once you get the generator home, be sure to operate it safely. To avoid carbon-monoxide poisoning, never run a generator in an enclosed space\u2014set it up outside and away from open windows and a/c vents. Large generators work best when wired directly into your home&amp;#039;s circuitry. Consider hiring an electrician to install a transfer switch so you don&amp;#039;t have to plug individual appliances in separately. After shelter, water is the most pressing need in times of disaster. Most of us can&amp;#039;t survive more than three days without it, and natural disasters often knock water-treatment plants off-line. During floods, contaminated water can also back-flow into household water pipes. That means that an army of microbes is just waiting to infect your gut at exactly the time when local hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed. Treating water is easy: Strain it, then boil for 1 minute or treat with chlorine bleach (1 tablespoon for 10 gallons) and you&amp;#039;ll kill off most pathogens. But it&amp;#039;s better to think ahead by keeping a three-day supply of bottled water (1 gallon per person per day) on hand. Cody Lundin, survival instructor and author of When All Hell Breaks Loose, takes it a step further. If disaster looms, he suggests filling everything in the house\u2014from bathtubs to 1-gallon zip-lock bags\u2014with tap water before contamination begins. Food is the least essential of the survival essentials. People have been known to survive three long weeks without food. But who wants to go through that kind of suffering? As with water, it&amp;#039;s relatively easy to build up a supply of food just by buying some extra dried beans, Campbell&amp;#039;s soup and dried fettuccine every time you shop. Soon you&amp;#039;ll be stocked up with little pain to the billfold. If you&amp;#039;ve lost power, open your fridge only when you absolutely need to and your food will stay pretty cold\u2014especially if you can power it for a couple of hours every day with a generator. If you have time before the bad weather hits, organize your fridge, putting the most perishable food toward the front, and save the stuff in the freezer for last. Securing your heat, water and food may be the starting point of disaster prep\u2014but turning your home into a real bulwark against disaster takes more effort. Study FEMA maps to determine the disaster profile of your area and learn as much as you can about how floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other dangerous events can affect your house and neighborhood. Then invest your time, energy and money accordingly. You might build structural reinforcements in case of an earthquake or practice smart landscaping to defend against wildfire\u2014such measures are detailed elsewhere on these pages. And remember the lesson of Quake and simi\u00ADlar studies: When it comes to natural disasters, the biggest risk is assuming that they can never happen to you. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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