Last week our power went down without warning. I was working at home as usual when the radio went off and security alarms around the neighbourhood started shrieking. After the WiFi dropped I finally took notice.
Power cuts happen infrequently where I live, the power usually comes back on within an hour and life resumes. But last week was different. The previous day I’d started listening to the audiobook ‘Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath’ by former ABC news anchor, Ted Koppel, and the outage found me in a twitchy mood.
For a few moments my imagination ran away with me. I wondered if it was down to something innocuous (as usual) or whether instead there’d been a catastrophic cyber attack on our nation’s power grid.
Within three hours the electricity came back on. It had been due to the failing of a high-voltage line which had taken out power to 3,000 homes in the area.
But it could have been hackers. Really it could.
Times are changing
My imagination got the better of me that day and it’s been happening a lot lately.
In part that’s likely due to reading books like ‘Lights Out’ and ‘This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends’ by Nicole Perlroth — another essential read that details the insidiousness of cyber threats in the modern world. I’ve worked in cyber security for the last 10-years and such books are essential reading for professional development. They also scare the bejeezus out of me.
Those books, combined with the various high profile cyber attacks witnessed in recent months such as Colonial Pipeline have convinced me that other serious attacks are possible, if not likely in the near future. The compounding effects of such disruptions could alter our way of life significantly, for the long term.
I find myself trying to make sense of it all. I wonder what I’ll do if and when such disruption happens? I search for explanations to rationalise what’s going on. I look around me for reassurance that this is as bad as it’s going to get, and conclude that it may not be. I find myself awakening to other clear and present dangers all around me.
I’ve reached just one clear conclusion about how to handle it all; that it feels comforting to try and be prepared for what might happen.
Not to the extent that the preparation comes to dominate my life or the lives of those around me. Rather, I’m dedicated to expending a little time and resource on preparing for what life may throw up.
If that makes me a prepper, then so be it.
We’re all preppers
Even the most laissez-faire amongst us spend time and energy preparing for whatever the future may bring. Few would tolerate being labeled a prepper though, for doing so.
We take vitamins, exercise and eat healthily to preserve our bodies for old age, hoping to avoid illness and the ravages of time. Our preparations may be driven out of vanity as much as longevity but the result is the same. Our preparations and choices are influenced by what we hope or fear the future may bring.
We save and money so that we may be able to meet expenses that the future brings.
We service our cars, top up the oil and put air in the tyres so they’ll be ready to transport us reliably and safely on future journeys.
We devote energy to relationships in the hope of enjoying love and companionship into old age or out of a fear of dying isolated and alone.
We all prepare for the future to some extent, and in various aspects of our lives. We believe that the future will come, and most envisage that tomorrow will be much the same as today. We act accordingly.
How far does this preparation have to go before we’re worthy of being labelled a ‘prepper’?
Photo by Aedrian on Unsplash
What if?
I’ve come to believe that preparing for the unforeseen isn’t just a choice, but a responsibility. It’s one that I’ll be taking more seriously in future.
Having lived through the global pandemic that dominated 2020, is it really possible, sensible or defensible to rely on life proceeding as it always has done?
I couldn’t have foreseen a world where I’d routinely wear a face mask into a supermarket or where I’d have doubted being able to pick up basic groceries and toilet paper when I got there. 2020 showed that such things can quickly become the norm without warning.
Those living in parts of the USA that experienced gasoline shortages after the Colonial Pipeline hack would have been unlikely to have foreseen such an event — but it happened nonetheless.
Is it really such a leap to contemplate that large-scale cyber attacks or other acts of terrorism, insurrection or war could threaten and disrupt supply chains and national infrastructure? It’s happened before — frequently.
An old problem that won’t go away
I’d be doing an injustice to the two excellent books mentioned above by trying to summarize them. Various cyber attacks have disrupted and in some cases, crippled entire nations for days or weeks at a time. If you’re interested, I suggest you take a read of one or both of them. Cyber is just one threat that could disrupt our entire way of life in the short term, or even for good depending on its severity.
This isn’t a new thing though — we humans have lived with risks throughout time. In centuries past, diseases and wars were rife and people lived as best they could under the spectre of such threats.
In the Epilogue of his book, Koppel talks of his early childhood spent in World War Two England. He reflects that while Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, the nation had around year living on a war-footing before the conflict reached its shores. During that time, people prepared for what might happen.
This was preparation for a threat that was foreseen and which seemed likely — the impending danger of invasion by Hitler’s armies. While the British public had no way of knowing how, if or when the Nazis might bring the war to them, they knew they had to make preparations regardless.
They built bomb shelters in their gardens, anticipating aerial bombardment. While these were unlikely to offer much preparation against a direct hit, the preparation helped people feel like they were doing something positive, and offered a psychological boost against the impending threat.
