Carmon

Since 9/11, people have become much more inclined to seek out educational services and products related to survival and emergency preparedness. This does not present much a surprise. It seems like, since that dreaded day in New York in 2001, disaster has been followed by disaster. In the wake of terrorist attacks, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the like, we have come to realize our vulnerabilityboth at the hands of others and of nature itself. We have now come to understand that we need to be prepared for whatever may befall us in these uncertain times.

Of course the hardcore survivalists have been preaching preparedness for years but, unfortunately, many of this group stand on what, by the mainstreams standard, would be considered the fringe and thus few people have taken them all that seriously. Who has time these days, after all, to live in the woods for extended periods of time honing their survival craft while preparing for the soon coming apocalypse while they have jobs to tend to and families to raise? Not me. Likely not you either.

There are options these days, however, for the individual serious about obtaining education and training in survival and emergency preparedness. For one, there are the traditional survival schools. Some offer military-styled survival training, others focus on more primitive skills, others offer a more eclectic approach.

For example, one of the best known survival schools is the Boulder Outdoor Survival School headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. BOSS has been around since 1968 and offers a comprehensive on-site curriculum in traditional living and survival. Interesting to note, the president and CEO of BOSS is the History Channels Digging for the Truth host, Josh Bernstein.

Such on-site schools are legion as any Google search will reveal, though not all of equal quality. You probably have one nearby or within a short driving distance from your present location. I recommend such training when practical for you but all too often it is the case that such is not practical for the average person. For one, such programs offer their training curricula on-site and this usually involves an absence from both work and home for, oftentimes, an extended period of time. Second of all, such programs tend to be quite expensivebeyond the reach of the average consumer. Third, the programs tend to focus solely on wilderness survival skills or general emergency preparedness, standard curricula rarely bringing the two together.

For emergency preparedness education and training, there are programs out there, perhaps one of the better known is the Community Emergency Response Team program (CERT). CERT training is typically sponsored by local civic groups (police departments, fire departments, etc.) and the training tends to focus on disasters that are likely to occur within a specific community or localized geographic context.

A recent development in survival and emergency preparedness education and training has been that of the implementation of a comprehensive online curriculum. Via online education and training more people than ever before now have access to a complete and comprehensive curriculum in both wilderness survival and emergency preparedness. There is only one company out there right now filling this niche, and I am very happy to be part of it. It is likely that this will be the new trend in survival training and emergency preparedness education for years to come. Though such training does not replace actual hands on learning, it definitely augments it and places such education in the hands of individuals who otherwise would not have access to it and it does so affordably.

For those of you interested in survival training and emergency preparedness, you have at your disposal today many options. There are books, there are videos, there are on-site training programs, and now online curricula. Research the various options and decide on which one best suits you and your particular goals and needs. But, by all means, prepare yourself. Your life or the life of your family may one day depend on it!

Copyright 2007 by M. Shane Huey. All rights reserved.

M. Shane Huey is Director of Curriculum Development and an instructor with Global Survival Technologies. http://www.globalsurvivaltech.com