Don’t Live in Fear: A Preparedness Mindset for Computers, Disasters, and Life

Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: November 2015.

Richard Lowe, The Writing King, joined Dr. Briar Lee Mitchell on the Artist First Radio Network for a wide-ranging hour that jumps from cybersecurity to earthquakes to belly dance photography, and keeps circling back to a single idea he applies to all of it: you can be afraid, or you can get the knowledge and prepare. Fear paralyzes; preparation frees you.

BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATION

The Conversation

From a room-sized computer to a security expert

Dr. Mitchell: How did you become an expert in computer security?

Richard: I’ve been at it since 1980, back when computers filled a room. I was VP of Consulting at two companies, worked on mainframes, on accounting and furniture systems, even helped design the system that controls water for Las Vegas, and finally ran corporate computer operations at Trader Joe’s. With a retail chain that size handling credit cards, we faced a brutal annual security audit every year, hundreds of points you had to pass at 100 percent, it made an IRS audit look like nothing, and protecting everything from a manager’s phone to the receptionist’s desktop, around 1,500 machines, demanded real security discipline. When I took early retirement to write, what I knew best was security, so my first book was a cybersecurity guide. I gave it a memorable title: Safe Computing Is Like Safe Sex, with the subtitle, you have to practice it to avoid infection.

Phishing and passwords, briefly

Richard: Most phishing emails give themselves away, misspellings, bad grammar, a strange sender, a fake address like “Bank FO America.” The rule: don’t click the link, open your browser and type the address yourself, because PayPal and your bank never email to say your account is closing. I once got a “you’ve been hacked” email from a credit card company; I logged in directly, nothing was wrong, then called the number on the back of my card, not the one in the email, because scammers plant fake phone numbers too. And use a different password for every account, kept in a password manager that fills them in and generates long random ones you never have to memorize.

Dr. Mitchell: Do you change passwords often?

Richard: The advice then was every 90 days; with my number of accounts I did a once-a-year sweep. Worth noting that guidance has since shifted, the current emphasis is long unique passwords in a manager plus multi-factor authentication, changing only when there’s a reason rather than on a schedule.

Backups, and destroying a dead drive

Richard: The very first thing my book tells you is to set up automatic cloud backups, so every change is saved offsite. Then if a computer dies you might rebuild the operating system, but you still have your ten years of family photos and, in my case, all my books, sitting safe in a data center far away. And when a drive reaches the end, destroy it. I just took a sledgehammer and a chisel and punched a hole through one, the NSA could maybe recover it, but no ordinary criminal will. You can also run an erase program, though they’re slow, I had one chewing on a four-terabyte drive for nearly a month, or have a drive demagnetized or physically ground up, which is what we did at work. The trap people fall into is thinking deletion erases data. It doesn’t. When you delete a file, the system just removes the name from a list, like crossing a title off a library catalog while the book stays on the shelf. Format a drive, sell it on eBay, and a buyer can undo the format and pull everything off it. I used to buy drives that way and the things I found, people never erased them properly.

The Real World Survival Guide

Dr. Mitchell: Tell us about your Survival Guide.

Richard: At Trader Joe’s I was in charge of disaster recovery, moving systems to another site after an earthquake, and I realized the computers do nothing if the people can’t get there. So I trained as a member of a Community Emergency Response Team, CERT, which your fire department runs for free; the California course ran seven days, three hours each, and I took it twice. The philosophy is identical to safe computing: you can be afraid, or you can get knowledge and stop being afraid. Living in fear doesn’t help. Understand the dangers, prepare for what’s likely, and do what you can afford. Build a bug-out bag, a duffel with what you need, so that if you have thirty seconds to leave, you grab it and run. And to shelter in place, keep about two weeks of food and water, I have five five-gallon bottles and a stock of MREs, the military meals that last almost forever, because in a big quake nobody’s reaching you for a while.

His own disasters

Dr. Mitchell: Had you been through disasters yourself?

