Prepared

What happens when the world as you know it tilts off its axis—a blackout, a car accident, a wildfire raging toward your neighborhood? In Prepared: A Manual for Surviving Worst-Case Scenarios, special operations veteran Mike Glover argues that survival isn't about paranoia or stockpiles of canned food—it's about mastering calm, competence, and clarity when everything changes instantly. Glover contends that the answer to chaos lies in preparation, not panic: developing a resilient mindset, a plan, situational awareness, decisive action, and the physical tools that transform you from a potential victim into an asset to those around you.

Glover’s philosophy was forged through decades as a Green Beret and CIA contractor, where split-second choices and meticulous preparation meant the difference between life and death. Drawing lessons from combat zones like Sadr City, Iraq, and from tragedies like the Virginia Tech shooting, he translates special operations principles into practical steps for civilians navigating modern crises—from natural disasters and civil unrest to everyday threats like car wrecks or home invasions. The book expands traditional survival thinking beyond wilderness skills into a holistic life system for peace of mind in uncertain times.

Preparedness as a Way of Life

At its heart, Prepared asks a simple question: if catastrophe came today, are you truly ready—mentally, physically, and logistically? Glover reframes preparedness not as fear, but as freedom. By designing a life capable of adapting to sudden disruption, you gain confidence and reduce anxiety during calm periods. Preparedness, he says, is self-reliance multiplied: a mindset that marries tactical competence with psychological steadiness. Modern comfort has made many of us fragile, expecting institutions to save us. Glover’s goal is to reverse that drift, helping readers become resilient citizens who can think clearly, plan deliberately, and act decisively under stress.

Two Worlds of Readiness: The Mental and the Physical

Glover divides preparedness into two interconnected domains—the mental (the invisible) and the physical (the tangible). The mental side includes the Resilient Mindset, Planning, Situational Awareness, and Decision-Making. These are the thought processes that let you stay calm when disaster erupts, form sound judgments under duress, and perceive danger before it fully manifests. The physical side includes your Everyday Carry (EDC), Mobility, and Homestead—the equipment, vehicles, and infrastructure that extend your capacity to act. Together they form a matrix of self-sufficiency that turns knowledge into action and action into survival.

From Soldier to Citizen

Glover’s own story anchors his philosophy. After two decades in combat zones, he witnessed the fragility of order and how effective preparation saves lives. In one Sadr City operation, a simple fluorescent VS17 panel—the size of a kitchen towel—prevented an F-16 jet from mistakenly bombing his team. That small item, placed methodically in his kit, represented the culmination of planning, discipline, and foresight. It’s the same principle he teaches civilians: simple, premeditated actions prevent irreversible consequences. His company, Fieldcraft Survival, now trains thousands of everyday people, from soccer moms to law enforcement officers, applying military-tested methods to civilian life.

Why This Matters

In a world defined by convenience, Glover warns, the capacity to cope with unpredictable hardship is fading. Yet the threats we face—hurricanes, blackouts, violence, pandemics—are not decreasing. Preparedness, therefore, isn’t fringe; it’s citizenship. Trained, capable individuals become assets to their families and communities, not liabilities. The book argues that survival doesn’t end at surviving—it’s about prevailing and helping others do the same. Like Viktor Frankl’s idea that freedom exists between stimulus and response, Glover’s framework empowers you to fill that space with competence and courage instead of panic. This is not about living in fear of catastrophe; it’s about removing fear from your daily life by being ready for anything.

Across seven major chapters—Resilient Mindset, Planning, Situational Awareness, Decision Point, Everyday Carry, Mobility, and Homestead—Glover builds a blueprint for modern resilience. He ends not with isolation but with community: emphasizing that the ultimate preparedness isn’t solitary survivalism but collective strength, neighbors helping neighbors. Being prepared is not just about staying alive; it’s about protecting life’s meaning when crisis strikes.

