Emergencies don't come when you expect them

I heard a story recently that haunts me still, and I expect will continue to haunt me. I hope I don't mess up the details--my impression was that this event happened quite awhile ago, and this account is according to memory, with no intentional errors or disrespect:

In a rural area, there was news that some local members of the community were killed while driving a wagon over the train tracks. Everyone in the surrounding area knew the people who died, and everyone knew about the place that they crossed.

The people who died also knew about the dangers of crossing the tracks. They had done it for years, and knew that it was necessary to exercise caution because a train could hit them. They had crossed for so long, however, that they didn't exercise caution this time. Maybe when they first started crossing the tracks they did, but as time went by, and nothing bad happened to them, they let their guard down. When the accident happened, they weren't worried enough about something bad happening to take the precautions needed in order to cross the tracks in safety.

An investigation was made into the accident, and at one point the driver of the locomotive was interviewed. They asked him if he thought that the people who died saw him coming. He answered that yes, they did see him coming. When they asked him how he could be so sure, he replied, "I saw the looks on their faces."

Just like the people who were crossing the tracks, we have been given plenty of warnings that we need to have emergency preparation items and food storage in place. The nature of the emergency, whether it be natural disaster, job loss, disruption in the food supply, pandemic, or personal financial issues is at best secondary. The result of any of these or other emergencies is the same: if we don't prepare, we are going to be in trouble.

The thing is, like the people in the story, we go along and we hear the warnings, but for many, many, many of us nothing has happened---yet. Hopefully it never will, but it is more likely that there will be sometime when you/I/we will need to use the emergency preparations we have put into place. Please get all the food storage and emergency preparation items that you can gather, within your means, into order as quickly as possible. I have gone over many of the possible scenarios where emergency supplies could be needed in past posts, and most likely will continue to do so in future posts. You/I/we need to prepare now, while we can.

Some people may think about current events and think, well, the pandemic hasn't done what they said it would do. The economy isn't as bad as some said it would get. My job/company/position is secure. I have savings. This isn't tornado alley. You get the idea. Looking back on your/my/our reasoning for not preparing when we see the emergency upon us will not do any good. The actual reason we need to use our supplies doesn't matter--in the end we need to be prepared to provide water, food, shelter and security for ourselves and our loved ones, regardless of the particulars of the situation.

I still have work to do, so I don't write this as a perfectly prepared person. Exactly because I still have work to do for me and mine, the help I can give to others will be limited. Consider it cyber-begging if you will, but please, do what you can to get prepared in terms of water, food, shelter and security emergency supplies.

I don't want to be haunted by the looks on the faces of those who are not prepared when an emergency is upon us, and they have no safe way to get through it. Prepare now so that you can safely navigate through an emergency. At best, you will have no emergency, and can use your supplies at your leisure. But if you end up needing your emergency supplies for an actual emergency situation, you'll be glad that you heeded the warnings.