In a Tweet, Social Media mentor Brian Humphrey said "The greatest danger to American society (& #SMEM) is not terrorism or global warming, but rather mediocrity and complacency."

In an online forum, one individual suggested that through the years, the Citizen had not gotten enough education.

Social Media is going to automatically face those two issues and solve them ... NOT.

We have streaming video and audio, All-Hazards radio, TV, AM and FM radio, shortwave broadcasting, IPODs, Android phones and tablets, Blackberries, SMS alerts, email alerts ... and folks on TV saying the sirens did not go off.

On the Kindle, one can get the book, "In Time of Emergency A Citizen's Handbook on Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters". This book was originally published in 1968 and cost a whopping $0.00 (Kindle not included) on Amazon.

 This material came about 11 years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  The information in the book is dated but still applicable. Make a plan, build a kit that supports the plan, practice the plan ... it's
all there.

FEMA has engaged Social Media sites with a blog, YouTube, Twitter ... with both Agency and personal accounts cranking out disaster information. The National Weather Service, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Hurricane Center have been cranking out information for years as well as recently engaging the Citizen in electronic form.

The ARE YOU READY books and videos were and still are available. Did you get yours? They are free from FEMA or you can buy a copy of the book from Amazon.

I am NOT saying that we should do less in engaging the Citizen.  I am a CHEERLEADER for Social Media, if, for no other reason, than the economy of local government is not supportive of doing more with less unless less is free.  I am saying it's time for the Citizen to wake up and smell the coffee.  Years of material, much of it free, is available in a variety of forms.  Expertise of the original Civil Defense folks is leaving fast.

The Citizen is already mediocre and complacent. The evidence of that was the phone call to the Emergency Operations Center to inquire about the Watch versus the Warning because the caller was too lazy to walk across the room to turn on their AM RADIO.