Richard: Several. I lived through the Northridge earthquake, my house tossed like a box being shaken, a freight-train roar of ground and cars and exploding transformers and shattering glass, and I ended up on the front lawn with my dogs and a fire extinguisher while a neighbor pointed up at all the stars, because Los Angeles had blacked out. Years later a fire swept Lake Arrowhead, where my parents lived; they evacuated and we couldn’t reach them for a week until my sister tracked them down. My sister-in-law was caught in Katrina, lost for two weeks before we found her and wired her money. Every one of those taught me how unprepared most of us are. Wherever you live there’s a threat, earthquakes, hurricanes, flash floods, fire, and you can panic, ignore it, or quietly get ready.

Situational awareness

Richard: There’s a whole chapter on situational awareness, which is just being aware of your situation, not paranoid. People get mugged because they zone out; muggers look for people who aren’t really there. Walk into a theater and take one extra minute to find the exits, so if there’s a fire or worse you already know to move against the crowd. Live near the water in earthquake country? Spend a couple of hours on a map working out whether you’re in a tsunami zone. Walk each room of your home asking how you’d get out in a fire, is that window blocked, is that door rusted, how would I get a bedridden parent out, and fix what you find. Then make a family plan that includes the kids, so they know you have it under control and what to do if a quake hits while they’re at school. Get to know your police and fire departments, even start a community group. It’s all just thinking before the disaster instead of during it.

Treat people as human beings

Dr. Mitchell: Tell us about How to Surround Yourself with Beautiful Women Without Being a Sleazeball.

Richard: After my wife passed, I took up photography to keep out of grief, nature first, then a Renaissance fair where I met belly dancers, lovely and largely conservative women who started inviting me to shoot their shows from front row center. Over the years before I left California I shot 1,200 belly dance performances and hundreds of Renaissance fairs, close to a million pictures. What it taught me, and what the book is really about, is human rights at the personal level: treat dancers, women, everyone, as human beings with the same rights you have. Don’t put your hands where they don’t belong. If a woman says no, that’s fine, don’t get your feelings hurt, grow up. People sneer about being “friend-zoned,” but she’s a human being and owes you nothing; if you end up friends, wonderful. That’s all it is.

Live for today

Dr. Mitchell: What moved you toward fiction?

Richard: A science fiction story I dreamed up in high school, which I’m finally writing now that I’m a professional, it’s grown into a planned series, with the first volume since published. But the deeper reason I do so much is this: my wife was ill for years and couldn’t leave the house, and what that taught me is to live for today. Don’t put off the vacation, the skill, the conversation with your kids, get involved in life. So I joined the dance and Renaissance communities, took up photography, and I push myself, I’m afraid of heights, so every year I go up in a hot air balloon with a quarter inch of plywood between me and three thousand feet of air, just to prove I can. I’ll go to a masquerade ball as a goth vampire. There were stretches of hell when my wife was sick, and you power through, stay aware, keep moving forward, and try to enjoy what’s good. Just don’t be afraid. Get prepared, get knowledgeable, and you’ll get through life just fine.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Notable quotes from this conversation

Common questions from this conversation

How do you destroy a hard drive before getting rid of it?
Physically destroy it, a sledgehammer or a hole punched through it, or use an erase program, demagnetize it, or have it ground up. Deleting files or formatting the drive isn’t enough, because that data can be recovered.

What’s the single most important cybersecurity step?
Automatic cloud backups. If your computer dies or has to be thrown away, you can rebuild the software, but your photos, records, and files are safe offsite.

What is a bug-out bag, and what else should I keep?
A packed duffel with the essentials you can grab in thirty seconds. To shelter in place, also keep roughly two weeks of food and water, including long-lasting MREs, since help may not reach you quickly after a major disaster.

What is CERT?
A Community Emergency Response Team, training that fire departments offer for free to teach ordinary people how to assess and help in an emergency. Richard took the course twice.

What does situational awareness mean?
Knowing your surroundings, exits, hazards, evacuation zones, without being paranoid. A minute of attention when you enter a place, or a couple of hours researching your area’s risks, makes you meaningfully safer.