This is a re-print of commentary from a past Kansas Business Group on Health newsletter.

“Preppers,” those reality-TV characters always gearing up for The End Of The World, have a bad reputation: they’re kooky extremists praying for the government to fail, we think, or they’re the victims of end-of-days preachers stocking their bomb shelters with beans, rice, and ammunition. But the COVID-19 pandemic has given me a different perspective. Modern disasters don’t fit into the mold described by Mad Max movies, paranoiac end-of-days prophecies, or Hank Williams, Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Instead, modern disasters are likely the slow-motion, smoldering problems we’re seeing now: economic decline, a continuously threatening viral illness, and the seeming impending failure of institutions.

How do we prepare ourselves and our employees for this kind of disaster? After a Sunday evening deep-dive into disaster preparation that I’m not completely proud of (but not really ashamed of, either), I’m convinced hoarding dry goods won’t cut it. I see two big items crucial to disaster preparedness that many of us neglect (credit to ThePrepared.com):

First, guard yourself against financial difficulties. As Neal Gabler pointed out in a viral article in The Atlantic a few years ago, roughly half of Americans cannot scrape together $400 in an emergency without using credit cards. So before you or your employees buy emergency potable water containers for your basement, work on building a solid financial foundation. Companies like Tally will help employees get credit card debt under control. Most personal finance sites, like Robinhood, eTrade, and dozens of others now offer commission-free trading now to help put away even small amounts of monthly income for a future rainy day. You can consider making any retirement savings at your company “opt-out” rather than “opt-in,” a strategy that has been shown to radically increase savings rates. Consider a workshop for employees on end-of-life planning. It doesn’t have to be morbid. Make it clear that people with advance directives and wills have less end-of-life anxiety. Financial wellness is inexorably intertwined with physical wellness. As we’ve said before on the KBGH blog: given the high stakes of illness in this country, your doctor may be your real financial planner.

Second, get your physical and mental health to a point where you can handle the physical and emotional demands of an emergency. Ask yourself and your employees, can you walk far enough to get to the grocery store and back in case of a fuel crisis? Can you keep your mind clear under stress? Do you have addictions that will cripple you in case of a catastrophe? If the answer to any of those is “maybe,” now is the best time to start working on them. We should all work to make sure we have the strength to navigate our homes, our work, and our environment without the benefit of motorized transportation, elevators, and automatic doors. Encourage employees to start taking longer and longer walks from home to see if they can get to the grocery store or their kids’ school without a car. Encourage taking the stairs as often as possible (some companies even run the elevators purposely slowly to encourage this). Encourage employees to work to know that, if they fall, they can easily get back up and moving. If someone is not confident in his mind’s ability to handle undue stress, make sure they have the ability to see a mental health professional to learn coping skills for another crisis or to work toward being addiction-free.

It’s fine to indulge yourself in a binge-watch of Doomsday Preppers. But as you watch, pay attention to whether their strategies apply to you. You probably don’t need a gas mask. But you definitely need to be able to carry your grandkids up a flight of stairs and to write a check for $400 on short notice.