STAGE I: SHAPE – Each phase of this stage is completed in the deliberate, detailed, centralized planning stage.  This process can be overwhelming, but don’t worry, GGG has funneled the science of planning into this free guide, which will help provide more time for the art of H2T rather than W2T about this stuff. With GGG guidance, you will be able to scribe your situation and assess the plans of action and resources needed.

S – Situation Survey: Conduct a survey of the geography and demography of the area to include things such the regional map assessment, climate, natural disaster or man-made threat and the medical support, water & food supply, roads, rail, and air transportation, emergency services locations, assets, etc.

Within the Department of Defense (DoD) doctrine framework, the MDMP states the “operational environment is a composite of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of capabilities and bear on the decisions for any plan.”

Likewise, you can internally and externally scan your situation and environment to help analyze and influence plans based on actual elements in your life.

The MDMP includes eight interrelated operational variables: political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, and time.

In the Gator Decision Making Process (GDMP), for civilian purposes, you can skip the “military” factor. Except it is good to know how civil, national, and state military agencies interrelate and operate to support the civilian population in distress.

For example, what military organizations are near, and how will they interact with FEMA to support you?

You also need to know mobility routes and transportation, threat/adversary templates, and weather forecasts and effects.

In summary the Gator Decision Making Process (GDMP) includes the following variables: political, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical environment, civil and military organizations proximity and jurisdiction.

H – Head of Household (HH6) Estimate: The HH6 assessment assesses the current situation, gaps needed to fill in knowledge, skills and abilities, and visions of how your family should react to a specific scenario. This should be based on the type of threats and risks, capabilities, education, and experience/age of your family, and what is the prognosis for success in the event of any FERPS scenario either with your family disbursed or consolidated at home. Review finances, assess needed resources, and develop the optimal plan balancing current life and future emergency needs.

As a leader of your small (or big) family, your HH6 estimate will help decipher the facts and assumptions, assess risks, and develop stop-gaps to reduce those risks to your family. Your estimate will take all this and funnel the energy and resources, translating the end-state vision into action.”

Vision instills thought provocation, and this leadership task will set the example for your significant others and inspire and motivate them.

I showed my kids a family emergency kit and explained steps for different emergencies. I remember the good feeling I had when my children said – “You did all this for us daddy?”

During the evaluation cycle, you must understand and frame the environment correctly through good internal and external scans of the environments and then visualize and frame the right problems.

Any identified gaps can be resolved through reframing of the problem and inclusion of the family in the thought process leads to a new perspective on the problems and ultimately their resolution.

This continual decision-making process consistently pushes your family to better their critical thinking skills and will lead to a better understanding of what the status is, based on your combined estimates.

A – Analysis of Life Operations (ALO): Inventory the facts and generate the assumptions by assessing what each family member’s life consists of and how that affects the plan, respectively.

For example, people, ages, maturity, health, probable locations during events, activities, hobbies, schools attended, work/jobs, sports, and experience with emergency and survival principles.  

During this phase, you will have to consider the facts and assumptions. In accordance with (IAW) the Department of Defense (DoD) doctrine, “A fact is a statement of truth or a statement thought to be true at the time.”

ALO facts will entail those quantifiable, measurable and specific details, data, and information such as distances to school from home, ages, average temperatures, health data, flood areas, transportation routes and methods.

IAW the DoD, “an assumption is supposition on the current situation or a presupposition on the future course of events.”  ALO assumptions are estimates, hypotheses, or simply put, guesses about what you think will happen during an event.

Notice some assumptions can be mitigated (eliminated or impact reduced) through education.

For example, if you assume a younger middle-school family member will not have the abstract thinking ability to sort through a challenge – this generates a risk in which the child must always be with or near a family member or grown supervision who understands H2T.

A mitigating solution is education and training, which will help to improve his/her ability to react as well as equipping the child with contact rosters and guidance for what to do while in school (i.e., ensure to listen to teachers when they discuss emergency plans) during a disaster).

You may also assume during a hurricane or flood your area is not prone to risk, but education can eliminate guessing by researching the facts such as the FEMA Flood Map Service (https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search).

This will help in POA/COA development and analysis to determine if you are in a flood-risk area, what evacuation routes are better and would not be flooded, and if the evacuation area is safe. There are areas on the California coast that could face a double whammy from an earthquake then an onset tsunami... (https://www.osha.gov/earthquakes)

Some towns only have minutes to heed warnings and literally run for the hills. The hills being x minute distance away running to a spot high enough (y) above the flood line with waves traveling at z speed.

Likewise, in the first T of METT-TC (Terrain & weather), weather is a further subset with the variables of heat, cold, and precipitation. Always assess how these variables will impact your ability to complete a mission.

