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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Third Half - Thinking


Welcome,
This is the third half of the post on thinking.

PACE
I had never heard of it before, until I read a book by Gerry Schumacher (To Be a US Army Green Beret).

PACE is an acronym to help organize your thinking on your preparations.

Primary - What is the first way that you are going to solve a problem.

Alternate - What is the second way that you are going to solve the same problem

Contingency - The third way

Emergency - The very last way before you have to improvise a solution to your problem.

Let us look at an example.

Your problem, opening cans of food.

Primary - an electric can opener
Alternate - a manual can opener
Contingency - another manual can opener
Emergency - a P-51 can opener

Yes, I know an electric can open won't work in a power outage. That is why you have three other methods of opening canned food. It could be worse; you could have lost electricity and broken the manual can opener. Don't worry though, you still have the other manual can opener and the P-51. All of these methods have to fail before you start stressing about how to improvise a method to safely open your canned food.

The OODA Loop
I have heard of this decision-making process before. It helps you to focus on your problems/situations

Observe - make Observations about a problem

Orient - Orient yourself to the problem. What do you see as the problem/What information do you have about the problem

Decide - Decide what you are going to do about the problem

Act - Act on you decision

Then you go through the loop again until the problem is solved. There is an article at Wikipedia that explains the OODA Loop

I can use the OODA Loop to explain how this blog has evolved.

My problem/situation; I know I can't go it alone. I don't have time or money to be a doctor/nurse, welder/pipe fitter, farmer/rancher, and pull security 24/7/365.

Observe - no money, lack skills, people to join with, friends/family are starting to see the various situations happening and want to prepare. I am a doomer and a gloomer, this turns people off. Folks don't want to go over the basics, I think are necessary, in their survival-type blogs.

Orient - People don't have time because of 9 to 5 jobs to learn the basics of surviving a long-term emergency

Decide - I'll write a one entry per week for 16 weeks preparedness blog so people can take the time they need to learn about preparedness

Act - write the blog and get family/friends to read it.

Now I look at the results. I am unsatisfied, so ...

Observe - I have a lot of knowledge. The one entry per week for 16 weeks blog isn't working, for me. Low readership. Not enough people "taking the course"

Orient - I need to provide more information. Not advertising with others

Decide - I will ask some of the survival-type blogs for a plug, and I'll write more

Act - E-mail Ryan at Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest and James Dakin at Bison Survival Blog. Write an additional post for the week.

Again, I look at the results. I'm not satisfied, so I...

And the process continues until an acceptable outcome occurs. The OODA Loop can also be used in a tactical situation. I think this is the original idea behind the OODA Loop's development. It may help you to defeat your opponent, so read about the OODA Loop at the link.

Links:

Wikipedia - OODA Loop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop

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