In Glover’s experience, every catastrophe—whether on the battlefield or at home—starts with shock. Your heart races, your vision narrows, and time feels elastic. The critical difference between those who survive and those who freeze, he says, is resilience: the mental muscle that bridges instinct and intelligent action. The first step in preparedness, therefore, isn’t buying gear—it’s strengthening your nervous system to stay clear when adrenaline hits.

Understanding the Body Under Stress

Glover begins by explaining the body’s stress circuitry—the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Under threat, the sympathetic floods you with adrenaline to fight or flee. When overwhelmed, however, the system shuts you down—the infamous freeze response. Drawing on neuroscience and psychology (not unlike the Yerkes-Dodson law of stress-performance), he explains that too much physiological arousal drops performance off a cliff. The key is to train your response until stress sharpens rather than paralyzes you.

The Cost of Comfort

Modern life, he argues, has dulled that edge. We live in constant low-grade stress from screens and schedules, but rarely face real discomfort that builds resilience. Like muscles that atrophy without use, our coping mechanisms degrade. Consequently, when a true high-stress event hits—a car accident, an active shooter, a fire—we’re emotionally fried and physically unprepared. Glover calls this fragility the “new normal,” the result of insulating ourselves from risk while increasing psychological strain.

From Freezing to Fighting

Through vivid examples like the Virginia Tech shooting, Glover dissects how freezing can cost lives. He recounts the actions of victims like Matthew La Porte and Professor Liviu Librescu, who faced terror with selflessness born of exposure and training—one an ROTC cadet familiar with gunfire, the other a Holocaust survivor accustomed to chaos. Their experiences prove that exposure to stress inoculates us against its paralysis. Meanwhile, students who had never faced danger often froze, unable to act—a devastating illustration of the Yerkes-Dodson curve in real life.

“The less discomfort you’ve endured, the more likely you are to break when chaos comes.”

Training Discomfort: Exposure and Experience

Resilience, Glover insists, is not innate—it’s trained. Exposure to manageable doses of stress recalibrates your baseline for crisis. He encourages small, deliberate challenges: cold plunges, long hikes in bad weather, firing at the range under time pressure, physical training when tired, or sleeping outdoors. These experiences, he says, callus the nervous system so that when real adversity strikes, you remain functional. Borrowing a phrase common in the military, he urges you to “embrace the suck” rather than run from it, learning to breathe and speak positively to yourself to re-center in chaos.

Reclaiming Resilience in Civilization

Glover’s ultimate takeaway: resilience begins where comfort ends. The ability to keep your head—through training that blends stress exposure with self-awareness—is the first and most essential preparedness tool. You can’t buy it, stockpile it, or outsource it. Like building a callus, it comes only through friction. The paradox of preparedness is that facing discomfort each day makes life calmer overall—because once you’ve built your resilient mind, nothing truly surprises you again.

If mindset is the mental foundation of preparedness, planning is its architecture. Glover maintains that hope is never a plan. In crisis, improvisation without framework collapses. Effective planning, he writes, begins with asking tough “what if” questions long before catastrophe strikes—transforming vague fears into concrete actions that anyone can follow. The key principle: prepare for failure, not success.

The PACE Model

Glover teaches civilians a military method known as PACE—Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. Originally designed for communication redundancy, it’s a universal plan-building framework. For example, consider a house fire: your Primary exit might be the front door; your Alternate could be the back; your Contingency, a second-story window with a ladder; your Emergency, breaking glass to escape. The method forces you to think through each “what if” before adrenaline clouds judgment. Practicing PACE with family, he explains, imprints actions so even children can react under stress.

Fighting Ignorance and Arrogance

Glover identifies two enemies of good planning: arrogance (“It won’t happen to me”) and ignorance (“I don’t want to think about it”). Both blind you to reality. The Titanic tragedy, he notes, exemplifies arrogance—engineers believed the ship unsinkable, so lifeboats and drills were neglected, costing 1,500 lives. Ignorance manifests in everyday denial: refusing to write a will, learn CPR, or check smoke alarms because it’s “too depressing.” True preparedness requires humility and curiosity—the courage to confront what could go wrong and answer honestly how you’d respond.

