Mastering Risk

Send us Fan Mail Your government sends out information with regards to emergency management, the standardized message: have a plan, be informed and make a kit.  That is messaging, not communicating.  If the government wants to be a trusted sources when the world goes pear shaped, they need to establish a relationship with citizens.  Become informed of the wishes and desires of the community - what...

Send us Fan Mail Preparedness is trying to or has taken a seat at your table.  That small set of ideas that reside in your life, so why is it there?  We explore the reasons why by examining your theoretical lens on the world, the frame through which you examine the world around you, understand events and make decisions.  You need to self reflect on who you are and how you view this world in order...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to season 4 of IMCH, where we will be focussing more on conversations with people, building your skills sets for disruptions and becoming a more informative and interactive show. Today is about the human networks, your social capital.  The value of people around you, their skills and personal resources that you get access to by meeting your neighbour.  The most important p...

Send us Fan Mail With all the preparations and craziness in the world today, we often forget that there is a limited time here and we should be rocking an incredible life, full of the experiences and people that bring us joy.  So this week we talk about the foundation of developing these preparedness plans, which is a great life that is worthy of protection.   Why are we doing this preparedness jo...

Send us Fan Mail Emergency preparedness communications are normative - they tell a story of the intent of professionals to help, all the wonderful things they have done to be ready to assist, but almost all of the communications lack positivism - they don't tell the reality of municipal emergency management.  The limitations, the extent to which they can provide services to the community and...

Send us Fan Mail There are a spectrum of people involved in preparedness, from the blissfully unaware to the dire hard survivalist.  Who are they and where do you fit on the spectrum?  What does that mean for your outlook on life?  When we think about kits, EDC and a myriad of bug out bags, why do we always think its necessary to have a kit?   In this week's episode we explore the different s...

Send us Fan Mail Preparedness costs are everywhere, the Internet and experts are telling you to buy kits, build stockpiles and a myriad of other advice, all designed to get a piece of your disposable income.  Preparedness is free, at the most basic and simplistic animalistic requirements, there is no requirement to outlay funds.  Period.  There are no socio-economic barriers to adopting an individ...

Send us Fan Mail OPSEC, should everyone know that you are into preparedness and therefore probably have some Gucci kit in the basement and tons of food when the shizzy hits the fizzy?  The reality is that most don't care and those that do likely don't live that close to you.  So in reality it is not a huge issue, but one that cannot be ignored.   Do you advertise?  Do you tell everyone? ...

Send us Fan Mail These are turbulent times, no one needs to remind you.  If you're a business owner, public manager or anyone who has a legal responsibility for humans at work, you need to consider investing in their preparedness.  In the business continuity community, there is a professional certification to help organizations and companies to build plans to navigate disruptions and to survi...

Send us Fan Mail This week we return to the basics, water.  Seems easy - bottle and store, but life makes this far more complex.  What to do when your potable water sources is contaminated and the options for purifying.  We chat about the types of contamination, reasons they occur and how you can mitigate that through the options for purification and storage.  Simplicity.  Lets not over complicate...

Send us Fan Mail This week's episode is for a friend, someone who is working in Western Ukraine to alleviate suffering and provide assistance to the IDP and refugees.  She is doing so in a confused and fluid environment.  In this episode I offer ways to identify information and fuse together a picture of what is actually happening on the ground.  How to determine where the enemy is and where...

Send us Fan Mail This one feels different, this may actually affect me and potentially at a level I never thought possible.  How do we understand the world events and the impact on our lives?  We conduct the preparedness planning evolution of considering what we would do when the most impactful event occurs.  That event is defined by you, for your family, what would be the worst case scenario, the...

Send us Fan Mail This week has been the most consequential since 1993.  Globalization has been dying since 1998, but this is the final nail in the coffin.  The peace dividend has expired, security is now being provided by the world re-arming.  What we thought was the orientation of human civilization has now been altered.  This week we discuss the mental health and reality of these changes, the ef...

Send us Fan Mail War is hell, this is for the listeners in areas of the world who far the imminent threat of open conflict, who live under the risk of conflict and for those wondering what would be the considerations for war.  We begin with a reminder that this of all times. is about you accepting responsibility for your outcomes.  Your state will be orientated around saving the nation and the cri...

Send us Fan Mail This week we chat about personal fitness, it's free and simple.   No gym memberships, expensive equipment or anything else required.  Just your discipline.  We discuss the best prescription ever offered: take 30 days, walk 30 minutes outside, eat food - that's anything with a single ingredient when your hungry.  Drink just water.  After 30 days, you will be rested, revit...

Send us Fan Mail Food, we love BBQ, smokers, pizza and all that wonderful garden bounty.  Venison on the grill and fresh berries in the hand.  Food is one of the most chatted about preparedness topics on the Internet and in Podcast land.  So why now?  A conversation about your risk exposure to the industrialized food supply chain, your risk tolerance and some interesting mitigation measures.  How...

Send us Fan Mail My contribution to the ongoing issue in my city of Ottawa.  This is not a go truckers or smash truckers podcast episode.  The truckers are used as a context to understand why our discourse is so much in need of assistance.  We approach these situations as "we need to win", out narrative is just and right.  We lost the ability, fuelled by identity politics and the corpora...

Send us Fan Mail What is the threat that keeps you up at night?  What are you afraid of, or do you look forward to an apocolypse to reset the world?  We dive into the idea that we all are preparing for something, a threat that we believe is the most likely to affect us, or we are hoping for a significant event to punish some element or portion of society.  We discuss the individual nature of prepa...

Send us Fan Mail This week we tackle the never ending debate on how much time should I be preparing to be on my own for?  Society will recommend 72 hours, but most in the community know that for significant disasters, that is woefully inadequate.  So how long?  This episode  tackles the rationale behind that decision and walks a pathway for you to follow to answer that question for yourself, consi...

Send us Fan Mail One of the animalistic requirements for survival and thriving is security.  That includes the positive control of your thoughts and emotions as well as your physical environment.  This episode talks about severance, situational awareness and all the steps you can take to become a more hard target.  This is not about walls, turrets and active shooting zones, but things that are ach...

Send us Fan Mail It's controversial.  No getting around it.  To what extent should the government's control over my ability to make a decision be limited?  Vaccine Mandates? Vaccine enforcement?  This is an important discussion that includes the pandemic but is more general, to what extent should the government have the authority to enact regulations that limit my freedoms?  Libertarian,...

Send us Fan Mail This episode we are back to the individual emergency preparedness theme, examining your dependancy on the grid - not just power, but food supply chains and health care.  How do you navigate life when the power is cut for a couple of days in the dead of winter?  Is it society's responsibility to keep you family warm and fed, or yours?  How will you maintain you household syste...

Send us Fan Mail The final, other than open debates, episode in the series takes the identified issues in emergency management, with the actors within the space and carves out a roadmap for the field in Canada.  One that does not require additional governance, or new ministries, but leveraging what we have already established and offers a pathway towards greater disaster risk reduction.  Specific...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are faced with a stark choice - there are friends, colleagues and neighbours who have made the legal, at least for now, choice to not accept a vaccination or who have opposing views on government control of our lives.  This is not about the right or wrong or vaccinations or mandates.  This is about maintaining the fabric of our society, which is the relationships that inc...

Send us Fan Mail The first episode in this series defined the problem, the second offered some institutional perspective and potential solutions.  This week's contribution is the discussion of the actors within the space or phenomenon of emergency management.  It is important to consider that there are more than the emergency managers involved in these discussions, but that they are the execu...