Your Survival Blog
Preparedness: a weighty issue?
I recently blitzed through Amanda Ripley’s very readable The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why. It’s an excellent book, but I stopped cold while reading the appendix called “How to Boost Your Survival Odds.” You see, one of Ripley’s six survival tips is “Lose Weight”:
I hate to nag, but there is no workaround here. The harsh truth is that obese people move more slowly, are more vulnerable to secondary injuries such as heart attacks, and have a harder time physically recovering from any injuries they do sustain. There is no need to say much more, since there are entire industries devoted to this particularly modern and maddening challenge. But it’s worth remembering that on 9/11, people with low physical ability were three times as likely to be hurt while evacuating the towers. Once again, what helps us in regular life helps us in disasters.
I’ve heard enough from friends with weight issues that this passage immediately struck me as wrongheaded. So I ran it by a few of them to check.
I can’t improve much on their comments:
“When someone claims to be putting forth a ‘harsh truth’, I automatically expect them to be putting forth a prejudice they hope to not be called upon to justify by announcing in advance that it is the truth. I’ll just run right out and tell all the obese people I know who are runners, dancers, choreographers, and rock climbers that they should really try to develop some physical ability, shall I?”
“While there are correlations with weight, it’s not a 1:1 mapping, and in an emergency it doesn’t matter why someone has trouble moving (other than to let the survivors feel better or worse about whatever happens to them). Nor do I think that lowering one’s prospects of dying in a rare disaster is likely to be a particularly powerful motivator for anyone inclined to be overweight.”
“‘Get in better shape’, where practical, is generically good advice. But then, so is ‘make ten million dollars’, which would make any number of disaster preparation steps easier.”
“I get the impression that there’s a widely-held sense among those without the inclination — or with the sort of low-level, need-to-lose-five-pounds issue that can be dealt with with minimal lifestyle changes — that the problem is somehow that overweight people didn’t realize there were any disadvantages to being fat, or that it had anything to do with what they ate or, to a lesser extent, how much activity they engaged in. Ripley may be in a similar position: ‘But if they knew they’d be more likely to be burned alive by Al Qaeda, maybe then they’d stop their incomprehensible eating and activity habits.’ There are really very few obese people who couldn’t name ten reasons they’d rather be thinner. Increasing social stigma and the wide trumpeting of health risks are demonstrably no match for the wide availability of cheap, tasty food; I seriously doubt that adding another, fairly uncommon risk to the list is likely to make a significant difference.”
“As an overweight person, I think that the biggest issue here is the conflation of obesity and ‘low physical ability’. There are plenty of people out there who are clinically overweight, who nonetheless have very good strength, agility and endurance, if not speed. I would seriously question if Ripley has any hard data to back up her blanket comments about obese people healing more slowly, or being at higher risk for heart attack in a disaster. Just to put things into perspective, while I’m way heavier than I should be now, I also know that I was 30+ pounds outside the ‘overweight’ categorization for my height when I was playing on the varsity soccer team in high school. There’s a definite undercurrent of ‘thinner is better’ out there in the world, I just don’t buy it, and frankly there’s a lot of medical data turning up that flies in the face of straight BMI statistics.”
One friend referred to the “elephant in the room”: “if you are somehow differently-abled and disaster strikes, by Ripley’s guidelines, you are f***ed.” He agreed with me that “the right place to focus might be on maximizing overall fitness and mobility for the person you are, rather than on reducing BMI.”
“Yeah,” responded another friend, “talk about mobility and maybe about helps for disabled people who need to evacuate when the elevators go out. And maybe nudge all of us to improve our mobility the best we can.”
I’m with them. What do you think?
Posted by eks on 05/27 at 10:27 PMsomehow that overweight people didn’t realize there were any disadvantages to being fat, or that it had anything to do with what they ate or, to a lesser extent, how much activity they engaged in. Ripley may be in a similar position: ‘But if they knew they’d be more likely to be burned alive by Al Qaeda, maybe then they’d stop their incomprehensible eating and activity habits.
Posted by square peg web on 06/16 at 08:22 PMRecently I have been doing cardio and weight lifting. I am 45 years old and I have lost some weight, I am 5’3” at 150 lbs. I also take care of my 82 year old mom who weighs 170lbs. I have had to pick her up off the floor, correctly of course, and since I have been exercising it is so much easier now to lift her up. This will be make a big difference in a disaster. I believe being in good physical shape, the best we can be, will help us and those we need to help. This is a very touchy subject, but it is important.
Posted by Kimberly J. McAfee on 07/13 at 12:59 PMThere are really very few obese people who couldn’t name ten reasons they’d rather be thinner. Increasing social stigma and the wide trumpeting of health risks are demonstrably no match for the wide availability of cheap, tasty food; I seriously doubt that adding another, fairly uncommon risk to the list is likely to make a significant difference.
square peg web
Hay there was a widely-held but very wrong notion that using the front brake would cause you to crash. So lots of riders never learned to use the front brake, and the front brake more of your stopping power in an emergency stop from normal road speeds.Thanks for the post.
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Once again, with three daughters, weight is a very sensitive issue in our family. I think it is more important to look at our overall health, strength and fitness levels. We are tackling it as a family, along side packing our bug out bags etc. When evaluating emergency preparedness, evaluating all aspects of location, risk, etc. As a mom and caregiver, I can assume some of the challenges I would face in a disaster. If being stronger or more fit, not more “skinny” will help me protect, take care or save my family, then that is what I need to do. This issue is personal yes, but important. If it makes a positive difference, than it is worth looking at and creating or implementing that in our emergency preparedness plan. I do not want to regret not being able to do what I need to for my family because I was not prepared, physically or otherwise.
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