A survival retreat is touted by some as the solution to any disaster, but is it? Is it better to stay in your home or is it better to go away to a retreat? Sometimes you don’t have any choice in the matter. If a hurricane wipes out your house, you have to go.

Practically speaking, however, most families don’t have the financial resources to buy, set up and stock a survival retreat. So what’s the solution for a family with limited resources?

There are some situations where you’ll have to move your family from your home but more than likely you will be able to stay at home if you’re prepared. You will have to do a threat assessment to evaluate the practicality of staying at home.

Will your home be able to withstand the types of threats you’re most likely to see in the area you live in? If not, what can you do so it can withstand those threats? Do you live in an area with tornadoes or hurricanes? You can strengthen your structure to withstand them or provide protection from them, particularly hurricanes.

If you’re in an area with tornadoes, do you have an underground shelter or a safe room? (A safe room is reinforced to offer added protection from an external threat.)

If there is a power outage, perhaps due to an ice storm, do you have alternate sources of heat and electricity? In this case it would be wise to have a generator as well as a wood stove as a back-up source of heat.

Solutions to most of the threats that you might face are cheaper than you might think and certainly cheaper than setting up a retreat somewhere else.

After you’ve done an assessment of possible threats, look at how you can survive them. Reinforcing your home against possible threats is one place to start and accumulating some of the equipment you might need is the next. Also easy to do is keep a supply of food and water adequate to survive a couple of weeks.

It’s better to start small when doing survival preparations, and work your way up. The Mormons encourage their members to prepare and have up to a year’s worth of food set aside. It makes sense doesn’t it? Everyone falls on hard times but they're not so hard if you’re prepared.

Imagine how well you’d sleep if your house, car and credit cards were paid off; you had enough money in the bank to survive for a year (not that much without mortgage or car payments), you had a year’s worth of food set aside, your house was well prepared against natural disasters and you had a back-up source of electricity and heat. How much would it matter if you were unemployed for a while?

Don’t worry about what people think if you are preparing. Survival preparations are more accepted after Y2K and the ice storms several years ago in eastern North America. Two hundred years ago, it was just common sense to prepare. That was life. It’s still common sense.