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Finding Your Weak Points: CARVER, Turned Around

One of the most useful tools I came across in my interviews wasn't a piece of gear. It was a scoring method. Special operations planners use a target-analysis method called CARVER to decide which part of a system matters most and fails most easily. After 2001, federal food-safety agencies turned it around. The Food and Drug Administration, working with the Department of Agriculture, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, adapted it as "CARVER + Shock" so that people protecting the food supply could find their own weakest points and fix those first.

That's how we use it here: defensively, on your own home. You aren't looking at anyone else's property. You're looking at your own house the way a storm, a long outage, an accident or an opportunist would, and asking one question: what breaks first, and what does it take down with it?

Most families prepare by buying whatever they saw last. CARVER makes you rank instead. The goal isn't a perfect house. It's knowing which one fix buys you the most safety, then doing that fix this month.

The six letters, for a household

Score each system from 1 to 5. In this worksheet, a higher score always means more exposed, so the biggest total is your weakest point.

• C — Criticality. How badly does your household suffer if this system fails for a week? 1 = an inconvenience. 5 = someone's health or life is at risk (insulin that needs cold storage, heat in a northern-winter January, water for a family of five).
• A — Accessibility. How easily can weather, an accident or an outsider reach it or interrupt it? 1 = protected and indoors. 5 = exposed, outdoors, or depends on something outside your control (the power line, the town water main, a propane tank by the road).
• R — Recuperability. How hard is it to get back once it's down? 1 = you can restore it yourself in an hour with what's on hand. 5 = you need parts, a technician, or a supply chain that may not be running.
• V — Vulnerability. How easily does it fail right now, as it stands? 1 = backed up, tested and maintained. 5 = no backup, never tested, or one part away from failing.
• E — Effect. How many other systems go down with it? 1 = it stands alone. 5 = it takes others with it (lose power and you may also lose the well pump, the furnace blower, the freezer, the phone charger and the medical device).
• R — Recognizability. How obvious is it from the street that you have it, or that it's your weak spot? 1 = nobody can tell. 5 = it's on display (a running generator on a dark street, cases of water stacked in an open garage, a broken gate everyone has noticed).

FDA's version adds a seventh factor, Shock, for the public impact of an attack on the food supply. A household doesn't need it. Criticality already covers what a failure would do to your family.

The worksheet

Copy this onto paper. Fill it in at the kitchen table with everyone who lives in the house, because each person notices different things. Walk the house and yard once before you score.

How to read it:

1. Circle the highest total. That's where your next dollar and your next Saturday go.
2. If two totals tie, fix the one with the higher C. A failure that hurts someone outranks one that's only expensive.
3. Any single 5 under Criticality gets attention this month, whatever its total.
4. For each fix, ask which letter it lowers. A spare part lowers R. A backup lowers V. Moving something out of sight lowers the last R. A fix that lowers two letters beats one that lowers one.
5. Rescore after every fix, and again each spring and fall. The weakest point moves once you fix it. That's the method working.

A short worked example

Here's how one household might score itself. It's an example family, not a real one: two adults and a child in a rural house on a private well, with an electric well pump, a propane furnace, one adult on a refrigerated medication, and a chest freezer.

What it tells them: Power scores highest at 23, and its Effect is a 5, because when it goes the well pump, the furnace blower, the freezer and the medication fridge all go with it. Water comes second for the same reason: the well needs electricity to pump. So the family's first fix isn't more stored food (their lowest score at 11). It's a way to run the well pump, the furnace blower and a small refrigerator through a week-long outage, plus enough stored water (one gallon, about four liters, per person per day) to cover the gap while they get it running.

They price a small generator with a transfer switch put in by a licensed electrician, plus fuel stored safely away from the house. Once it's in and tested, they rescore. Power's Vulnerability drops from 4 to 2 and its Recuperability from 4 to 2, and Water drops with it. Now the medication, Medical with a Criticality of 5, is their highest-priority item. Their next fix is a small cooler and a backup plan with their pharmacist and doctor for keeping it cold. They also think about where the generator sits, because a running generator on a dark street puts Recognizability right back up. But they never hide it by enclosing it. Generator exhaust is carbon monoxide, and it kills quietly. Never run a generator indoors or in a garage, basement or shed, even with the door open. Run it outside, at least 20 feet (about 6 meters) from doors, windows and vents, as the CDC advises, and keep a working carbon monoxide alarm on every level of the house. Lower its visibility with placement and an open fence or screen, never with walls and a roof.

That's the whole method. Score it honestly, fix the top line, and score it again.

Bottom Line

• CARVER is a special operations target-analysis method. Food-safety agencies turned it around to find their own weak points, and you can do the same with your house.
• Score water, power, heat, food, comms, medical, the perimeter and vehicles from 1 to 5 on all six letters. Higher means more exposed.
• Fix the highest total first, break ties by Criticality, and treat any Criticality of 5 as urgent.
• Watch the Effect score. The system that takes others down with it, usually power, is often the real weak point.
• Rescore after every fix and every season. The weak point moves, and that's the point.

General information only, not medical, legal or professional advice. Get the book at nooneiscoming.us. The app is coming soon.