Women and children were evacuated to the countryside in the hope of avoiding attacks which were expected to focus on cities and industrial areas. Nobody really knew if it would help, but they were doing something and taking precautions — that offered comfort.
Citizens were encouraged to ‘dig for victory’, to grow their own food. Rationing was introduced to preserve scarce resources or those that it was perceived might be threatened. People started managing their stocks of food and scarce resources before they actually ran out.
Those who couldn’t sign up for active military service still took action, arming themselves with garden tools or whatever weaponry they could find. The Home Guard saw volunteers patrolling their neighborhoods armed with shovels and brooms in case they should encounter Nazi paratroopers.
While little had actually happened at this point, people still contemplated that the worst could occur and took active precautions just in case it should. Some measures turned out to be worthwhile and effective while others were utterly pointless. People prepared nonetheless. It was the act of preparation that offered comfort and put people in a better position when the war arrived on their doorsteps.
There is little doubt that we live under the spectre of various threats today — some which are likely and others that are less-so. But threats exist nonetheless — even if we’re lucky enough to live in an area of the world that’s free from war.
Whether we choose to prepare or not is a matter of individual choice.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
There’s little point in waiting and reacting
The majority of the cyber security industry is built around responding and reacting to attacks after they’ve happened. Proactive detection of threats and risks is (for the most part) still about looking for vulnerabilities that are already known to exist, or for technology exploits such as malware that has already been exposed. In this sense, those protecting against the bad guys are always on the back foot.
Preventative measures are a bid to limit the vulnerability of technology to being attacked. Beyond these measures, companies and nations are left hoping that contingency plans and emergency procedures and preparations will help them to ride-out the disruption caused by cyber attacks.
As private individuals, prepping for disruption amounts to forming our own contingency plans for our lives.
And yet, when we make preparations for unforeseen disruptions, these often lead to us being labeled cranks, weirdos or conspiracy theorists. We’re called preppers as if that were a derogatory term.
In theory
I feel responsibility for myself, my family and my community to be at least a little prepared for what the future might bring. I don’t believe that there’s going to be a cavalry riding to my rescue in the event of the worst happening. I don’t put much faith in my government or the authorities to have this all figured out on my behalf. At the very least I want to do my bit should the worst happen.
It’s my responsibility to prepare.
I’m not talking about routinely dressing in army surplus clothing, stockpiling years’ worth of food, weeks’ worth of water or building a fallout shelter in the back garden. I’m trying to be more conscious of the things that could feasibly happen and change how me and my family live today, and to then prepare for them.
It’s about giving at least a little thought to what I might do if the worst happens and making some preparations where I can. I’m not waiting until things happen, before figuring out how to react.
In practice
Take the power cut for example. If it had happened during the evening rather than in broad daylight I doubt I could have found a flashlight or even a few candles and box of matches to restore light. I’ve now made a few basic precautions in case of future power outages so that we don’t have to fumble around in darkness.
If the water supply should fail I’m not going to be caught completely unprepared. I don’t have gallons of water stashed away, but I’ve got some bottled water in the garage, a means of safely containing water while it’s still coming out of the tap, and a way to purify more if supplies should shut down completely. I hope it won’t but if it does, I’m prepared.
If a future power cut should become a long-term blackout, taking down telephony and cell phone coverage I would previously have had zero means of finding out the cause or severity of the situation, or of communicating with my family and agreeing a plan. I now have some basic radio equipment and thanks to an irreverent and fantastical conversation with my family, a basic plan and a rendezvous point agreed in case of societal meltdown.
There are other things too — I’ve got a few boxes in the garage packed with essential equipment and dry food that can be grabbed and thrown in the car should my family and I have to leave home in a hurry for whatever reason.
I imagine these are the sorts of preparations that are familiar to those who live in places prone to hurricanes, forest fires or earthquakes. They make preparations for unforeseen events and take comfort from knowing the measures are in place should they be required. Of course, they hope they won’t be.
The brilliant Shani Silver wrote an excellent piece talking of her recent experiences escaping Hurricane Ida in New Orleans, detailing the possessions she couldn’t have done without. This is a great example of how we can all prepare for the threats that loom over us and which may occur.
Am I a prepper?
My minimal preparations aren’t likely to guarantee long-term existence in a post-apocalyptic world, and I’m not sure that’s what I aspire to really. If the world should descend to a Mad Max-like anarchy then I’m not sure I’d want to be the last man standing.
But my preparations haven’t demanded a lot of time, expense or hassle to put in place either. They give me a shred more comfort than I’d have if I’d continued to live in blissful ignorance of threats that exist to my current way of life.
If you want to call me a prepper as a result of my choices, then go for it.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Norbert Buduczki on Unsplash