No time like the present to prepare for tomorrow

The other day when it had snowed a few inches and I was planning on staying home snuggled up with a book, my mom decided that she wanted to get out of the house. A Wal-mart trip was planned because she needed a few things. The roads were a little slippery, but not too bad. I was surprised by the amount of cars in the parking lot. Usually there are hundreds, but on this particular night there were about fifty, give or take a few. I was even more surprised by the items that were placed strategically at the door. Rows of candles, shelves of flashlights, lanterns, little containers of propane, numberless batteries, and other materials one might need in case of an ice storm or other natural disaster.

Shouldn't people already have these things? Why do people wait till there is actually a disaster to buy things that will help them survive? Do they think that it will be like normal and they will be able to just hop into their cars and get what they need at the store? But what if they can't? What if a Earthquake destroys the roads like in Haiti ? It is true that a earthquake that big might never happen here, but there are other natural disasters that could. Such as a ice storm. Like the one that hit a few years back.

During that ice storm, it was close impossible for anyone to go anywhere. Ice on the roads, trees and power lines that had fallen, and the possibility of tree branches falling at any moment all made driving very dangerous. Power was out for most of the city. If people needed food, batteries, flashlights, blankets, generators, or even fire wood, they would have to risk the dangerous driving conditions and possibly have to drive all around town to find a store that was not sold out of the things that they needed.

I wonder why these people were not prepared. Or that they don't seem to learn their lesson. We never know when a disaster is going to hit or how serious it will be. Why wait to prepare for something that we don't know is going to happen? We should be more like the Doe-Doe birds in Ice Age the movie. "Prepare for the ice age!" as they would say. I don't think that we should be quite that obsessive about preparing, but we should take it seriously and not wait till the last minute.