Planning for the Unplannable

Even with thorough strategies, some events defy prediction. Glover’s solution is not to script every scenario, but to build adaptability into the process. He describes a combat form of “war gaming,” brainstorming possible branches and sequels to a plan—what if X fails, or Y is delayed—and rehearsing until flexibility becomes instinct. The hidden benefit of this process, he explains, is that it automatically sharpens situational awareness: you learn to “sit facing the door” in every restaurant, not out of paranoia, but out of trained pattern recognition. Planning breeds calm presence.

Conversation as Contingency Training

Glover encourages planning as family dialogue rather than top-down decree. “What would you do if someone broke in right now?” he asks readers to literally discuss with loved ones. Talking through vulnerabilities—from door strength to power outages—creates ownership and readiness across all ages. The measure of a good plan, he writes, isn’t how thick the binder is, but how quickly everyone knows what to do when seconds count. Planning can’t remove catastrophe, but it ensures you never meet it as a stranger.

Situational awareness is the art of paying attention—the habit that prevents catastrophe before it begins. As Glover puts it, if mindset helps you recover and planning helps you escape, awareness helps you avoid the fight altogether. In a world of constant distraction, this skill has atrophied. Most of us, he warns, “navigate blind,” moving on autopilot between home and work without truly seeing what’s around us.

Setting the Baseline

Glover adopts the concept of a “baseline” from former Marine Yousef Badou—normal conditions in a given environment. To detect danger, you first have to know what “normal” looks like. In a Baghdad village full of hostility, Badou knew villagers staring angrily was ordinary; the anomaly—the “spike in the pattern”—was a man smiling and waving, signaling a likely ambush. The same logic applies anywhere: what’s unusual on a Monday commuter train or a Friday nightclub? Awareness means spotting patterns before they become peril.

Environmental and Human Cues

Environment sends constant information—disturbed foliage, unusual silence, odd smells, or rearranged objects. The Marines codified this as “5s and 25s”: scan five meters around you, then twenty-five meters out, looking for changes in the landscape. People, meanwhile, transmit even more. Watch hands and demeanor: nervous fiddling, pale skin, shallow breaths—all betray adrenaline. Glover recounts the story of a security guard who tackled a protester just as she leapt onto an NBA court—because the guard noticed her fixed stare and chest-level phone. Awareness isn’t about clairvoyance; it’s about noticing deviation.

“We don’t rise to meet threats— we perceive them late or not at all.”

Overcoming the Denial Reflex

Perhaps the gravest obstacle to awareness, Glover notes, is denial. Upon hearing a gunshot or seeing smoke, most people invent benign explanations—“That’s just fireworks,” “Probably construction.” This mental refusal can cost critical seconds. He illustrates this with Tilly Smith, a ten-year-old girl who recognized tsunami warning signs in Thailand because of a geography lesson. Her persistence, even when adults dismissed her, saved over a hundred lives. Awareness means overriding denial—trusting your senses even when it feels impolite or inconvenient.

Training the Eye

Daily practice builds perception. Glover recommends a simple ritual: once a week, intentionally observe a full environment—a restaurant, parking lot, classroom—scanning people’s hands, exits, and demeanor. With repetition, your brain unconsciously catalogs baselines and anomalies. You stop living as prey waiting for rescue, becoming a proactive observer of your surroundings. In his view, situational awareness is not paranoia; it’s presence—the most humane form of vigilance in a distracted age.

Survival is rarely about perfect choices—it’s about timely ones. In crisis, the costliest error is hesitation. Glover’s chapter “Decision Point” explores how to think clearly when time evaporates and every instinct pulls you in different directions. The goal is not genius-level calculation but simple, practiced decisiveness.