Again, of course you may not be in the military and think this does not apply, but as a civilian you can translate this thought process in your family’s war of survival against the elements.

Below is an adapted version of the METT-TC geared to civilian application – the SETT-TC.

P – Plans of Action Development: A plan or course of action (POA/COA) is a broad potential solution to an identified problem. This is a two-step process to develop plans and then compare them:

Step 1 – Develop Plans/Courses of Action: For each situation you may face, a plan must be developed on how to react to each scenario.  As soon as possible, in the tools link, I will provide you with worksheets that will guide you to scribe the element of each POA/COA. With the previous Analysis of Life Operations (ALO) complete, these notes will help to build your reaction plans.  

UPDATE: See the Gator Basic Survival Training provided FREE

The Red Cross provides very good resources for different types of disasters.

Step 2 – Compare Plans/Courses of Action: Comparison of POA/COA’s is critical. In the military sense, the COA comparison is used to select the best plan to achieve the mission.

With FERPS, the trick is not necessarily to decide between which POA/COA is best since the emergency/event/disaster/ catastrophe will be the cue which tells you what the best POA/COA.  

Therefore, make sure you have a POA/COA for each scenario. For example, the POA/COA during a massive winter storm will be much different than a tornado, chemical spill at the nearby railway, or main city water break.

In FERPS, every POA/COA is established for each type of scenario. Centrally planned POA/COAs should be known by every member.

Each POA/COA should be distinguishable in that every member should be educated to know which cue they are receiving and thus react and employ the correct actions for each POA/COA:

In the military the COA analysis (war-gaming) is a disciplined process. This includes rules and steps to help visualize the flow of the operation based on several factors, including METT-TC.     

Each POA/COA you develop must include the action, reaction, and regroup. You must also conduct analysis of the advantages and disadvantages – always consider facts and assumptions and assess risks and resolutions.

Each POA/COA will have strengths and weaknesses and applying a dedicated though process to pre-planning during the SHAPE stage.

E – Equipment & Resources Needed: So far, you have (hopefully due to the effectiveness of this free information) spent nothing on the development of your FERPS plans, but now you have entered the costliest arena – Equipment & Resources.

Survival and emergency-type gear can be super expensive. Definitely, can be a source of anxiety and friction, especially if both parents are not in the same boat of agreement on the need for serious survival kits for whatever reason – realistic probable weather emergencies or potential improbable man-made catastrophes.

Here is where some of the external resources come in, and there are excellent publications and tools to help with this. Also, please watch this site blog for continuous equipment and resource updates. I will provide advice and guidance on the best equipment and resources for the job.  See the Gator Basic and Advanced Survival Training courses.

In the meantime, in order to initiate movement on acquiring and maintaining the need equipment and resources – this needs to be driven from your situation surveys, assessments, estimates, and plan of action development.

For example, if your environment is southern coastal and some of your threats are weather based such as hurricanes, your plan should not necessarily include cold weather gear unless you are mobilizing to a cold weather area.

You also want to compare the different POA/COAs in regard to power supply and balancing against available resources.

If you plan to evacuate in most POA/COAs like in a hurricane, you would be better to develop your “power generation plan” to include mobile solar powering devises instead of costly heavy electric fuel powered generators. Or in a static situation, do you think gas resupply will be feasible at all?

Then solar or others such as wind must be considered There are mind boggling choices of survival gear at different prices and capabilities.

Needs-Based-Capabilities-Assessment (NBCA) – One method of being able to identify your needs and capabilities is to conduct “rock drills” through each step of each COA. As you conduct a map reconnaissance/exercise go through each step of the drills and think though the elements and risks and develop hypothesis/alternatives on what your family might need in each stage.

Lastly, keep an inventory for your bag with a picture to depict the bag  with all equipment laid out and decompose a list of what is in each pocket. Keep a copy of this list and diagram in the most easily accessible pocket for easy reference to what is in the bag, where it is, and the listing of expiry dates of perishable items such as food, water, and iodine tablets. Make sure any items with batteries are packed to help prevent seepage and keep tabs on the level of energy. Depleted batteries are the worst surprise at the wrong time during an emergency when you need light. I pack those little “do not eat” oxygen absorbing silica gel packets to absorb moisture and keep batteries dry.

A REAL Break-Down – What good is a plan if it is not practiced, coordinated, and the necessary equipment and supplies are not available?  It is certainly not a plan which will enable confident and competent implementation at the moment of truth – a truth which will reveal your failure or success measured in the level of suffering for your family. As flood waters seep through the threshold, the lights have gone dim, or your family is deep in the woods it is the wrong time to realize the I should have could have done this or that revelations.

