Prepping for People Who Live Alone or Whose Spouse Cannot Help

Preparedness is often discussed as if every household has multiple adults that are capable, available during an emergency.

But that's not always the case.

Some people live alone.

Others are married, but their spouses may not be able to help when something goes wrong.

Spouse might be out of town, unable to leave their location, not physically able to assist sick or injured.

They may be caring for children or aging parents, or they honestly may not emotionally be able to be calm in a crisis.

You know, your preparedness plan needs to work even if you're the only functioning adult available.

So the main idea is this.

If you live alone or if your spouse or partner cannot help, your plan should be simple, visible, redundant, and easy to use under stress.

You need to build a check-in plan.

To have at least one trusted person who knows to check on you during any serious event.

Now, this could be a family member or a friend, maybe even a neighbor.

Your check-in plan can be simple.

For example, you can say, if you do not hear from me after a major storm or a power outage or some local emergency, send me a text.

If I do not respond within a certain given amount of time, call me.

If you still cannot reach me or haven't heard from me, come by or contact somebody nearby.

I can't help but think of the two ladies that we mentioned in the book that had the communication planned for checking in each morning.

And it basically was, I will have this blind raised by like eight o'clock.

And the lady across the street had the same thing.

And so they could look across the street and see if the other one was up and okay.

And if that blind stayed down, they knew to send help.

Yeah, very smart.

Just a quick way to be able to just non-invasively check on somebody and don't have to be concerned unless there's a reason.

One thing you can do is use written plans and checklists.

Stress makes it harder to think clearly, and written plans help reduce decision fatigue.