What Would You Do?

You've been tied up in meetings all morning, meetings that ran well into your lunch hour. You finally get a minute to slip out of your office and grab something to eat. You go to an ATM, put in your card and see the message "Transaction Denied. Please Contact Your Financial Institution." You go to your bank, but it is closed. The ATM at the bank says "Temporarily Out Of Service".  You begin to notice that businesses around you are closing early. You get out your cell-phone to make a call and hear the message "All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later." As you look around you see that the police are blocking off streets and setting up check points...

The likelihood that you will survive a long-term emergency depends largely on survival planning done today. Planning and preparation will enable you to react to a developing situation quickly and safely.

If a disaster strikes in your community, you might not have access to food, water, or electricity for several days. You may think that you will have enough time to run to the grocery store, but stores quickly sell out of important supplies following emergency warnings.

Preparing emergency kits for your family is an important step in keeping them safe and healthy during a disaster.

Because your family may not be together when a disaster strikes it is important to create a plan in advance.

Your plan should include:

• How you will get to a safe place
• How you will contact each other
• How you will get back together
• What you will do in different situations

Depending on your threat model, there are many things you may need to plan for. It's Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. As you approach your, home looking forward to a few days off, you see a police car parked on the street in front of your house. A black SUV with government plates, and another marked police vehicle are parked in your driveway. You see four or five uniformed police officers standing in front of your house... What would you do?  Do you run up to the closest police officer, declare that this is your home and ask what's going on? If they have a warrant for your arrest you'll be spending the long weekend in jail, before you can see a judge on Tuesday.

A few years ago Matthew David Keenan's Criminal Law Legal Blogs provided advice on what to do if you think that the police are looking for you.

Most of us are probably not overly concerned about being arrested by the police; but do you have a crazy ex-spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. that might be looking to cause you some problem. According to a study by the CDC, an estimated 15 percent of women and 6 percent of men have been a victim of stalking during their lifetimes. 61 percent of female victims and 44 percent of male victims were stalked by a current or former intimate partner. 7.5 million people were stalked in one year in the U.S.

If you need to drop out of sight for a few days, do you have a place to go and a plan to do so?

The U.S. State Department has a booklet, "Personal Preparedness Plan: Prepare for an Unexpected Departure from Post" that offers advice for someone who might have to leave an area on short notice.

According to the law enforcement and intelligence experts on CBS's Hunted, going on the run is a lot harder than you might think.