A really valuable tool I acquired with the 3^rd Ranger Battalion and used throughout my career was the Troop-Leading Procedures (TLP’s) – a mnemonic process leaders used to plan and prepare for patrols. I have dedicated an entire section to this process and provided a tailored process for the FERPS toolbox…the Family Emergency Leadership Procedures (FELP’s).

Practice, practice, and more practice…

Rehearsals will help practice and coordinate the actions between family members, and reveal weaknesses or problems of your POA/COA’s. This will help improve each member’s understanding of the concept of each POA/COA and it should foster confidence in them.

Don’t do all the talking – these rehearsals should include all members to read and brief the part and actions in execution sequence. You should instill and inspire them and ensure in the event the leader/HH6 is not present, they can think and act in your absence.

There are different types of rehearsals – backbrief, map reconnaissance, radio/communication, sand table/terrain model, rock drills, and full live action crawl-walk-run through.

If needed conduct a gradual crawl-walk-run teaching strategy to get the level of proficiency needed. Start with verbally reading and discussing the plans with your family, then conduct map reviews, practice how you would communicate, etc.

For each POA/COA conduct a dry rehearsal with your family. Have at a minimum a map laid out on the table, you can use game pieces to represent each family member and other available items to signify different land marks, vehicles,  schools, work locations, etc.

During exercises in the Army there would be an Observer Controller (OC) who was an independent observer watching and assessing the actions teams took during missions. They were objective bystanders who would critique different COAs of a team’s action to a battle drills and then conduct an AAR with the team on the observed results.

To set up the game once all pieces are in place, someone announces the current situation including where people are located, what is the current weather, scenario, and potential threat. Then BOOM the drill is enacted with the cue such as “Tornado high noon work work day.” The controller states directives as the reaction develops and provides successive orders to ensure success.

Lastly conduct initial and post inspections on things such as understanding, gear preparation, contact cards, etc.

E – Educate: The HH6 must motivate and communicate the narrative of each specified scenario, but sometimes when an emergency cues it may not be totally evident what is happening at first. HH6 must describe the intended desired end-state. The concept to “educate” should be ingrained throughout the entire centralized planning and decentralized processes. But, most critically the number one success factor to a well prepared family is the development of their knowledge and experience base providing your family the tools for H2T through a problem.

Do you ever remember the anxiety felt from the fear of the unknown and how that effects everything? For example a piece of furniture which you have to assemble with a ¼ inch thick manual and some tools. Did it help when you read the instructions thoroughly, conducted an inventory of the pieces and staged the pieces correctly, and thought through the process by looking at the pieces, understood how each bracket, screw and fastener would operate and interrelate?

If you ended up with a wracked set of nerves and crooked shelf, you probably didn’t take the necessary educational approach to the task. Similarly as mentioned before, you probably might have experienced it already while sorting through the huge array of resources from disaster, emergency, survival, and prepper resources.  

I found most resources had very good content about what to do after a disaster hits. I did however, find it frustrating on certain gaps of knowledge and information on front-end planning. There were varying degrees of completeness on front-end phases of planning. Hence the FERPS is here to help you fill and bridge that gap. This will be a single-source place to properly prepare through education in front-end centralized planning and bridging that to decentralized execution. I will guide to alternative external expert resources.  

The GGG FERPS is best in planning and educating for preparedness planning. I will guide you to other tools and publications that will have the more in-depth information things such as water supply and disinfection and other more advanced topics.

A – Assess: Assessment is the continuous monitoring and evaluation of the current situation.

The aforementioned step of rehearsal and inspections closely bridges to assessments. You can and should continually evaluate and assess all aspects of the process. Broadly, assessment consists of the following activities: monitoring the current situation to collect relevant information, evaluating progress toward attaining end state conditions, achieving objectives, and performing tasks, and recommending or directing action for improvement.

There are a multitude of ways to integrate a process for a continuous cycle of learning in which feedback and critiques will maximize reinforcement of learning.  Learning points can be established with a feedback rally point…

While in the Army the After Action Reviews (AAR) taught me to always capture the lessons learned and it was a simple rule to use the three up and three down approach – three positive (good) and three negative (bad) points about what was planned and what actually happened. The AAR can be a formal sit down with charts and notes, or a field expedient informal huddle. The key thing is to invoke discussion and participant involvement to help them adopt the plans as their own instead of feeling as if they are only checking the block of compliance. Another quick method which helps during actual rehearsals is the on-the-spot correction. This takes advantage of discussing deficiencies in knowledge and performance.

