Well, I probably have a somewhat unique perspective. I was in the air over Japan during the quake, landing in Asia to hear the news. My wife and family are in the Pacific NW, not the best situation. I am on a business trip and have been tied up from 8:30 am until about 9 pm with only about 15 minutes during the day to check e-mails or make calls - which is the middle of the night in the US.
My first fears were for my family as a result of:
1. Massive meltdown releasing radiation which would end up falling on our house.
2. Resulting unrest in the US due to 1, or as a result of panic in preparation of 1.
3. Social problems expanding to other countries I may be in or traveling through.
Here are my observations and lessons so far, our family education continues.
1. Knowledge really is power - don't rely on CNN. I found a site, stratfor.com that had news hours or even days before mainstream. I have an ongoing customer service issue, so I can't give a 100% thumbs up but that is another discussion. If anyone has suggestions on other sources, I would love to make a list of services/websites/etc to have on a thumb drive.
I quickly knew more than 99.9% of the population by simply having a laptop and Blackberry and the desire to use them. Having communications stuff on hand, extra batteries and chargers as well as knowing where to look and when is easy to do and is probably the #1 lesson. Without knowledge you are guessing and following the crowd - at best.
2. Take risks - act first. If you have seen the movie Ronin, you may remember the line "if there is any doubt there is no doubt." The intelligence I gathered in the initial hours pointed to a large problem at the nuke plants. The first step was to talk to my wife about their potential evacuation. We were able to make a list of things we (they) had and what would be needed as well as evacuation routes and when to pull the trigger. She was able to buy everything we needed with the exception of iodine pills. She could have picked them up, but we somehow forgot until mid-week when they were sold out everywhere. Had we prepared a list ahead of time, we could have beat the crowds by days. Better yet, we should have had them already but I didn't see how we would need them - I only considered US issues. They didn't sell out until a local news story from a mainstream news feed.
I saw videos of empty stores in Japan literally hours after the event. We bought stuff in the US before 99.9% of the US realized there could have been a problem. This isn't bragging, we should have had it on hand. No plan is perfect though and there are always things to do.
When local news runs a story, it is far too late. The iodine pills are a classic example - you can't get them for any price now. Fortunately that is the extent of the run, but it was the one thing we missed.
Basically, I learned you need to act before it makes sense to act. If you have it already or have a well thought out list you are better off as the mind isn't efficient when under stress - things are forgotten. What is the risk, what is the cost? High risk and low cost = act even if the probability is very low.
Had this been 10 years ago with no international cell phones, I would have been extremely limited and it would have sucked beyond belief. Same goes for problems in this country where the phones would quickly be shut off.
Essentially, you need to act when it doesn't make sense and you will very likely be looked at as strange to your neighbors. You will be wrong 95% of the time, or more, but it is the time when you are right that counts. Be prepared to be wrong and hope you are.
We had cash on hand and in savings for emergencies and were able to buy a bunch of stuff we will use anyway which means great protection and virtually no cost (use the stuff anyway). Acting early gives you time to do other things later or move earlier. Having cash on hand means we didn't need to go to the bank. Multiply this and you save crucial minutes, hours or even days.
3. Have a plan. We didn't have an evac plan, but something is better than nothing so get going. Likewise you could find your plan is woefully inadequate or plain wrong. I quickly educated myself on nuke reactors and determined that the family would evacuate if 1) a major release occurred or was likely to occur (as opposed to the local release we have seen so far) or 2) Social unrest was happening in the NW as observed by others evacuating, stores out of food, lines at gas stations or the slightest report of anything like this or 3) If our gut said go. The advantage we had was the timezone change, I could watch all night their time and was sleeping during their day. We had near 24 hour coverage and I was prepared to send the text at any time.
Also, my wife pre-loaded some items in the trunk (minimum equipment) as well as staged the bulky items in the garage. In 5 minutes she could be fully loaded and on the road. The car was never lower than 3/4 tank and minimum stuff was in the trunk so she could evac anywhere/anytime. We also had the hastily made written plan. Luckily we had probably 80% of the bare necessities for an evac on hand - the big challenge was coming up with a list and finding the stuff.
When you have nothing planned, or even if you have planned, small and smart actions early on lead to a huge impact on what the outcome of the situation is.
4. Don't trust the government. I quickly figured out that you can't evacuate Japan - where would the millions go? Likewise, they can't even evacuate major population centers like Tokyo. Thus, the bigger risk to the government of Japan is panic which unfortunately means suppressing bad news. I don't think the US is different, I heard calming news saying there was no threat of radiation in the US before anybody knew the extent of the damage. This isn't a tinfoil hat moment, just acknowledgment that what is best for my family is not the best thing for society in general. The government, best case, is caring for the entire country - I am most worried about four people. This means my actions are often 180 degrees from the desired action of the population.
Most governments are oriented to keep the public calm and clean up the mess afterward. FEMA has never prevented a single person from being hurt by not being part of the tragedy.
5. You are crazy. If you do the above, you will be perceived as irrational, illogical, afraid, uninformed, confused and crazy. Likewise, you will think the exact same thing about those who don't act. Only one of you will be right - decide for yourself. I actually have a co-worker flying through Japan today. Crazy.
6. Others are crazy. Find them. It is surprisingly easy to find others of like mind. There is power, safety, options and peace of mind in numbers. Imagine the difference between my wife heading out alone vs going with a second family! HUGE. Through a couple casual conversations, she found a friend who was going through the same thought process - people I wouldn't have guessed. They had their rv fueled and loaded with supplies and made plans to pick up our family on the way out. Now, we had another set of eyes watching as well as the increased capability two extra adults bring. We now have an rv, more equipment, more adults and defensive capabilities at our disposal we couldn't have had any other way.
This happened by accident, but I cannot overstate how important this is. Make a habit of asking everyone you interact with "what do you think about...." and you will quickly figure out what kind of crazy they are. You probably will be surprised. Do this constantly. They were shocked to find out we were getting ready and we were shocked to find out they were.
We plan on using this to build a list of people who think like we do. So easy to do and so important.
7. Learn from the event. Many, many lessons were learned at little to no cost so far. The biggest lesson is that being prepared could be free. If you have items stored you will use, it doesn't really cost anything. The buying spree my wife went on would have seemed expensive 10 days ago, but seems trivial now. A few hundred to a thousand bucks invested wisely makes a HUGE difference to what you are prepared to deal with.
This post is part of the process of documenting my feelings, thoughts and actions to learn from. I saved the handwritten page of nuke plant notes to remind me of how I felt when I was writing that. Human nature wants to force us back to complacency. "We freaked out and did things that weren't necessary. The others were right." should be "We acted quickly and protected our family. We knew we were likely to be wrong and were prepared to pay the tiny cost in return for huge amounts of security and risk reduction."
Document what went right, what went wrong and what you would have done differently. Do this in the heat of the action so you don't forget or downplay things after the event. Small things have big consequences sometimes. I am working on our new and improved evac plan today and will have a robust plan in place within a week.
The best news is that my wife is now 100% on board and I am 125%. My wife didn't know about iodine pills. I thought they were one of those things I would never, ever need. Perspective changes. Having the "you may need to evac the kids from radiation, you need to be ready to get to Montana as quickly as possible - be ready to leave everything we have, including family or friends that won't go" - I had this conversation with my wife who was 6,500 miles away which gave an incredible perspective I couldn't have had any other way. I could have thought about this happening, but that is so much different than experiencing it. Use that, learn from it.