I’m certain my wife thought “OK, sweet husband,” and wanted to pat me on the head. “No seriously,” I say, “we should probably get some plastic sheeting in the event we need to cordon off portions of our house in case we need to self-quarantine during a pandemic. We’ll also need lots of disinfectant and things like N95 masks.” It was 2017; years before COVID-19. COVID-19, by the way, is and continues to be, terrible. That said, it’s not nearly the badass pathogen I had dreamt up in my worst-case scenario. There are far worse things out there. Many of them have been almost entirely eradicated by… vaccines. I don’t need to elaborate.
She was probably alarmed that I had given this thought. It might have made her reconsider whether I was a kook, too… but, I think about stuff. Hopefully the stuff doesn’t come to fruition. For instance, before my son was born, I considered what I might do if my wife were to die during childbirth and leave me with a newborn to take care of. A nightmare scenario, to be sure. It truly terrified me to my core. The movie Fatherhood, starring Kevin Hart, is based on a true story of just this scenario. It does happen. Thinking about it ahead of time wouldn’t make it less devastating, but it might help me not totally botch my response.
Sadly, most of us will experience some kind of calamity in our lives. A car crash, the death of a spouse, etc. These are not things most people like to think about, but that’s why doing so is so vital. The government and military calls this “contingency planning.” It helps to head off an emotional or bumbling response should a situation arise. To paraphrase von Moltke, these plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, but as Churchill would add: nevertheless, planning remains invaluable.
Life Insurance
One contingency plan I have given quite some thought to is my own demise. I think anyone who has people who rely upon them should consider this with some frequency. You owe it to the people you care about.
For those younger folks out there who might not have anyone depending upon them, here’s a good gateway to this contingency planning: If you die, who would pay for your funeral expenses? The average funeral in the US, based on my quick Google-y search, is about $10,000. At 22, the last thing I wanted my parents to have to worry about if I died was shelling out for the cost of my cremation. Could they afford it? Fortunately, yes. But did I want them to have to? Absolutely not. So, even though I didn’t have any dependents, I bought life insurance that would cover the expenses. Morbid, certainly, but essential nonetheless.
A bit later, after getting married, I upped my life insurance a little bit. Not too much, but enough to cover my cremation and a bit of runway for my betrothed to reorder her life if necessary. Then I had a son, which prompted me to buy a whole bunch more life insurance. Nobody’s setup for living a baller lifestyle if I die, but the payout coupled with our existing assets would probably mean my family could be pretty comfortable.
This is not to say that you should try to insure your way out of everything that could befall you. I don’t have disability insurance. I didn’t buy flood insurance as part of my homeowner’s policy. Nor do I have a home warranty. Lots of this stuff is easy to avoid if you learn enough stuff to become adaptable. This is a key component of contingency planning—your ability to adapt your plans to meet the circumstances with which you’re faced.
OK, I Understand Life Insurance, But Is That All I Should Consider?
Here’s a good example from my life of contingency planning in action. While on maternity leave, my wife’s company reorganized and her job was eliminated through no fault of her own. Shitty, right? Had I not thought of the possibility of one of us losing our jobs, this huge surprise might have been overwhelming… especially when you combine this surprise with the heightened emotions surrounding having a brand new baby and the severe sleep deprivation that accompanies those little buggers.
Instead, I was able to immediately hug her, comfort her, and feel comforted myself because I knew this was luckily not a huge emergency for us.* I like to think that my calm demeanor helped ease the emotional turmoil she was experiencing at that moment.
The Zombie Apocalypse
The zombie apocalypse was quite the fad for awhile around the turn of the millennium and the decade that followed.** The US military even created what I believe is a training aid for planners surrounding the idea (CONPLAN 8888).
The zombie apocalypse is a fun way of thinking about planning that is adaptable for many… more likely scenarios. Surely the power would eventually go out during a zombie apocalypse (or severe thunder storm, hurricane, tornado, cyber attack, etc.), right? Luckily, you’ve planned ahead and can use your EV to power lots of stuff you need to increase your chances of survival. Uh oh, it seems like that power outage knocked out the water pumps for your municipal supply. Good thing you have water stored for your family. The rigorous lifestyle of surviving the zombie apocalypse sure is a lot of hard, physical work! It’s fortunate you’ve been maintaining epic physical fitness, then…
As mentioned before, one of the keys to successfully applying your contingency plans is adaptability. Page 7 of CONPLAN 8888 points to other supporting plans to which it might usefully tie-in. One of these is titled “CONPLAN 8531: Pandemic Influenza.” Anyone think that might have been a useful CONPLAN for use during the COVID-19 pandemic? I think with a little tweaking, the military probably adapted that plan to apply to COVID in order to not start from square one. So, too, might you adapt an existing contingency plan of your own to apply to an unforeseen event.
Plan, prepare, and adapt to increase your resiliency. Get thinking!
*If we had not been such diligent savers over the years, this would not have been the case. The unfortunate reality is that this would have been a massive emergency for a lot of people. Goes to show that resource planning is a big part of contingency planning overall, right?
**A good friend of mine once told me he planned to rely solely on a bicycle and a samurai sword during the zombie apocalypse. I asked whether he had either of those things. He did not. Did he ride a bike at the gym a lot? No. Had he ever used a samurai sword? No. A lot of good that contingency plan did with no preparation whatsoever…
I too don’t have a samurai sword, but have planned for the future with other means. Contingency planning should never be underestimated, since none of us is prescient enough to predict the unpredictable.