L – Logistics & Lessons: When you have to flee your home and the family is cold, miserable, and tired; it is the wrong time to figure how to pack for the elements and learn how things work. Wrong time to determine if you have a lantern without a mantel or the right type of fuel. You will know how bad of a mistake it was not too waterproof everything in your bag when your sleeping bag and clothes are wet and your tired and want to sleep after a long day. How to set up the tent. You find the survival food is years expired because of lack of discipline to create a stock rotation plan.

Don’t just buy an item your think you need off of a checklist and stuff it on a bag. Equipment needs require a committed assessment based on the conditions (SETT-TC) and your continual ongoing HH6 estimates and awareness of the situation.

When a cue signals an event and kicks off such as the notice of really bad weather over the radio or obvious encroaching threatening weather, remember SURVIVAL as an aid to help guide thinking through an immediate threat. Also make sure your COA’s are written, your family is educated on them, and all members do their part to lead and do those actions which will be needed for you and your family to survive.

P – Procedures: In the military, once the unit is in the field and the long complicated MDMP has been developed, then small units depend on a trusted very easy to follow process to lead troops on through decentralized execution of tactical missions…the TLP’s.

Also the Army Ranger Handbook (SH 21-76) quotes Field Manual (FM 25-101) which defines a battle drill as “a collective action rapidly executed without applying a deliberate decision-making process.”

Characteristics of a battle drill are –

They require minimal leader orders to accomplish and are standard throughout the Army.

• Sequential actions are vital to success in combat or critical to preserving life.
• They apply to platoon or smaller units.
• They are trained responses to enemy actions or leader’s orders.
• They represent mental steps followed for offensive and defensive actions in training and combat.

When the enemy attacks from the right at close range it is the wrong time for a unit to “discuss” how to react to this contact. The drills enable team members to be on the same sheet and react properly based on a “CUE” followed by effective leader direction and communication as needed – this cue can be a flare that pops up or the commencement of enemy fire hits a unit, the inherent and implied direction is to react instinctively, get down, and return fire towards the enemy. The team leader provides supplemental directives based on development of the situation.

Likewise your family needs to be in sync with plans and have the ability think the WHAT through and result in the skills, knowledge, and abilities on HOW-TO think and execute through any challenge.

L – Leading:  The military includes definitions of leadership to include the ability to influence the actions of others. Also it includes responsibility and accountability. Leaders are responsible to ensure the appropriate direction and guidance and to demonstrate courage, condor, and commitment. All members of the family must be leaders as well as good followers. In the absence of their parents, children who are old enough to be on their own should be able to lead their own actions and think any problem through.

A – Actions: Decisive yet prudent actions. Indecisiveness can be a huge risk to survival, for example waiting too long to bug out in the face of an oncoming hurricane. Actions made too hastily without some shape or form of prudent decision-making can lead to catastrophe, but following this process will help ensure proper planning to prevent piss poor performance.

Procedures are the method we invoke action and are closely tied together. You and your family must have and know procedures to execute and act to survive in any event.

See also the discussion on “battle-drills”

Your FERPS plans should not be a bystander to life placed on the what-if’s shelf, but front and center of prudent planning for the when not if. There are so many stories with witness statements, “I’ve never seen anything like it…I never thought this could happen here…”

In just one sample a study conducted by Jeff Bethel, PhD, Associate Professor of the University of Oregon, College of Public Health and Human Sciences in an assessment of disaster preparedness among households in Corvallis, Oregon (2017), the following where conclusions.

Conclusions

• Nearly 60% of households felt well-prepared (15.8%) or somewhat prepared (43.7%).
• Less than 60% had supplies of food or water or a communications plan respectively.
• Households renting the home were less prepared than households owning the home.

Over half of households will not be ready and the odds increase for those in renting.

Will you allow your family to be a stuck in misery?

S – Survival: Sorting through the myriad of survival, prepper, and disaster planning books and resources providing great advice can help you know W2T. For example many publications quote the acronym SURVIVAL:

However, this guides a person on W2T about the steps necessary to survive, evade, resist, and escape (SERE) after an incident occurs. SURVIVIAL is a good mnemonic for the execution (PLANS) phase of the time-constrained decision-making process in FERPS, but make sure you understand and have thoroughly reviewed and prepared for the deliberate decision-making in the SHAPE stage.

Now that you have completed the PREP FOR GOOD and SHAPE REAL PLANS process and completed everything therein (surveys, estimates, COA development & analysis, planning, resourcing, educating, rehearsing, assessing, etc); don’t just place your plans on a shelf with a sign “Break Glass in Case of Emergency.”  Keep it a real-time, living, continual process and always be vigilant and prepared for PLANS, the last phase in the SHAPE REAL PLANS.