"Be a survivor, not a statistic"

Here's a book I'd like to recommend! It's the kind of book that everyone should read. But especially those of us who live in "safe" little Sweden thinking that we are invincible, since disaster hardly ever strikes here. Two weeks ago a news article came out in Dagens Nyheter where it said that 7 out of 10 Swedes are completely unprepared to take care of themselves if disaster strikes. And this book gives us a billion reasons for why we should change that!

These types of books aren't written to scare us, they are meant to prepare us. In other words... we should be smart enough to collect these tools, so that we are prepared when something goes wrong. Because things will go wrong. It's just a question of when. The author, former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley, does not only focus on natural disasters. He writes about things that can happen in our every day lives no matter where you live on the planet. We're lucky not to have many natural disasters in Sweden. But let's face it, I am going to live in The United States for at least a year and I want to travel the world. Doing so without having my own and other people's (like my host children's) safety in the back of my mind is not okay.

Before this book was written Cade was the host of a TV-show called "Surviving disaster". He guides the viewers through each episode where he and a group of people find themselves in a dangerous situation. You learn how to get through it from start to finish. It's not just "an avalange strikes and you've got to figure out how to get down from the mountain". It's "an avalange strikes, one of your friends get buried in the snow, another friend gets injured, you have to spend the night on the mountain without freezing to death, you meet a bear and need to know how to handle this situation depending on what kind of bear it is". Most likely you won't go through all of this in real life, but maybe you will have to tackle one or two of these problems. And you'll be ready.

What will you do if your boat is sinking, if your plane crashes, if someone breaks into your home, if you find yourself in the middle of a terrorist attack (Breivik sure surprised us all didn't he...), if you get stuck in an elevator, if you have to defend yourself by fighting someone, if you're being stalked, if you get into trouble in a foreign country??... All of the answers are in this book + much more. I've learned so much from this and I will keep this book forever.

One of the things I've learned!

Let's say an eartquake strikes. The last thing you should do is go back into the house. But if you need to go back in and search for survivors, this is what you should do; Find anything to draw with... crayons, mustard, ketchup, chalk... whatever. Before entering a room, make a diagonal line. After thoroughly searching the room and knowing that no one is in there or after getting someone out of there, close the door and draw another diagonal line to create an X. Write the time and date over the X and at the bottom of the X place a "0". This will help other search and rescue teams later on. They won't have to waste their time going through every single room.