There is a lot of talk in the media about natural disasters. In the past year the United States has faced hurricanes, flooding, tornados and fires. The first thing on the mind of anyone who goes through a disaster is physical survival. But what very few people consider is economic survival. Just because you lose all of your physical possessions doesn’t mean that you have to lose everything that you have worked for all of your life. But in order to survive economically, you need to do some pre-planning.

Natural disasters can take many forms and they are not all created equally. Some are highly localized, such as a tornado, while others will disrupt large geographic areas. These types of disasters include hurricanes and earthquakes.

One natural disaster that both the federal government and state governments are preparing for is a flu pandemic caused by the spread of bird flu. Scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are all in agreement on one point. It is not a matter of "if" this will happen, but a matter of "when".

Within the past week, at a conference of concerned nations being held in China, $1.9 billion has been pledged to stop the spread of bird flu. If this disease gets out of control within the next two years, HHS estimates that as many as 2 million Americans could die. It would be an unparalleled disaster both in terms of death and the economy.

So what can you do to insure your economic survival? We’re going to take a look at what I would call "normal" disasters and then we’ll look separately at the bird flu.

If you have just lost your house to a disaster, you may think that the area that the disaster impacts is irrelevant. It is not. The wider the area of coverage, the more likely it is that you will see significant disruptions in services, such as phone and electricity.

Disasters that cover wide areas also place considerably more strain on government services. Hospitals may fill up or have to be evacuated. Police, fire and ambulatory services may be stretched to the point of not functioning at all.

One thing that very few people ever think about until it is too late is that ATM’s in the disaster area will probably not work.

The downside of living in an electronic economy is that we have become slaves to it. When the power goes out, or when phone services don’t work, the disruption is enormous. To prepare for a disaster, you really need to figure that you will be on your own for up to a week.

This means that you will need to stockpile food and first aid supplies. But it also means that you need to keep some cash on hand. Not only will you find that ATM’s don’t work, but it is unlikely that credit cards will work either. Most merchants are completely reliant on electronic processing for credit cards and debit cards. The only way that you will be able to make a purchase in a disaster zone is with cash.