Everything Is a Chain of Decisions

Glover cites former Ranger Tom Flanagan, who learned that wrestling—and combat—is “a bunch of decisions back to back.” Each move flows from the previous; miss one, and you’re pinned. Life works the same way: every ordinary action is already a rehearsal for fast, correct judgment. Decision-making, Glover insists, is not foreign—it’s familiar muscle memory. Training simply accelerates recognition and removes hesitation when pressure hits.

Get Off the X

In military parlance, “the X” is where the danger originates: the ambush site, the impact zone, the blast radius. Your first, automatic move must always be to get off it—to move, regroup, and reassess. Staying put equals death. Whether in a car accident, a sudden fire, or a hail of bullets, your body wants stillness; your training must override that urge. As one commander told Glover, even the wrong decision executed fast beats paralysis under analysis. Momentum creates options. Movement buys time.

Facing Lethal Force

Among the hardest decisions is whether to use deadly force. Glover challenges readers to define their moral threshold now—not amid chaos. The criteria are personal: Do you act only when directly threatened? When family is at risk? Only if the attacker is armed? He warns that relying on legal technicalities (castle doctrines, stand-your-ground laws) avoids the deeper work—deciding what you can live with afterward. Knowing your ethical line in advance prevents emotional overreaction under stress.

Avoiding Violence When Possible

Echoing self-defense experts Tim Larkin and Jocko Willink, Glover distinguishes between social aggression (arguments, threats) and asocial violence (predatory attacks). The first can be de-escalated; the second cannot. You must learn to tell them apart. De-escalation, he says, may be as simple as using firm verbal commands, turning on lights, or breaking the attacker’s script. When violence truly is the only answer, act decisively—but never prematurely. In catastrophe, survival is action guided by principle: moving from fear to choice, from chaos to clarity.

“Everyday Carry,” or EDC, is where preparation meets reality—the tangible gear that bridges planning and performance. For Glover, EDC is more than a tactical checklist; it’s a mindset: live every day as your own first responder. Whether in war or suburbia, the items on your person determine your capacity to act before help arrives.

From Flip-Flops to Readiness

Glover learned this lesson when his CIA supervisor scolded him for wearing flip-flops on base. “You’re always on duty,” the man said. The message stuck: comfort can cost you seconds that decide everything. Today he urges civilians to adopt the same standard—carry what allows you to run, fight, render aid, and communicate at all times. You don’t need a dozen gadgets, just the essentials consistently accessible and practiced until instinctual.

Defensive Tools: Lethal and Nonlethal

A good EDC balances capacity (how much force you can apply) and capability (how well you can apply it). On the lethal side, Glover recommends compact, high-capacity pistols like the Sig Sauer P365, and fixed or folding knives optimized for utility and defense. Nonlethal tools—pepper spray, tasers, or loud alarms—create distance and buy decision time. The goal is proportionality: respond to the threat level with matching tools, using violence only when flight or deterrence fails.

Survival Gear and Medical Readiness

Beyond combat gear, your EDC should sustain life for seventy-two hours if stranded. Glover prioritizes medical kits—tourniquets, hemostatic gauze, compression bandages—as non-negotiables, since bleeding control saves more lives than fire-starting or water-purifying combined. Add compact fire sources (Bic lighter, magnesium striker), a Mylar blanket for warmth, purified water tablets, and a flashlight. Practice using them; tools you don’t train with won’t save you when adrenaline hits.

Carrying Confidence

Just as essential as gear is demeanor. How you carry yourself—alert, upright, calm—can deter threats before they materialize. Glover’s summary mantra: “You are your first responder.” EDC is not an apocalyptic arsenal; it’s an everyday expression of agency. When you train, pack smart, and move intentionally, preparedness stops being stress—it becomes confidence in motion.

When disaster makes staying put deadly, mobility becomes your lifeline. Glover defines mobility as the freedom and capacity to move—an extension of your self-reliance through vehicles equipped for survival. Whether evacuating a hurricane zone or escaping civil unrest, your vehicle can be a refuge, ambulance, and escape pod rolled into one.

