I’ve been preaching emergency preparedness for a while now, and have even published a number of papers on things like writing contingency plans and business continuity. I’ve given talks on the importance of readiness at professional conferences and for the local Red Cross. For some reason, though, the topic suddenly seems to be EVERYWHERE!

My friend and co-author John Hedtke has a new book out called “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Preparedness” (co-authored with Maurice Ramirez).

And just this week, I got TWO magazines that have survival as the theme for the October issue! The entire October issue of Popular Mechanics is devoted to “Beyond Survival: How to Live Through Any Disaster”. You can read part of it online, especially the article “Ready for Anything” by Glenn Reynolds. And yeah, that’s the same title I used for the talk on business continuity that I gave at the Montreal IEEE/PCS conference.

Then just yesterday I got the October issue of Reader’s Digest, again devoted to the overall theme of “How to Survive Anything!” It looks like they won’t be updating their website with October content until October, so you’ll have to take my word for it for now (or check it out at your local magazine store).

So while I’m delighted to see more people talking about preparedness, I have to wonder at the timing of it all. And yeah, I’ll be backing up my hard drives this afternoon, and stocking up on staples like bottled water and Famous Amos cookies.