Redundancy

It took a furnace failure on a -20 Celsius Sunday to remind me of the importance of building redundancy into our lives. As soon as the repair company told me that they do not have the parts in stock I went scavenging electric heaters and hauling firewood into the house.

A stack of wood in the shed and a very effective wood stove did provide adequate, if arduous, heating during the three frigid days that followed. Luckily our family was on fall break and stoking the fire was possible.

Like the last power outage, where we vowed to purchase a backup generator, and the last time gasoline was cheap and I vowed to keep more jerry cans on hand, building redundancy into our lives often requires some cost and a significant amount of pre-planning.

In aviation, most systems have built in redundancy, from the duplication of magneto ignition, communications radios, and even controls. Ten thousand feet is a poor place to figure out that your primary system is not working.

Add a layer of risk-mitigation and redundancy to other aspects of your life. The next time your hard drive fails, the ice storm hits, or the stores run out of toilet paper, your pre-planning will bring you a disproportionate level of calm, and your ‘prepper’ self will thank you.

• Now that’s a peak ethos.