Outfitting for Survival and First Aid

A prepared vehicle multiplies your resilience. Glover advises stocking it with the essentials for shelter, warmth, water, food, and communication. Think Mylar blankets, fire kits, collapsible water bladders, purification tablets, and compact rations. Unlike your pocket EDC, mobility gear supports families for days or weeks. He adds that medical readiness inside vehicles is vital: multiple tourniquets, trauma kits, and easy-access first aid stations. Speed matters; if your kit is buried in the trunk while you’re pinned upside down, it’s useless. Mount gear within reach.

Learning from Real Disasters

Glover points to Hurricane Ida in 2021, where last-minute evacuations produced gridlock, gas shortages, and desperate travelers without plans. The lesson: don’t become part of the traffic jam. Know where you’ll go, keep fuel reserves, and maintain your vehicle. Preparation reduces dependence and panic. For long-term displacement, he outlines “bug-out rig” setups: trucks or SUVs with water storage, recovery equipment, communications gear, and power options like solar or generators.

Motorcycles and Minimalism

He also praises motorcycles for urban maneuverability and fuel efficiency, emphasizing rugged dual-sport models as “the jeeps of the motorcycle world.” Even then, he reminds, success depends less on horsepower than on rider skill, terrain awareness, and load management—concepts echoing earlier themes: capability over comfort, training over tech.

Mobility as Freedom

Ultimately, mobility is about expanding your circle of independence. A well-equipped vehicle shortens vulnerability time during evacuation and lengthens endurance after escape. Like every facet of Glover’s method, it begins with mindset: your vehicle isn’t status—it’s strategy, a moving extension of your preparedness.

Glover closes his framework with the ultimate test of preparedness: your home. The homestead is not an isolated bunker for doomsday, he insists, but a living system of sustainability—security, medical support, food, energy, and community—that lets life continue gracefully through crisis. Preparedness at home means designing resilience into daily living.

From Paranoia to Practicality

Rejecting “doomsday prepper” stereotypes, Glover reframes preparedness as normal civic responsibility. Hurricanes, blackouts, and supply disruptions—not asteroid impacts—are the real threats. During Hurricane Ida, for instance, countless residents owned generators but lacked stored fuel, sparking fights at gas stations. The tool without planning, he writes, is false security. True resilience means redundancy: overlapping systems for power, food, and safety that function when one fails.

Securing the Perimeter

Glover borrows military principles like OCOKA—Observation, Cover, Obstacles, Key Terrain, Avenues of Approach—to evaluate home defense. He advocates layered systems: motion-activated floodlights, cameras, dogs as living sensors, and simple environmental alarms like squeaky gates or gravel paths. Self-defense weapons should match your home’s layout and materials; a suppressed pistol with a light, he notes, is often safer indoors than a rifle that overpenetrates walls. Security should feel seamless, not militaristic—quiet readiness, not constant fear.

Health and Sustainment

Prepared homes also heal. Glover emphasizes building “aid stations” stocked with trauma gear, everyday medicine, preventive supplements, and hygiene supplies. Simple rotation—using older items first, restocking behind—keeps stores fresh and familiar. Comfort items like soap, dental care, and hot water sustain morale as much as health. Preventive care, he argues, is as critical as ammunition.

Food, Power, and Community

Sustainable food systems—gardens, canned goods, livestock—anchor independence. His own chickens, cows, and vegetables turn his Utah home into what he calls “a thriving micro-ecosystem.” Similarly, layered power systems—solar panels, batteries, propane generators—form a PACE plan for energy. Yet his final and most important layer is human: community. Preparedness doesn’t end with private stockpiles; it scales through cooperation. Neighbors, he writes, are your greatest redundancy. The community you build before disaster becomes your lifeline during it.

Preparedness as a Peaceful Life

In the end, Glover returns to a deceptively simple truth—preparedness is a path to peace. When you’re ready for adversity, you stop fearing it. The homestead is not a fortress but a foundation—of freedom, of family, and of calm confidence that no matter what happens, you will not merely survive; you will continue to live well and help others do the same.